Imagine a child named Johnny. His parents are going through a tumultuous divorce and fighting over Johnny and everything else. One night, Johnny’s dad wakes him up in the middle of the night, quickly throws Johnny’s clothes into a duffel bag, hurries him out to the car, and speeds off into the night. He tells Johnny they’re going to start a new life together, just the two of them. A few nights later, Johnny’s mom shows up late at night, grabs Johnny and his bag, argues with Johnny’s dad, and drives Johnny back to their home. Fast forward to when Johnny, who now goes by John, is a married adult with children of his own, and his family is preparing for a vacation. John opens the kids’ bedroom door and sees his wife packing suitcases. John instantly feels overwhelmingly agitated, angry, and distressed and doesn’t know why.
John is experiencing a trauma trigger. The suitcase, the packing, the kids’ clothes – these sights have triggered John’s early traumatic memories of fear, confusion, and feeling unsafe as his parents yanked him back and forth from one home to another amidst conflict.
Around 70% of adults have had at least one traumatic experience. Long after a traumatic event, people, places, physical sensations, dates, and life stages can trigger distressing memories of the earlier trauma. Understanding your triggers can help you cope and feel more confident and in control. Let’s talk about some common triggers, why they happen, and how you can learn to manage them.
What Are Triggers?
People living with PTSD experience reactivity to trauma triggers, also called cues or trauma reminders. When a person encounters a trauma trigger, it is common to experience intense emotions like fear, anxiety, irritability, or anger.[i] You may experience physical reactions such as a racing heart, tightened muscles, and rapid breathing. You might have vivid flashbacks. Flashbacks can either feel like you’re watching your earlier traumatic memory play out in front of you, or like you’re reliving the experience in this moment, complete with sounds, smells, emotions, and other sensations from the traumatic experience.[ii]
Some common triggers include:
- Life Transitions: Marriage, childbirth, parenting, career change, moving
- Feelings: Stress or panic may trigger memories of earlier trauma
- Sensory Input: Sights, sounds, and smells that were present at the time of trauma[iii]
- Anniversaries:
- The date of the traumatic event or traumatic loss of your loved one
- The birthday of the loved one you lost
- Holidays that celebrate your lost loved one, such as Mother’s Day or Father’s Day
- Seasons and Weather:
- Winter or falling snow may trigger distress if you experienced a traumatic car accident due to snow
- Hurricane season may cause distress if you were severely impacted by a hurricane
Managing trauma triggers can feel daunting. Sometimes, like with anniversaries, you may see them coming. While this can help you prepare, it may also cause dread for days or weeks before the anniversary date arrives. Other times, triggers seem to pop up out of nowhere, cause you major distress, and leave you feeling alienated as you try to explain your trauma reaction to the people around you.
We understand how challenging it can be to navigate trauma triggers. Sometimes it can help to know that you’re not the only one going through this. Many people experience similar distress when they encounter trauma reminders. It’s not your fault you experience these intense reactions.[iv] It all has to do with how the human brain processes experiences when it becomes overwhelmed by a terrible event.
What Causes Trauma Triggers?
Your brain typically uses an organized system for filing away your experiences as memories. But, when you experience something extremely threatening, your body temporarily pauses many of its systems so it can direct all of its energy and resources toward surviving the threat.[v] It prioritizes being able to fight or run fast over being able to process and store your memory of the event. Later, though, because the experience did not get filed away properly as a “memory,” your brain can perceive the experience as something that is happening right now, in real-time. So, when sights, sounds, smells, or other details from your environment cue your brain to recall that earlier traumatic event, your brain sees that past event as something occurring “right now”. You relive the terror, feelings of distress, rapid heart rate, adrenaline, and the intense urge to fight for survival.
Sometimes it is easy to connect the dots and identify triggers and what caused them. In the case of Johnny from our earlier example, we can see that packing the children’s clothes brought up distressing memories of one parent throwing his clothes into a bag and taking him away from his other parent. A person who once lived in a warzone may panic when an airplane flies overhead and experience vivid flashbacks to a time when airplanes might be followed by terrifying explosions.
Sometimes, understanding why certain sights, sounds, smells, dates, or life events cause us distress can be difficult. Talking about your experiences in trauma therapy may help you identify, understand, predict, and plan for triggers so you can feel like you’re in control again.
How Can Life Transitions Trigger Past Trauma?
Life transitions can be trauma triggers for many reasons.
- Major life changes, like getting married, moving, starting or changing your career, or having children increase stress, even if the change is perceived as positive. Stress worsens PTSD symptoms.[vi]
- Life transitions can make it difficult to continue healthy coping routines, access your support networks, and get enough exercise and sleep to protect yourself from increased PTSD symptoms.
- PTSD can make it difficult to trust, problem-solve, communicate, and feel close to others. These challenges can strain relationships.[vii] Entering into a new relationship or getting married can bring new challenges in these areas. Additionally, if the trauma you experienced was betrayal, domestic violence, sexual assault, or rape, marriage or starting a romantic relationship may bring experiences that are especially triggering. If you grew up with parents who fought constantly or were abusive to each other, you may find normal conflicts in your own relationship to be distressing.
- Becoming a parent can trigger traumatic memories from your upbringing. Maybe your parents were physically absent, emotionally unavailable, or struggling with addiction. Perhaps they were severely controlling or overprotective, harsh, abusive, or narcissistic. Maybe they had unresolved mental health struggles that affected you and your relationship with them. Maybe they passed away when you were young and you’re wondering how you’ll raise children when your own parents didn’t raise you.
