By Jenny Peterson
Today, we’re diving into a concept that can be tricky to get our heads around, but once you do, it’s a complete game-changer.
Have you ever had someone in your life who just drains the emotional life out of you? Or you feel like you are triggered by a particular person or things people say? Well, we are going to uncover why that happens.
And here’s the kicker—nobody can make you feel anything.
I know, I know, that’s a bold statement, but stick with me.
The Nature of Triggers
We often hear the term trigger tossed around in conversations. “Oh, that just triggered me.” But what does that really mean? At its core, a trigger is an emotional reaction that’s set off by an external event, person, or situation.
But here’s the truth: the trigger isn’t coming from the person or event itself—it’s coming from inside you.
Here’s where things always bring us back to you guessed it… your subconscious. Our feelings are based on past experiences and the meanings we’ve assigned to them. The brain, being the efficient machine that it is, creates shortcuts. When something happens that even remotely resembles a past hurt or emotional wound, the brain lights up those same neural pathways, and we feel as if we’re reliving that moment. This is why the same situation can cause one person to feel angry, while another person remains calm.
It’s like our emotional brain has a file folder for each type of experience. The person in front of us isn’t making us feel angry or sad—our brain is pulling out an old file from a past experience that made us feel that way. Essentially, the feelings aren’t new; they’re a replay of unresolved emotions.
Now, that’s powerful to know because it means that you, and only you, have control over your emotional response. Sure, someone’s actions might set off a cascade of memories, but the emotion you feel is based on your past, your meaning, and your inner world.
The Brain’s Need for Patterns
Let’s talk about why our brain is wired this way. We are creatures of habit. The brain loves patterns, staying comfortable, and predictability. It doesn’t care if the pattern is positive or negative; it just wants to keep you safe by anticipating what’s going to happen next. When something reminds your brain of a past experience—especially an emotional one—it kicks into gear and tries to prepare you for what it assumes is going to be a similar outcome.
This is why certain people seem to drain you emotionally. They aren’t necessarily doing anything intentionally to upset you, but their behavior may be hitting on an unresolved file in your emotional archives. Maybe they remind you of someone from your past who hurt you. Maybe their actions echo a time in your life when you felt powerless.
The good news? Now that you understand this, you can start to rewire those patterns.
Why We Can’t Make Others Feel Anything (Even Love)
So, if no one can make us feel anything, it stands to reason that we can’t make others feel anything either—not even love. This is a tough one to swallow. So many of us pour love and energy into people, only to feel like it’s not reciprocated or appreciated.
But think about it: if our emotions are based on our past experiences and meanings, the same is true for everyone else. You could be the most loving, supportive person in the world, but if the person you’re trying to love has a file folder full of past experiences where love meant pain, rejection, or manipulation, that’s the file their brain is pulling from. It has nothing to do with your love and everything to do with their internal wiring.
This is why it’s impossible to “fix” someone emotionally. They have to be willing to rewrite their own patterns and heal those old wounds. This is a big one in relationships. People enter relationships with old wounds and rather than addressing them, they reach out to their partner to try and fulfill these wounds. Going outside ourselves for love, worthiness, importance will never solve anything, it only creates a co-dependency on the other person.
How to Use Triggers as Opportunities for Growth
Now, you might be thinking, “Well, that’s great, but what am I supposed to do when I get triggered?” This is where self-awareness comes in. Triggers aren’t a bad thing; they’re actually clues. They point you toward areas of yourself that need healing.
When you get triggered, ask yourself: What is this really about? Is it about the person in front of you, or is it about something unresolved in your past? Once you’ve identified the root cause, you can begin to heal it. The root cause is most likely going to be in your childhood. When you get triggered, the little girl or boy inside of you is reminded of a wound that hasn’t been healed. Most likely your core beliefs will be underneath this wound.
Asking yourself “how does this particular trigger make me feel?” is the first step. Then asking yourself where in your childhood you had these same feelings will reveal the wound.
It’s also helpful to remember that the things that upset us the most are often a reflection of our unresolved feelings about ourselves. If someone makes you feel inadequate or unloved, there’s likely a part of you that believes that you are unlovable or inadequate. You are feeling this because it is what you believe and you are seeing the world through those glasses.
