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The trigger can be anything that provokes fear or distressing memories in the affected person, and which the affected person associates with a previous traumatic experience. Just as trauma is not merely an unpleasant or adverse experience, a trauma trigger is not merely something that makes a person feel uncomfortable or offended.
If the amygdala perceives a match to the stimulus, i.e., if the record of experiences in the hippocampus tells the amygdala that it is a fight, flight or freeze situation, then the amygdala triggers the HPA (hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal) axis and "hijacks" or overtakes rational brain function. [5]
Social situations such as parties may be triggers for social anxiety. A safety behavior in response to such a situation may be hiding one's hands. Triggers are sets of events or actions that can remind someone of a previous trauma or feared consequence. Exposure to a trigger could lead a person to have an emotional or physical reaction.
Psychological trauma (also known as mental trauma, psychiatric trauma, emotional damage, or psychotrauma) is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events, such as bodily injury, sexual violence, or other threats to the life of the subject or their loved ones; indirect exposure, such as from watching television news, may be extremely distressing and can produce an involuntary and ...
A common mechanism to deal with these potential triggers is to avoid thinking about them and to avoid situations where they may be exposed to them. This can affect quality of life by limiting where someone feels they can go and what a person feels comfortable doing.
These patterns can persist long after the event that triggered the fear, making an individual hyper-responsive to future fearful situations. [ 31 ] [ 109 ] During traumatic experiences, the high levels of stress hormones secreted suppress hypothalamic activity that may be a major factor toward the development of PTSD.
A trauma trigger is created through the process of traumatic coupling, in which a benign thing (e.g., the sound of a motorcycle accelerating) gets incorrectly linked in the individual's mind to a dangerous situation (e.g., the sound of gunfire). PTSD is treatable.
Exposure therapy in PTSD involves exposing the patient to PTSD-anxiety triggering stimuli, with the aim of weakening the neural connections between triggers and trauma memories (a.k.a. desensitisation). Exposure may involve: [18] a real-life trigger ("in vivo") an imagined trigger ("imaginal") Virtual reality exposure