Emotional Triggers in Relationships

Episode Summary of “Emotional Triggers in Relationships”

Welcome to episode 28 of The Communicate & Connect Podcast with your host, Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky, a seasoned military marriage counselor. In this episode, we’re unpacking the crucial topic of “Emotional Triggers in Relationships.”

Emotional triggers are inevitable and understanding them is vital for fostering a healthy, connected, and resilient relationship. Whether you’re in a new relationship or have been with your partner for years, learning to recognize and manage emotional raw spots can be transformative.

Join us as Dr. Polinsky dives deep into this essential subject, using her own experiences to illustrate how past emotional wounds can unexpectedly influence our reactions towards our partners. Discover how seemingly benign actions can trigger painful emotions and uncover the steps you can take to navigate these emotional landmines effectively.

Through insightful anecdotes and practical advice, Dr. Polinsky guides listeners on how to identify their own emotional triggers and encourages open communication with partners. Learn how comforting each other during emotional flare-ups can lead to deeper intimacy and a more synchronized relationship. Whether you’re looking to improve communication, enhance connection, or build a stronger partnership, this episode is packed with valuable insights tailored to meet your relationship needs.

Stay with us for a compelling discussion that not only promises to enhance your understanding of emotional triggers but also equips you with actionable strategies to apply in your daily interactions. Tune in to empower your relationship and strengthen your emotional bond.

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Episode Transcript for “Emotional Triggers in Relationships”

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:01]:
This podcast is sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, where we have a team of therapists who provide individual, couples, and family therapy services, all tailored to meet the needs of military and veteran families. To learn more about our services, visit www.communicateandconnect.com.

Welcome to the Communicate and Connect Podcast for Military Relationships with your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a military marriage counselor. If this is your first time listening to the Communicate and Connect podcast, please take a second to go, rate, review and subscribe to make sure you get all our future episodes. We also really want to know what it is you love about our podcast. And if for some reason you’re not loving it, we want to know that too, because we’re committed to providing the best quality content to help you improve your relationships.

Early puberty caused lasting emotional trigger impacts.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:01:05]:
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Communicate and Connect podcast. This is episode 28 on emotional triggers in relationships. So I’m pretty glad that we’re going to talk about emotional triggers in relationships, because we all have them, and being aware of kind of where the landmines are in a relationship is generally a good idea.

So I’ll start with a story about myself because I find that examples tend to be very helpful for people when we’re talking about these things. So, for example, I have a raw spot that triggers me, and that is when my husband laughs at me. That comes from my childhood. I can trace the roots of that raw spot back to my childhood where I was more overweight. I don’t know if I would really say overweight.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:02:11]:
I developed into womanhood earlier than my peers, and so I had a more adult body than my peers did at the time. And I did feel kind of outcast because of that. And people would make fun of me and they would laugh at me. And so that is a very, like, humiliating feeling. That is a trigger now for me.

So if I’m, like, playing around with my husband or I’m doing something, or I say something to him and he starts laughing at me, I immediately go into, why are you making fun of me? Are you making fun of me? How can my person, who I love, be making fun of me? And it does trigger. It’s a big trigger for me emotionally. And every time I ask him, I say, why are you laughing at me? Or why are you making fun of me? And he says, I’m not making fun of you.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:03:11]:
I think you’re cute. And that is always his response to me, which is sweet. Like when I can remove myself from how I feel emotionally triggered. He is feeling sweet emotions towards me, which is, which Is nice to think about, you know, that he’s feeling sweet emotions towards me, that he finds me cute. I mean, I do like that. But his expression of it by laughing and chuckling like he does is. Yeah. Is triggering for me.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:03:44]:
So this, I think, is a great example of how we have emotional triggers that come from somewhere in our past that our partner could be doing something with positive intentions. And it could still be an emotional raw spot, an emotional trigger, and bring up a lot of painful emotions. And again, these are.

They’re often like landmines. So, you know, my husband and I have worked through this already in our marriage, and I still sometimes get triggered by it. But we have this same discussion each time. And it’s not as painful now as it was towards the beginning, that I got myself a little off track here. But let me get back on track.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:04:33]:
So we all have emotional raw spots and they get bumped up against in marriage. And when that happens, we do get emotionally triggered. And it brings up kind of a mental template in my mind. And so when we go through painful emotional experiences, our mind stores that memory and our bodies store that memory.

And in that memory is the emotions that I had with that memory. And so the memory comes up. It’s not just a memory, it’s also a memory, plus all of the emotions that I felt at the time. And so then something in modern day or current day happens often in your relationship, something happens that is feels very similar to what happened in the past.

Raw emotional triggers strain relationships significantly.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:05:28]:
It brings up all of the emotions, not just from that moment in time, the current moment in time, but it brings up the emotions from when that has happened in the past as well. So now we have lots of painful emotions happening. And it is very painful when raw spots get triggered. And in relationships, it’s hard because if I don’t know that my partner has a raw spot, I don’t know to avoid it.

I don’t know why they’re hurt. Like, I could see, like, if I put myself in my husband’s shoes and I’m laughing because I think my wife is cute, and then she gets really mad and blows up at me for making fun of her, I’m gonna feel kind of lost as to what on earth is going on.

