What’s Behind a Client’s Emotional Trigger?
EMDR for Attachment InjuriesVery often there are traumatic memories at the core when a client comes in and reports that they were triggered in some way. They were triggered into anger. They were triggered into reactivity, they were triggered into withdrawal. Right? So sometimes when you have a situation where someone is responding aggressively or in a retaliatory way or in a way that they are shaming or even abusive to a partner, we have to get curious about what's underneath it. And what is underneath perhaps is that their partner did or said something that triggered something very old.
Right? Maybe a moment of shame or humiliation, maybe something that's grievous but something vulnerable, something overwhelming, something that was never properly processed in their life. And that memory gets activated. And then there's a part of their mind that says, no. No. No. No. No. No. Don't wanna feel that. Don't wanna know that. And so they push back. What does that look like on the surface that looks like defensive behavior, reactive behavior? What did your partner trigger? What else is there? What other feeling is there other than anger?
And we look to see, you know, if we can identify shame or grief or you know, just in that moment, they were longing for their partner to come close to them. And in fact, their partner said something that was hurtful or dismissive. And so that longing got stirred up, but never got met And so they pushed away. So feelings are complex. There's always a mixture of feelings there.
And in EMDR, We are trying to look for the core emotion that's underneath the defenses that's there even though a protect part of the person may come out and push away. We're looking for the core, and then we're following that core back. We're following the shame. The I'm unlovable. The I'm powerless. We're following that back, and where is the origin of that experience?