On Living With Adoption and Triggers

I was wondering the other day if you put 1,000 adopted people in a room and 1,000 kept people in another room, what percent of each group would consciously or unconsciously be worried about getting triggered. My gut puts 80% on the former. I have no idea about the latter.

Being adopted, for me, has been like living in a mine field, only my body is the field. I have no idea when something or someone is going to trip a wire and I’m going to internally implode or explode. The fury I carry, supposedly hidden away, is terrifying. Some days, it feels like I could set fire to the world. I am aware of how dangerous my rage can be to others as well as to my own well-being. If I hurt and scare away those I love and those who love me, how will I not die of abandonment and loneliness? 

To have your own emotions be a danger to your sense of safety in the world is a complicated predicament. It’s like being a match that knows it can self-ignite but has no control over the process.

The wild thing is that it’s not that I am having these reactions. It’s that some part of me is, and because that part is carried in the body of I, I am now a tornado of feelings and reactions that came from someplace so deep I don’t even know what’s in there.

One result is that I carry so much shame about the times I was triggered. Losing control and lashing out might feel good in the moment, but generally afterwards I feel ashamed of my behavior. This means I feel bad about expressing the trauma I carry within. That’s not a fun way to live. I still remember my feeling of shocked aloneness when I was in a triggered spiral of crying, and my father told me it was time to stop. I remember thinking I was in so much trouble when even my parents did not know how to stay with me, hold me, sit with me through the storm.

One way to survive feeling alone with your trauma is to keep moving. If I move enough, no one can see me fall apart. No one can let me down. I can’t let others down. Constant movement is a funny way of self-erasing.

These days, I’m fascinated by my ability to be triggered. What’s in there? What wants to be expressed? What if triggers aren’t bad?

In a LinkedIn post, Rita Dahiya wrote,

Everyone gets upset. But being triggered? That’s your nervous system speaking.

1. Upset vs. Triggered: Upset is a natural response to a present challenge—anger, sadness, frustration—but you’re still in control. Being triggered isn’t just heightened upset. It’s an automatic survival alarm from your brain’s deep memory, flooding you with overwhelming emotions and sensations.

2. What happens inside your brain? The amygdala sounds the alarm, ramping up instantly. The prefrontal cortex, your logical regulator, often goes offline. Your body reacts with racing heart, shallow breath, or even dissociation. 

3. Why does it feel so intense? It’s not overreacting—it’s an ancient protective system reactivated by past trauma or overwhelm. Upset is rooted in the present; being triggered pulls you back into the pain of the past.

4. Healing is possible. Triggers aren’t weaknesses—they’re survival strategies your nervous system learned to keep you safe. The journey is to notice the triggers, stay present, and gently teach your brain new ways to feel safe again. This is trauma-informed healing: reclaiming safety, restoring calm, rewriting your story with compassion.

With all of this in mind, I asked my Tuesday night writing group to write for six minutes on their relationship with being triggered. 

As I listened to each person read her piece, I had the feeling of watching a quilt being built. Each piece had its own voice, but they all fit together so powerfully. I wanted to wrap myself in their words and feel safe in the knowing I am not alone with my triggers.

What if our parents had been taught to expect triggered behaviors from us and had tools at their disposal? (Hello, Robyn Gobbel’s book, Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors: Brain-Body-Sensory Strategies That Really Work.) What if we, the adopted people, had been taught about trauma and triggers and the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex shutdown?

Oh, gosh, to be able to work with myself would have been so much more positively challenging than trying to keep myself stuffed inside a box.

Here is what some of the other writers had to say:

1

My husband is always telling me that I was the luckiest to be adopted into the family I ended up in. He gives me this Lou Gehrig-like speech every so often. It's the one where his voice echoes through the crowded stadium to say his goodbyes. "I am the luckiest, luckiest, man on the face, face of the earth, earth..."   

He thought that they were amazing people. 

"Think where you could have ended up!"

I've heard it a gazillion times. The "be grateful--the move on--be happy--look what you had…blah, blah, blah…” While his intentions are good, I WANT to hear--"Oh man, I'm so sorry. That SUCKS. I feel ya, and I love and support you." 

Why does everyone have to equate me with good fortune? I'm no rabbit's foot. Just a baby who wasn't even seen by her teen mother and then passed along to complete strangers. 

Being heard by all is the REAL luck. Then, I might have the tools.  

2

If my triggers were given the respect and care they actually deserve, I think they wouldn’t feel so loud or dramatic. They would just be signals - not something to judge or fix, just something to notice.

The part of me that reacts when I’m not heard or seen, made fun of, or dismissed wouldn’t have to go into a tailspin. It wouldn’t have to prove anything. It would just say, “Hey, that hurt,” and be met with understanding by them, but especially by me.

I think they would soften. They wouldn’t need to scream. They would feel less like I’m unraveling and more like I’m honoring something that once had to go quiet or disappear.

And maybe, if more of us learned to honor our triggers instead of silencing them, we’d create a culture that actually listens, especially to adoptees who have spent a lifetime not being fully heard.