What Can I Do To Cope With Trauma Triggers?
Trauma is treatable, and there are steps you can take to enhance healing.
Explore your triggers. Working with a trauma-informed therapist can likely help you get to know your triggers and make a plan for managing them when they happen.[viii] You may also try keeping a journal of your trauma reactions and what happened right before them. You might even ask supportive loved ones if they have noticed any patterns. For example, maybe they have noticed that you tend to get worked up right before you have guests over. Reflecting on this observation may give you insight into the reasons for your nervous system being activated. For example, you may recall that your dad frequently drank too much and became abusive when guests came to the home.
Plan for your triggers. As you get to know your trauma cues, you may be able to plan for some of your triggers. Imagine that going home for the holidays is a trigger for you because you have to be around relatives who have caused you pain. You might focus on taking good care of yourself before your visit so that you feel strong enough to face the challenge. You might plan ways to get time alone during your visit to ensure you will have breaks from the stress. You could plan an exit strategy so you’re confident you can leave at any time if you become overwhelmed. Perhaps you could take along a close friend who understands what you’re going through.
Learn grounding techniques. These are strategies that can bring you back to the present moment, where you are safe. If you experience panic, anxiety, or flashbacks, grounding methods can help you regain a sense of calm. Practice grounding techniques regularly so that you can use them in moments of distress.
Process traumatic memories. PTSD occurs when an experience was so distressing that it overwhelmed your brain’s ability to properly process and store the experience as a memory. You can reprocess the memory in trauma therapy. This can effectively reduce or eliminate PTSD symptoms. Imagine you’re trying to build a tower out of toy blocks. You lay some blocks flat and straight for a foundation. You stack another row flat and straight on top of the first row. But then, you accidentally lay the next row off-center. From this point on, as you build and stack, your block tower has vulnerabilities and may wobble or fall. If you go back, though, and re-align or straighten the off-center row, you will again have a strong and sturdy tower to build on, without those vulnerabilities. Reprocessing traumatic memories is kind of like re-aligning the row of blocks that was not straight. Once you go back and process the traumatic memories, you can feel more stable and experience relief from distress caused by triggers.
Can Trauma Therapy Help Me Cope With Trauma Triggers?
It is common and understandable if life transitions trigger your past trauma. You don’t have to navigate these challenges alone. In our trauma therapy, you can work with a licensed therapist who is specifically trained to help you cope with trauma, PTSD, and triggers.
It may be comforting to know that PTSD is treatable.[ix] Our supportive and compassionate team of therapists offer trauma processing in a virtual setting. This means you can work with qualified therapists from the comfort, privacy, and safety of your home, no matter where you are located.
Is Online Trauma Therapy Effective?
Yes. Research has demonstrated that trauma therapy delivered in a virtual setting is as effective as trauma therapy delivered in person.[x] People with PTSD sometimes find that it is easier to find a qualified, trauma-informed therapist online than it is to find a trauma therapist in their local area. If you have PTSD, you may also feel more comfortable and in control in an online setting. You can be treated from the comfort of home, without a commute, a waiting room, or sitting one on one in a room with a stranger.
Take Away
If trauma triggers are affecting your quality of life, causing you distress, or interfering with relationships, we encourage you to reach out to our office. Our team of caring, qualified, trauma-informed therapists would love to help you identify and understand your triggers, manage your symptoms, and learn to feel safe and in control of your life again. You can take the first step on your healing journey by calling our office today.
References
[i] “Prevalence and Potency of Trauma Reminders 8.5 Years after a Terrorist Attack. – EBSCO,” accessed March 25, 2025, https://research-ebsco-com.oh0142.oplin.org/c/kpurfj/viewer/html/2nakdsl2vv.
[ii] Anke Ehlers, “Understanding and Treating Unwanted Trauma Memories in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” Zeitschrift Für Psychologie / Journal of Psychology, February 26, 2015, https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/10.1027/0044-3409/a000021.
[iii] “Prevalence and Potency of Trauma Reminders 8.5 Years after a Terrorist Attack. – EBSCO.”
[iv] “What Is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?,” accessed March 24, 2025, https://www.psychiatry.org:443/patients-families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd.
[v] “The Special Problem of Interpretation in the Treatment of Traumatized Patients. – EBSCO,” accessed March 25, 2025, https://research-ebsco-com.oh0142.oplin.org/c/kpurfj/viewer/html/z3rylu5sof.
[vi] Lisa Y Maeng and Mohammed R Milad, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Relationship Between the Fear Response and Chronic Stress,” Chronic Stress 1 (June 27, 2017): 2470547017713297, https://doi.org/10.1177/2470547017713297.
[vii] “VA.Gov | Veterans Affairs,” General Information, accessed March 23, 2025, https://www.ptsd.va.gov/family/effect_relationships.asp.
[viii] “Prevalence and Potency of Trauma Reminders 8.5 Years after a Terrorist Attack. – EBSCO.”
[ix] “What Is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?”
[x] Asena Yurtsever et al., “The Effect of the Online Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Early Intervention Protocol (EMDR R-TEP) for the Risk Groups with Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Frontiers in Psychology13 (September 29, 2022): 935782, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.935782.