The real work is in healing that internal belief.
How Triggers Affect Your Health
Emotional triggers can have a profound impact on both health and personal growth.
When we experience a trigger, our body often responds as if it's under threat, activating the stress response system. This can lead to physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, tension, headaches, or digestive issues. Chronic exposure to emotional triggers, without proper processing, can result in chronic long term symptoms because the healing process keeps getting interrupted.
On a personal growth level, unaddressed triggers can keep us stuck in patterns of reactive behavior, limiting our ability to evolve. Triggers are often linked to past wounds or unresolved emotions, and each time they surface, they present an opportunity to heal and grow. However, if we remain unaware or avoid confronting them, they can reinforce limiting beliefs, stunting our emotional development.
By recognizing and working through our triggers, we gain self-awareness, which fosters emotional resilience and creates space for deeper personal transformation.
Blame vs. Responsibility
Here’s another big concept: it’s okay to live in blame for a little while.
We’re human, and sometimes it feels good to say, “That person made me feel this way!” But the key is not to stay there. Blame is disempowering. It leaves your emotional state in someone else’s hands. Give yourself 24 hours to sit in blame if you need to, but then be willing to call yourself out.
When blaming becomes an automatic pattern after years of doing it, we don’t always see it right away. And then when we become aware of doing it, it feels uncomfortable to not do it. This again is the brain just trying to stay comfortable.
Taking responsibility for your emotions doesn’t mean letting people off the hook for their behavior either. It simply means recognizing that you are the only one who can control how you feel. No one else has that power. And while it might feel easier to place the blame on others, true freedom comes from taking full ownership of your emotions.
Inviting Others to Be Emotionally Available
So, how do we invite others to be more emotionally available? The answer lies in leading by example. When you do your own emotional work and stop expecting others to make you feel loved, appreciated, or valued, you create space for authentic connection.
When people see that you’re emotionally grounded and not relying on them for your sense of self-worth, they may feel safe enough to open up. This doesn’t mean they will, but it gives them an invitation to engage with you in a new way—without the baggage of emotional expectations.
Understand Triggers Through a Story
I believe stories help make concepts easier to grasp, so I’d like to share a hypothetical scenario that illustrates how triggers are linked to our past experiences.
Emma sat at the crowded café, as she chatted with her friend, Rachel. It was a typical Saturday morning, a chance to catch up after a busy week. They laughed about trivial things—work, weekend plans, and the latest Netflix series. But the conversation soon turned to relationships, and that's when everything shifted.
"You know," Rachel said casually between sips of her latte, "sometimes you can be a little too sensitive. You overthink things."
It was a simple comment, almost tossed out without thought. But the moment the words hit the air, Emma’s chest tightened. Her heartbeat quickened, and a familiar heat spread across her skin, rising to her face. The noise of the café seemed to fade into the background as her mind zeroed in on that one word: sensitive.
Her hands clenched the edge of the table, trying to ground herself, but the spiral had already started. Emma heard Rachel continue talking, but her words blurred into an unintelligible hum. All she could think about was how she always seemed to mess things up—how she was always too much, too emotional, too... sensitive.
"I don’t know," Emma interrupted, her voice sharp, cutting through Rachel's sentence. "Maybe I just feel things more than you do. Maybe you should stop being so dismissive of other people’s feelings." Her voice was harsher than she intended, but she didn’t care. She had to defend herself.
Again.
Rachel blinked, surprised. "Emma, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying sometimes things get to you more than they should."
The words were meant to be comforting, but instead, they felt like salt on a wound Emma didn’t know she was still carrying. She felt the familiar weight of shame and anger bubbling to the surface, but it wasn’t just about Rachel’s comment. It was about something deeper, something that had been simmering inside her for years.
Flashback: The Origin of the Wound
Suddenly, Emma’s mind slipped back to a memory, one she had buried for so long but could never really forget. She was eight years old, sitting at the kitchen table, tears streaming down her face. She had just come home from school, upset because her best friend, Sophie, had excluded her from a game at recess. It wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but for eight-year-old Emma, it felt like the world was falling apart.