Louise Browne

3

If my triggers were respected and understood, a huge weight would be lifted. To experience dignity instead of shame regarding all the things I have had to carry seems unimaginable. To instead have society, friends, and family respond with compassion, curiosity, and consideration would be a gift to my psyche and body. I wonder if I would feel happy and relaxed. I could imagine I might be able to feel more present. It sounds so freeing and validating to have the weight of the shame, disappointment, fear and sadness taken away. I'm not even sure who or what would be left. But I know it would be lighter than what I carry now.

Megan Langhoff

 4

If my triggers were received with dignity and respect, I think I would feel like a kept person from a healthy family. 

It seems to me that children who are listened to and who receive support and love and communication handle upset better and maybe have less triggers and maybe have more tools to apply to their own triggers. 

I don't know many, if any, of these people, but I think they exist.

I know lots of people who don't know what a trigger is, much less how to respond. Honestly, most people have such a limited ability to respond to anything that's out of the normal. 

It's easy to be kind to strangers.  It's much harder to be open and loving and non-judgmental towards people you already have made judgements about.  Add in any kind of trauma, abuse, alcoholism, adoption, addiction, there must be some that don't start with A.   

And our society, which is built to cover all of that up and bury it forever. 

Dawn Conwell Mulkay

5

What if my triggers were respected? That means the world would be versed in attachment theory and they could receive me and help me process what is happening and this whole fucking mess could have been resolved when I was like 19 instead of having the grooves worn deeper into my brain and my nervous system which is so atrophied all I want to do is hug trees, look at art and swim in fresh water.

This could have been resolved, and I could have healed so much earlier. 

Somehow this makes me feel lighter, it's not my fault after all.

Michelle Diggs

6

I would be living from my authentic “SELF” more. I wouldn’t be afraid all the time. I wouldn’t feel the death grip of anxiety. It’s a mean ol’ pirate Captain Anxiety who forces me to walk the plank and jump into the abyss. There’s no water in the abyss. Fuck the abyss my authentic “SELF” would say. And I could make a joke not out of protection or self-preservation, but a joke made out of joy. I wouldn’t be afraid of joy. Joy robs me from me and joy triggers me. It shoots a good ol’ dose of catastrophizing into my veins and my insides run rampant from the fuel of fucked up shit. Yeah, oh well, ok.

Greta

7

It would be okay to just be me. No managing myself. No hiding. No masking. No guarding. I could be authentically vulnerable and know it was safe. More importantly, know that those who love me would keep on loving me. I wouldn’t be too much, and they wouldn’t be consumed by my fear or destroyed by my rage or devastated by my grief. I could fully be myself, not pretending to be someone else.

During Joe Hudson’s Connection Course, we did an exercise I’ll call May I Trigger You? You are set up with a partner, and you tell each other surefire things they could say to trigger you. It feels as unnatural and forced as it may sound, but the intention is clear: let’s stir the pot so we can see how to handle the resulting internal chaos. Once you feel sufficiently triggered, you tell your partner they can stop, and you take a few breaths to steady yourself. The assignment is to tap into the VIEW state of mind this course is all about (vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder), and, from this place, come up with two how or what questions. The trick is to really tap into your own feelings of vulnerability and to ask a question that holds space for impartiality (not needing things to go a certain way or for yourself or the other to be a certain way), empathy (the ability to hold space for your feelings as well as for those of the other) and wonder (isn’t this all amazing?).

 Let’s say I just did ten free hours of editing for you, and I’m feeling proud of how generous and good I am, and you turn around as if I hadn’t done much and ask for four more hours. Since I can’t do enough is a trigger for me, shooting me straight back perhaps to when I couldn’t do enough as an infant to be kept or later to make my adoptive mother always happy, my amygdala is going to rage with an alarm and my prefrontal cortex is going to go offline, which means I’m going to make a series of abrupt decisions. I’m going to go from a smiling, friendly person to a furious animal who tells you to fuck yourself as I slam out of the room. I’m going to go back home and break my lease and pack my stuff because I have to act out my fury in some way.

Do you see how walking around with triggers in my system can sometimes make life feel like one long trek across a half-frozen pond?

What if, instead of telling you to fuck yourself, I managed to wrap my arms around myself and take three long breaths? What if I managed to look inside and see what I was feeling? What if I could have asked, “What if you asked someone else?” or “How would you feel about paying me for more hours?” Anything to keep the bridge of communication open while showing up as my authentic self. If you said, “I would not feel good about paying you,” I would have the chance to smile and say, “I wouldn’t feel good about doing it, then.” That sounds pretty clean. Pretty honest. Not a lot of shame hanging around. 

It can be so complicated to be an adopted person and to own your needs and wants if you’ve lived a life of trying to be kept. Needs and wants can feel like tickets to trouble. Speaking from a VIEW state gives your needs and wants a chance to catch some air.

We are human beings that are born and then someday die, and in-between, we reach for things. Life is more fun when we reach for what we actually want with a vulnerable and generous heart.