Wait... What If "Triggered" Just Means I Picked Up Something That Wasn't Mine?

On trying not to absorb every sigh or shift in energy even when everything in me wants to fix it or explain myself, and feeling equal parts enlightened and dumb about it

Here’s something wild I’m learning.
What if “triggered” doesn’t mean someone did something to you?
What if it means you saw their mood, their judgment, their whatever-it-was, just lying there on the ground…
and you bent down and picked it up?

Stay with me here.

BTW I'm not talking about real trauma triggers here. Those are different. Those are valid and protective and take time and care to work through. I'm talking about the smaller stuff - the daily interactions that send us spinning when maybe they don't need to.

I had one of those weeks recently. The kind where every interaction felt loaded, where I kept replaying conversations from days ago, editing my responses, defending myself to people who probably weren't even thinking about me anymore.

Then my therapist asked this devastatingly simple question: "Why do you have to let it trigger you?"

And something slooooowly, kind-of clicked.

The Emotional Collection Habit

Think about the last time someone was short with you… the cashier's sigh, your coworker's tone, that look that felt like judgment. What happened in your body?

I've heard some people's faces get instant red hot, like blood is pulsing right behind their skin. Or their shoulders inch up past their ears. Their hands grip whatever they're holding.

For me? It's like someone just lit a match in my stomach and everything catches fire at once, slowly burning me from the inside out. My whole body goes into this weird alert mode and suddenly I'm already planning my defense for something that probably wasn't even an attack.

Do you immediately start explaining yourself? Spend the next hour crafting the perfect mental arguments in your head?

Welcome to what my therapist calls the Justice Loop - that compulsive need to make everything make sense, where someone else's energy becomes evidence about our worth. Where we HAVE to tell someone what they did was wrong and why it's not acceptable, spinning it over and over in our heads.

But here's what's fascinating to me (and is almost/kind-of sinking in): this isn't actually about the other person's behavior. It's about a learned trauma response that made perfect sense when we were kids.

The Survival System That Outlived Its Purpose

We learned early to read the room.
To track every expression.
To translate silence like our life depended on it.
Because sometimes, it did.

When you're seven and someone's mood could mean the difference between safety and chaos, becoming an emotional sponge isn't dysfunction - it's adaptation.

The problem is we're now adults trying to convince our bodies that some random person's attitude isn't actually a threat to our existence.

This isn't about having better "emotional intelligence". This is about untangling decades of learned responses and deciding who we want to be and what shit we actually want to carry.

The Space Between Stimulus and Response

I saved this TikTok that said something like "Between what happens and how you react, there's a space. And in that space, you get to choose."

I don't know if that's exactly how it went, but it stuck. Even when the space feels like trying to squeeze through a crack in the wall. Even when I don't remember it exists until I'm already three rounds deep in a mental argument with someone who probably (definitely) forgot about me five minutes ago.

The untangling is messy. One day you can see the patterns clearly - how you absorb other people's energy like it's your job, how their disappointment becomes your failure, how their stress becomes your emergency. The next day you're right back in it, three layers deep in someone else's emotional weather.

Here's what I'm trying to convince myself of: the boundary isn't about keeping their energy out. It's about not picking it up in the first place.

What This Looks Like in Practice

What if we tried asking 'Do I even want to engage with this?' instead of 'Why are they treating me this way?' I don't know if it works yet, but I'm testing it out.

Instead of immediately explaining yourself when someone seems irritated, notice the impulse. Feel where it lives in your body. Ask yourself what would happen if you just... didn't.

Instead of making someone else's mood mean something about your worth, consider that they might just be having their own human experience that has nothing to do with you.

This isn't about becoming cold or disconnected. It's about learning the difference between empathy and absorption, between caring and carrying.

The Ongoing Experiment

Maybe "triggered" used to mean "they hurt me" and now it means "I decided to make their stuff about me."

Maybe we don't have to attend every emotional event we're invited to.

The space between what happens and how we react - it's getting bigger. Not consistently, not perfectly, but noticeably. And in that space, we get to choose: Is this mine? Do I want to carry this? What would happen if I just let it be theirs?

Most of the time, the answer is: let them keep their stuff. You've got enough of your own.

-
Okay, that sounds way more zen than it actually is. Most of the time I still pick up their stuff anyway. But sometimes - maybe once out of ten times - I catch myself.