Her father walked into the kitchen, saw her crying, and sighed in exasperation. "Emma, you’re always getting upset over the smallest things. You’re too sensitive. Toughen up, will you?" His voice wasn’t cruel, but it was dismissive, brushing aside her feelings like they were insignificant.
Those words—you’re too sensitive—had cut deeper than any childhood spat ever could. From that day on, Emma had tried her best to bury her emotions, to stop feeling so much, to not be too much. But no matter how hard she tried, her feelings always seemed to surface at the worst possible times, and she would hear her father’s voice echoing in her mind, telling her she was overreacting, that she was too emotional, too weak.
Back to the Present: The Trigger
Rachel’s words had been innocent, but they had triggered that old wound. In that moment at the café, Emma wasn’t just hearing Rachel. She was hearing her father, hearing every time someone had dismissed her feelings or told her she was too emotional. The pain wasn’t just about what Rachel had said; it was about years of trying to be less than she was, of trying to fit into a mold that didn’t allow space for all the emotions she carried.
She took a deep breath, feeling the weight of her reaction. This wasn’t about Rachel. This was about her. About a wound that had never healed, a belief she had carried from childhood that her emotions made her unworthy, difficult, and unlovable.
"I’m sorry," Emma said softly, her voice trembling with vulnerability. "I think I overreacted. It’s just... that word, sensitive. It hits something in me. It reminds me of... my dad. He used to say that all the time when I was little, and I guess I haven’t shaken it off yet."
Rachel’s expression softened, and she reached across the table, squeezing Emma’s hand. "I didn’t know. I’m really sorry. You’re not too sensitive, Emma. You’re allowed to feel however you feel."
For the first time in a long time, Emma felt seen. Not dismissed. Not too much. Just... seen.
And she realized that the power to heal this wound was within her. She didn’t need anyone else’s validation or approval. It was up to her to rewrite the story she had been telling herself since she was eight years old.
The Moment of Clarity
Sitting there in the café, Emma understood something important: the people in her life weren’t responsible for her triggers. Rachel wasn’t her father, and she wasn’t that little girl anymore. The trigger had come from inside her, from an old hurt that still lingered, waiting for the right moment to be brought to the surface.
And now that it was out in the open, Emma realized she had the power to heal it. She didn’t have to carry that belief anymore. She wasn’t too sensitive. She wasn’t too much. She was human, and her feelings were valid. The healing would take time, but acknowledging the wound was the first step toward freedom.
Emma smiled at Rachel, feeling a sense of peace wash over her. For the first time, she wasn’t fighting her emotions. She was embracing them, understanding that they were there to guide her, not to define her.
As they continued their conversation, Emma felt lighter, more present. The trigger had lost its power because she had finally recognized it for what it was: a reflection of her past, not her present. And with that understanding, she began the process of healing the little girl inside her who had always felt like she was too much.
As you can see from this example, nobody can make you feel anything, and you can’t make anyone else feel anything either. Our feelings are deeply personal, shaped by our past experiences and the meanings we’ve attached to them. Understanding this can be the key to unlocking a new level of emotional freedom.
The next time you feel triggered, take a moment to reflect. What’s this really about? What file is your brain pulling from, and is it time to rewrite that story?
Your triggers are your biggest healers. Don’t blame your symptoms on them. Don’t think you can’t heal because of them. In fact, it is the opposite, you can’t heal if you don’t address them.
Your body, through your symptoms, is trying to communicate that how you respond to life isn’t working any more. When you address these underlying wounds, you will no longer send messages of threat to your body and it will feel safe to heal.
You are unique, your symptoms are connected to very specific patterns within your subconscious.
Without a plan unique to you, you will continue struggling and miss out on the life you deserve to be living! To help you get started on your long-lasting healing journey, we would love to provide you with a healing plan that is unique to you. Get your custom healing plan today!
You can also download my free healing guide, “Why Can’t I Heal” where you will learn the 5 reasons that you haven't healed despite everything you've tried. These are the missing pieces to your healing and the key to resolving your symptoms for good.
Jenny Peterson is the founder and CEO of Mind Body Rewire (MBR). She teaches those that are overwhelmed with trying to heal chronic symptoms how to simplify their healing by focusing on just one place, the subconscious mind. Learn more about MBR here.
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