But if he knows, if he knows that that’s a raw spot for me, and if I can communicate that to him in the moment, then that helps him know for the future, but it also helps him be able to comfort me and help us have a different experience of where we can become closer versus becoming more Distant. As a result, oftentimes when raw spots get hit, people either blame their partners for hurting them, or they kind of shut down and go away in distance from their partners.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:06:59]:
It’s extra challenging because oftentimes the partner is not doing anything wrong. They’re not doing anything wrong. They’re just being themselves. And something happened to trigger the pain template inside of me, or inside of you in this case. So they’re really not the cause of the pain. They just happened to be the trigger at that time. And the goal is to be able to express the pain that gets triggered and then be able to comfort each other when that happens. I like to use this metaphor of dancing.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:07:39]:
You know, couple relationships are a lot like dancing. And I do dance. Some of you probably already know that. I started with, like, swing dancing, Lindy hop, Balboa, Charleston, all of that stuff. I met my husband through west coast swing. Recently, I’ve been getting really into kizomba dancing. It’s just so much fun. But when you dance with somebody, it’s really common to step on each other’s toes.

Navigating Dance Mishaps and Emotional Challenges Together.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:08:05]:
Just like the other week, I was dancing with somebody and I kind of tripped, and I had high heels on, and my heel, like, I jammed it into the dude’s foot, and I felt so horrible. I was like, oh, my God. I did not mean to, like, put all of my weight through my heel into your foot. Like, ouch. That’s got to hurt.

But these types of things do happen when you dance, and the goal is to see, okay, how can we recover in this moment and keep on dancing together? And that’s also what we want to happen with emotional raw spots. So you guys are interacting together, you and your partner, and somehow they bump into or step on your toes or do something that triggers an emotional raw spot for you. It does hurt.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:09:00]:
Of course it hurts. And it also comes along with dancing together and being in a relationship together. There’s no way. There’s no way to avoid raw spots altogether. The most important part, instead of, you know, as you get used to dancing together, you probably step on each other’s toes less and less because you become more in sync.

So basically, the goal is that I can’t, you know, it’s not possible for me to never step on my partner’s toes and to never bump into them and to never hit a raw spot or an emotional trigger for them. That is just unrealistic. If we want to interact together, if we want to dance together, it’s going to happen.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:09:48]:
And it does happen less and less. As we get used to each other, get used to the triggers, get used to interacting together, dancing together, but it’ll still happen. And when it happens, the goal is to recover. And the way that couples recover is through comforting each other when trigger comes up, when the pain comes up. So that is the ultimate goal for couples.

And if that feels like a challenge, you could go to couples counseling. They can help you figure out how to do that. But let’s just talk about the beginning of the marriage, because this series is on getting ready for marriage and kind of some of like the foundational tips to help you get started.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:10:33]:
And so it can be really helpful if you can identify some of your raw spots at the beginning of the relationship, and if your partner can identify some of their raw spots at the beginning of the relationship, that is going to be awesome. It’s always better to know this is a really painful spot over here ahead of time. It’s nice to know that and not finding it out later.

So some examples of raw spots are like, feelings of being rejected is a common raw spot. Feeling betrayed, it might involve being afraid of being rejected or being afraid of being betrayed. A loss of control. If you have an emotional experience of feeling kind of like, I don’t have any control over this. Feeling excluded is a raw spot for a lot of people.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:11:24]:
In this. In the last episode, I talked about my trip with my husband to this cabin with some friends, and he got into a hot tub and he, like, didn’t invite me, and I felt excluded. That feeling of exclusion has to do also from stuff from my childhood. That is a template that came up for me. So that is another example that is slightly, slightly different than the first one, if that’s helpful for you.

But okay, so we’ve got rejection, betrayal, loss of control, feeling excluded, feeling unwanted, also feeling too needed to where you might feel smothered and like, you don’t have your own room. That could also involve kind of feeling trapped, like you don’t have your own independence. These are feelings that are common feelings for people when they have a raw spot that got triggered.

Identify and reflect on fight patterns effectively.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:12:24]:
And you want to see if you can maybe think about your most recent fight and kind of get curious about it and see if you can connect it to your past life events. So some good questions to ask yourself would be, okay, when else have I felt this way before in my life? And if you can start thinking of some times where, oh, yeah, I remember these different memories where I also felt excluded or smothered or something like that.

And then you can see okay, is there a pattern, Is there a pattern in my life where I’ve felt this different times? If so, then it’s probably an even bigger raw spot because there are more memories and painful emotions encoded in that mental template. You want to be able to share these with your partner so that way they can be aware, they can try to avoid it, but they’re not going to get that perfect.

And ultimately it’s better to tell them when you do get triggered and ask them for comfort. They can help comfort you and help you with the pain of that so you guys can get back in sync and keep dancing. And it’s better to repair than try to avoid. And I would, I really like, I cannot stress this enough.

Share emotional triggers with partner for comfort.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:13:46]:
Like, the antidote to the pain is comfort from your partner. It’s not avoiding it. So. And if you have questions about that, you feel free to like send them in a comment or something on social media and maybe if there are questions, like, if that wasn’t quite clear, then I can do like a live or something that goes a little more in depth on that.

So your action item for this episode is I want you to see if you can identify just one raw spot that is a common emotional trigger for you and share it with your partner. And I think that’s going to help just open up your conversation around emotional raw spots and emotional triggers. All right, have a great day.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:14:43]:
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so Please take a second to go rate, review and subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for our FREE 10-week relationship email course.

This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication, communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it. While I am a therapist, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered therapy and it should also not be a replacement for therapy. If you think you need a professional of any kind, you should definitely go find one. Until next time.