(Before reading this post, it would be helpful to read the post entitled “Understanding the Stress Response”)

It’s easy to understand why the stress response gets triggered when faced with a real threat like encountering an angry bear.  This post will help you understand why it gets triggered in everyday life.

Past threatening incidents can trigger a stress response today.

Every time we feel threatened, our brain stores the threatening incident, and all the components associated with the incident, in our implicit memory.

This is referred to as an “imprint” of the incident, and its stored components include everything that was happening at the time, relevant or not, such as facial expressions, body language, smells, tones of voice, figures of speech, and so on.

It will also store the negative feelings, limiting beliefs, negative expectations, and all the resolutions you created to help you survive and prevent this threat from happening again.

From that point forward, your implicit memory will keep that threatening memory alive – along with all its components – to help prevent that threat from happening again.

Then your brain continually scans for anything that resembles that incident.  When it identifies enough of those components to indicate a repeat of that threat, it triggers the stress response and many of the negative emotions, beliefs, expectations, and resolutions which you felt in the original incident, distorting your ability to accurately perceive what’s happening today.

That’s why we get triggered in everyday life.  Since most of our negative experiences felt like threats, they were stored in our implicit memory, and our brain continually scans for the stored components and “triggers” the stress response when they or something similar occurs.

Each time that happens, it feels like we’re in a truly life-threatening situation which is why we can react so strongly to something someone says, a look on their face, the way they hold their body, or a tone in their voice.

Most of us have quite a few of these “imprints” stored and ready to be triggered at any time. Fortunately, the imprints of past negative experiences can be resolved so they do not get triggered again and again.