How To Handle Emotional Triggers In Your Relationship

Do you know the opposite of love? 

Most people would likely say hate but it’s actually FEAR. 

Not understanding how fear operates in your relationship can wreak havoc, leading to increased conflict, insecurity, and emotional distance between you and your partner. Let me break this down and also give you a few tips on how to become more aware of times when fear, rather than love, may be running the show in your relationship. 

 First, it’s important to note that your nervous system is specifically designed to connect with another person’s nervous system. This hardwiring coupled with an innate internal drive to keep the one you are ‘attached to' nearby, forms the emotional bond we call love, between intimate partners. 

 There is also a specific part of your brain dedicated to keeping you safe; constantly scanning the environment looking for any type of danger that could be a threat to your survival. And not just physical threat, but threat of abandonment or rejection by your partner as well. 

 So, in our love relationship we are constantly asking ourselves, “Am I safe?” and “Am I loved?”

 When something your partner does or says, it could even be something as subtle as a look or tone of voice, triggers the alarm in your brain signaling that something is wrong, these two internal systems, designed to keep you safe and keep you connected, become activated. On an emotional level this feels like a surge of emotional energy and sudden disconnection from your partner. You will have automatic thoughts like, “What did I do now?” “Nothing I do is ever good enough” or “I’m just not important to him” “See, he just doesn’t care”. 

 This is your fear response, fight or flight, swinging into immediate action sending you into protective mode from the suddenly perceived threat, your partner. This is your brain's way of keeping you safe above all else. After all, abandonment or rejection by the one you love registers as a danger cue in your brain.

 Depending on how you learned to deal with emotions and your attachment style, formed in childhood, when you feel emotionally unsafe in your adult romantic relationship you create strategies to protect yourself. These show up in one of two ways; you either push down your emotions and move away from your partner which sends out a threat of not caring and potential abandonment, or you move toward your partner with strong emotion signaling a threat of disapproval and rejection.

In almost all couples there is one of each style. 

These protective moves, ‘pursuing’ by one partner and ‘withdrawing’ by the other, only serve to heighten the fear and protective reactions in both partners, pulling you into an endless negative loop of conflict.  

When you don’t feel loved you will not feel safe. Fear is now running the show.

To become more aware of when this is happening in your relationship, follow these tips the next time you get triggered by something your partner does or says (psst…you know you’re triggered when you feel that sudden surge of emotional energy).

 Tip #1: Step back for a moment and tune into the story you are telling yourself. Look for thoughts like, “I’m not a priority”, “I don’t matter”, “He doesn’t even care” or `I'll never be good enough”, “I’m always failing”, “Nothing I do is ever right”. 

 Tip # 2: Become aware of the softer more vulnerable emotions like sadness, hurt, or fear that are beneath the anger or defensiveness. 

 Tip # 3: Identify your protective strategy by observing the urge you have to either move toward your partner and fight or move away and flee. Notice how your ‘moves’ affect your partner’s ‘moves’. 

 Tip #4: Take a break from the conflict and ground yourself in the present moment. Remind yourself, that right now fear has highjacked your relationship leading to more conflict, insecurity, disconnection between you and your partner. 

The only real solution is for you to reestablish a safe emotional connection between the two of you. This will immediately extinguish the fear, sending messages to your brain, “Yes, I am loved” and Yes, I am safe”.