The Tracker's Journal: What Exactly Is a Trigger?

One of the unexpected gifts of writing a book is the feedback that makes you think harder about what you thought you already knew.

I've been working on Tracking Triggers: From Reactivity to Responsiveness, and a thoughtful reader recently pushed back on something fundamental: my definition of "trigger."

My original definition read:

A trigger is a disproportionate emotional reaction to a present experience, activated by something unintegrated from your past, whether it was something that happened or something that didn't.

Her response was direct: "It might be more consistent with the literature to frame the trigger as the event that led to the emotional reaction, rather than the reaction itself."

She's right. And when I went back to the two books closest to my own approach, the literature confirmed it.

What the Literature Actually Says

Susan Campbell, in From Triggered to Tranquil, is clear: "A trigger means a current-time cue or event that restimulates the sensations of past trauma." She even walks through both grammatical forms: "A loud voice can trigger (verb) a person's fear of being controlled or overpowered. And this same loud voice is a trigger (noun) for the person to assume a self-protective posture."

For Campbell, the trigger is the loud voice. The fear, the self-protective posture, the shift from feeling fine to feeling out of control: those are what she calls "trigger reactions." Her whole book is organized around this distinction. As she puts it: "This book teaches how to catch and calm trigger reactions quickly so we can get back to being present and resourceful."

David Richo, in Triggers: How We Can Stop Reacting and Start Healing, lands in the same place: "A trigger is any word, person, event, or experience that touches off an immediate emotional reaction." The trigger is the stimulus. And he's careful to distinguish three things: the trigger itself, the state of being triggered, and our reaction to it. As he writes: "Being triggered is not dysfunctional, though our reaction to a trigger might be."

Both authors define "trigger" (the noun) as the external event. But Campbell uses "trigger" extensively in connection with the response side: "trigger reactions," "getting triggered," "when you are triggered." As she writes, "this book focuses mostly on people's trigger reactions." So while the noun points outward, the word itself lives on both sides of the experience. Still, when it comes to a formal definition, the literature is consistent: a trigger is the stimulus. My original definition was swimming against that current.

A Revised Definition

This feedback, and these authors, helped me see that I was trying to do two things at once: define the experience and claim the noun. But readers come to the word "trigger" with expectations shaped by common usage, and fighting that creates unnecessary friction.

So I've revised my definition:

Being triggered is a disproportionate emotional reaction to a present experience, activated by something unintegrated from your past, whether it was something that happened or something that didn't.

And I've added a clarification:

Throughout this book, I use "triggered" as shorthand for this state, and "trigger" to refer to the whole experience: not just the external event that set it off, but the reaction, its intensity, and the unfinished past it reveals.

This small shift does several things.

It aligns with how people actually speak. "I was triggered" is the common phrasing. Meeting readers there reduces friction.

It sidesteps semantic confusion. Readers who expect "trigger" to mean the stimulus won't stumble over my different usage.

It preserves the precision I need. I can still talk about "the anatomy of a trigger" and "tracking the trigger," because I've established that I'm using "trigger" as shorthand for the whole experience.

Where My Approach Parts Company

Campbell and Richo both define the trigger as the external event, and they're in good company. But I think that framing, while technically precise, carries a risk: it keeps our attention focused outward. On the branches. The comment. The tone. On what happened to us. On what someone else did.

Campbell knows this. Her book teaches people to navigate trigger reactions "without falling automatically into fight-flight-freeze." Richo knows it too. He writes that when a trigger "stays the night with us, lasts too long, it is a signal. There is something to look into, to deal with."

Both authors point inward. But the term "trigger," defined as the external event, points outward. That gap is where my approach lives.

The branches on my pathway weren't the real issue. Glen stepping on something old, something unfinished from my childhood, that was where the tracking led. Both things can be true: the external event may warrant a response, and your reaction reveals something that requires your compassionate attention.

By defining "being triggered" as the state, and "trigger" as the whole experience, we honor both dimensions. We don't let the messenger off the hook. And we don't ignore what the message is revealing about our own unfinished business.

The Invitation

If you've been using "trigger" to mean the event, that's fine. Campbell and Richo do, and they've written excellent books with that framing. I'm not here to police language.

But I am inviting you to notice what happens when you shift the frame. Instead of asking "What triggered me?" (which keeps the focus external), try asking "What is this triggered state revealing?" (which turns the lens inward).

That's where the real tracking begins.

Update: A Cleaner Landing

Since publishing this post, I've continued refining the framing based on additional feedback and reflection. I've landed somewhere simpler and, I think, truer to how the word actually lives in common usage.

Most people use "trigger" in two ways:

As a noun ("a trigger," "the trigger"), it refers to the event that sets off a reaction, whether external or internal.

As a verb or adjective ("I was triggered," "being triggered"), it describes the subjective state that follows.

I now define both with precision:

A trigger is an event, external or internal, that activates a reaction.

Triggered is a disproportionate emotional reaction to a present event, activated by something unintegrated from your past, whether it was something that happened or something that didn't.

This book uses both, but focuses on the second: the state of being triggered.

This framing aligns with Campbell, Richo, and Goldsmith on the noun (the event), while claiming clear territory for what this book is really about: tracking the state, not just naming the stimulus. It also allows for an important distinction explored in Chapter 2: sometimes an event (a trigger) leaves us dysregulated but not triggered. The difference is whether the unintegrated past has been activated.

The original post captured a moment of thinking aloud. This update captures where the trail led.