Question. Have you ever found yourself? Suddenly, somewhere else. Not physically, but mentally, as if a smell, a sound or just a change in the light has tugged at a thread in your memories and pulled you back to a moment you thought was long gone. that's what we mean when we talk about being

triggered. And although the word gets tossed around a lot these days, it's not a buzzword,

because it's a real thing. It's a moment where your brain, when it's trying its best to protect

you, accidentally yanks you away from the present,

drops you into the past. It's like your mind suddenly changes the channel without asking you.

And you're not just remembering, you're reliving. Your heart might race, shoulders might tense up,

and although there's nothing that's going on in your

environment that's changed, your whole internal world has shifted. Even a date on a calendar can do

this. Mother's Day, Easter, birthdays, grief has got a way of creeping up on us through

dates on a calendar, or the smell of the spring air or somebody's cut the grass or something.

All of a sudden we're suddenly back in a hospital room or we're saying goodbye or there's that feeling of that, that ache of absence.

That's the thing about our brain. They don't just store facts. They store feelings.

And sometimes a little nudge is all it takes to open a page on the photo book that you weren't meaning to look at.

And I'll be honest, I had a funny moment the other week with a VR headset.

I was playing a golf game.

And for half an hour, I was convinced I was standing on a golf course. And when I took the

headset off to answer the door, I felt genuinely disoriented. It got me thinking, being triggered,

it's kind of like that, and it's not a headset you can lift off, because it's emotional. And

sometimes it's overwhelming. So, what do we do when that happens?

Well, we start by noticing it.

We make ourselves aware of it, noticing that we've shifted out of the present and we've gone

somewhere else.

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