Stop Getting Triggered Now

by Josephine Faulk, MPH · Published March 10, 2015 · Updated January 14, 2019

The Limbic Brain – Intellect vs. Instinct

When fight or flight were not viable survival options for you as a child it became imperative that you access an alternate method to ensure your mental, emotional and physical survival. You learned to freeze. It consists of shutting down the fearul and confused traumatized child parts of you. These are the parts that are rising to the surface when you are triggered. Even though children may lack well developed analytical skills, they have a built-in system for guiding their responses to imminent danger. This takes place deep inside the brain, where there is a second brain, sometimes referred to as the primitive or reptilian brain; it is the limbic brain, which kicks into action without any forethought necessary.

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Because it has the ability to bypass the thinking brain (the neocortex) it can move us to action based entirely on its own interpretation of a current situation, relative to past experiences, in order to keep us safe. If you had an emotionally unstable or physically unsafe childhood it has lots of material to work with and your limbic brain over-references to those past experiences far too often. The result is being triggered and over-reacting to, what might seem to others, an inconsequential event.

It’s important to understand how your limbic brain’s best intentions keep landing you in hot water. For the next few posts I will explain clearly the roles of the different parts of the limbic brain and how each contributes to the phenomenon of being triggered. In Part II of my book I teach you how to retrain those over-programmed, hypervigilant parts of your primitive brain so as to greatly lessen and even eliminate their preponderance for lashing out. Soon, your newly serene self’s thinking brain will be getting much more stage time.