Managing Triggers: Why You Don’t Have to Fire Your Emotional Gun

When Was the Last Time You Felt “Triggered?”

I suspect it wasn’t in the too-distant past. If you’re on any social media, it probably happened the last time you opened the app or site.

If you’re a leader, odds are someone recently said something or offered unsolicited advice that “triggered” you.

When we experience a strong emotional or psychological reaction, we’ve been “triggered.” Most of the time, this experience is negative in response to some stimulus that just rubs us the wrong way.

I’ve been interested in this term for quite some time. I’m unsure when this word entered our everyday vocabulary, but it seems everywhere we look, people are being “triggered.”

How I Recently Caused a Few Emotional Guns to Fire

I triggered a few people during a recent sermon. I was preaching about the massive departure from the church over the last 25 years, how it happened, and what we should do about it. My research on church decline primarily came from the book “The Great Dechurching.”

If you’re not a Christian or church person, keep reading. Faith isn’t the point of this post. But the next couple of paragraphs may explain why you’re not a religious person!

There are four primary reasons 40 million people have de-churched in the last two and a half decades. Two of the reasons “triggered” people in the congregation.

You can probably guess one: Politics. The other was around parenting and the missed generational handoff.

Politically, according to the research, the rise of the Moral Majority and the marriage of Christianity and the right created unintended consequences. Those in the political middle felt left in the cold politically and spiritually. If moving politically right was a Christian requirement, many moderates felt better allowing their Christian peers to walk away from the political middle while they walked away from the church.

The parenting issue came down to a lack of empathy, racist views, and willingness to listen. Again, according to the research, too many parents in the 80s and 90s suggested their children not ask questions and just do what the church and Bible tell them. The lack of parental openness to discuss and empathize with others was off-putting to many former churchgoers. So they left.

The data is the data. These reasons aren’t the only reasons, but they are empirically valid reasons.

From what I understand, the two individuals who felt triggered by my message are both politically right-leaning and have at least one adult child who’s walked away from the church. When they heard the sermon, they felt attacked by me. They had an emotional response. And I completely get it.

Of course, I never suggested that either of these two people caused their adult child to leave the church. The data presented aggregate conclusions, not individual situations. But when they heard parents were to blame, they were incensed—at me!

Not at the data, but at me. I offended them.

NOTE: Two weeks later, I taught this same message at another church and tried to soften the data. It helped, as nobody felt offended. I never want to offend anyone unnecessarily.

What to Do When We Feel Triggered in Leadership

I bring this up not to disparage their response but to highlight the reality of leadership. As leaders, we will

1) Trigger people and

2) Be triggered by people.

Let’s quickly talk through both and what we should do with each scenario: