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- How It Feels to Get Triggered
Panic
Holly and I recently got attacked on the internet—and it fucking sucked.
It felt like a kick in the nuts.
We felt confused, disoriented, and hurt—we even panicked for a second.
While our reaction could’ve been much, much worse, we didn’t respond as gracefully as we would’ve wanted to.
But we learned a lot.
Let me walk you through how it felt to get triggered, how to make sense of it, and how to handle it with a little bit of grace.
How it feels
Mind you, when I say ‘triggered,’ I’m not talking about the memory of a traumatic experience getting re-triggered by a current event.
Here, I mean ‘triggered’ in the sense of over-reacting to a given situation. A situation that you’re reacting to with an emotional intensity that isn't warranted to the degree that you initially experience it.
We encountered such a situation a few weeks ago. It was about one of our recent videos.
Since we’ve been making videos, Holly and I had seen a few negative comments here and there, but nothing had ever happened quite like this.
This time, we got personally attacked with an intensity that is still baffling—even in hindsight. It took us completely off guard.
We felt awful, like someone had thrown us into a dark hole.
We didn’t know when we might get out.
We felt scared and helpless.
It even made us feel physically sick. Our flight, fight or freeze response had been activated, and any rational thought was gone. We wanted nothing but to run away and hide.
However, I’d like to emphasise that we didn’t see reality clearly.
At that moment, our view of the world had narrowed and skewed. We were only able to focus on the negative signals that were suggesting we made a horrible mistake.
We saw nothing but a threat, and in our imagination, we made it much, much bigger than it actually was.
We couldn’t perceive the whole spectrum of reactions, all the positive and friendly signals that told us the exact opposite, or the voices in the middle that communicated simple indifference.
But they had been there all along.
How to not react
When you get triggered like that, you feel like you need to do something, to make this stop and go away—NOW.
But such a state of fear and panic is absolutely horrible for making decisions. You cannot trust your judgement—or anyone’s judgement—when you’re in such a state.
While your feelings were triggered by the external event, they are rooted in your subjective internal experience. Your feelings emerged as an interaction between the world and you.
At the same time, your intuition tells you the opposite. Only the world is at fault. Everything feels so real, intense, and immediate. You want to either run and hide, or attack and blame someone else.
However, the best way to respond is usually doing… nothing.
Don’t run, don’t hide, and don’t attack anyone.
That will only make it worse.
How to respond instead
Get yourself out of the panicked state first, before you make any important decisions.
Let that be your priority.
But you can only do that if you’re consciously aware that you are in a triggered state.
Unfortunately, this requires experience and practice.
How often did you recognise in hindsight that you made a dumb and hasty decision out of fear? After the fact, everything looks crystal clear. But in the moment, the dumb ideas seem like your only option.
They are not.
It’s difficult to be aware of other options, while you’re not in a state to actually see them. In those moments, you have to trust the patterns.
First, recognise you are in the triggered state, remember the signs, the feelings and sensations.
Then, detach enough from all of that to remember what it means.
Yes, there is an objective problem out there.
No, you are not reacting appropriately to it. You are over-reacting.
Yes, this feeling sucks.
But no, it’s not going to be forever. It will pass if you let it. You will be okay.
Yes, you want to run or fight.
No, neither is a good idea.
There are better, kinder, and more constructive options out there for how to respond—you just can’t see them yet.
But you will, once you get yourself out of that triggered state.
How to handle it
After you become aware of your state, focus on taking care of yourself first.
Whatever you're feeling, emotionally and physically, acknowledge it and be attentive to the sensations that arise—even if it hurts.
Don't judge yourself for your feelings. Don't judge yourself for your needs. Instead, allow the feelings to be there and leave again on their own.
Use the tools that are available to you and that you know work for you:
Journal, get your feelings out onto the page and vent freely.
Talk to someone you trust. It's okay to ask for help.
Move your body. Go for a walk, run, or work out.
Meditate if you have a meditation practice.
When Holly and I got triggered, we didn’t heed our own advice fully. We basically ran away and hid.
But we didn’t lash out, and we didn’t let it get ugly. We remained conscious enough to not get sucked into the triggered state fully.
Later on, we recognised how much we over-reacted. Yes, there were people who actually attacked us, but it came from a tiny (tiny!) minority of people.
I admit, we also felt a bit ridiculous.
But we’re grateful for this opportunity for growth, too. Next time this happens, we’ll be smarter, less afraid, and we’ll experience a greater degree of freedom.
Handling such situations with grace is hard, but the pressure doesn’t have to be on you alone. You can build systems that support you.
That’s why we created our own triggered checklist since then. It reminds us of what’s going and how to respond more appropriately.
We added the checklist to our Error Log in Notion as an additional entry template.
Check it out. We hope it helps you too.