Triggered
Break Your Comfort Zones
Welcome to Polymathic Being, a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains. These essays take common topics and explore them from different perspectives and disciplines, to uncover unique insights and solutions.
Today’s Topic is another Mixed Mental Art that delves into our comfort zones and how feeling safe and secure is important but can limit our growth if not considered properly. Join us as we look at how to structure your exposure to life that balances psychological safety with continual personal growth.
Before We Start:
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Intro
You’ve likely all heard the term triggered by now as US culture has focused on trigger warnings for movies and even college classes and social media is filled with memes making fun of people who act triggered. Images like the one below have gone viral for the visceral expression commonly associated with this idea.
The definition is pretty simple, being triggered is a negative reaction to information or experiences that challenge something you hold dear or that brings up unpleasant memories from the past. It’s literally the trigger of a fight or flight response deep in our lizard brain. It can be a trigger for past trauma, like PTSD, or a reaction to information or conversations that violate a deeply held belief.
It’s a crucial evolutionary response to protect us from threats. It’s also incredibly useful to help us understand ourselves better because triggers are the purest form of identifying our comfort zones. Triggers can also be a dangerous liability to our continued growth if we fail to introspect and learn from them. Once identified, we can take the difficult action of understanding this reaction and consider whether it is useful.
Grappling with Complex Problems
Years ago, I was in a group called Mixed Mental Arts. Their tagline was “Grappling with complex problems in the octagon of life.” The concept has had a lasting impression on me and I’ve met some great friends from that time. Sadly, the group started to change from the martial idea of grappling toward the conciliatory idea of Idea Sex ending up as weird and creepy as it sounds at first blush.
Grappling with complex problems took on a totally new tone and tenor as idea sex took root and the behaviors of the group changed. Punk Rock was swapped for Barry Manalo and jujitsu gis were traded for bathrobes. The problems with idea sex are pretty plain when we riff off of the literal term and contextualize it as such.
For instance, it starts with the expectation that idea sex is expected, anticipated, and entitled to. Ideas get tossed out like dick pics with the expectation that they’re appreciated. It became like Louis C.K. when he fondled himself in front of female comedians. Challenging ideas became akin to rejecting a sexual overture in a bar and watching the guy pout and call you a prude.
In the group, I was accused of turning off idea sex partners. They’re not wrong. I’m a picky idea sex partner. Many ideas should never procreate. Some should be choked out on the mat for good measure. The group slowly morphed into an incestuous echo chamber as people turned to intellectual masturbation, afraid to have their ideas rejected. In just over a year, the entire group was defunct.1 Ironically, this occurred when #metoo was trending online. #terriblebrandtiming.
Now, if these metaphors bother you, good! Because they’re designed to trigger your sensibilities and bring the problem into stark contrast. As Mixed Mental Arts pivoted from the octagon to idea sex, sensitivity to being triggered also went through the roof and people began to police conversations like you’d manage a swinger party, not a UFC cage match. Yet it’s the power of being triggered, taking that punch to your face when you weren’t expecting it, that actually helps us solve complex problems.
Be Triggered, Then Adapt
Being triggered is a powerful and healthy tool when contextualized. It’s one of the best ways to identify your limitations and fragilities. It’s a perfect chance to flip the script from feeling attacked to introspecting about why you’d react with such sensitivity to begin with.
As we explored in Trauma and Antifragility, avoiding any triggers and having warnings to keep them far away, doesn’t make you safer. Instead, it increases your vulnerability while stagnating your inherent, dynamic ability to grow.
Truly, the very idea of learn, unlearn, and relearn that forms the foundation of Polymathic Thinking requires that we continually challenge our comfort zones, allow ourselves to be challenged and triggered, and then analyze why it happened and whether it is helpful or limiting to the growth we want. In critical thinking, this is the application of critique to well-formulated ideas. It’s never good to avoid critique.
Now consider that being triggered is reactive. It happens when we aren’t expecting it, and it’s a sign of unpreparedness. It can also be a lack of confidence and conviction and it is certainly heavily wrapped up in ego. Instead, we can take a good look at those beliefs, refine, strengthen, and build them into something resilient and not prone to triggers. Avoiding triggers isn’t about holding nothing dear, it’s about holding some things so dear and defensible that there’s nothing to be triggered about.
Comedy is a great example of playing with triggers. The best comedy is designed to trigger and that’s what makes it so funny. It teases the cultural and social sensitivities and lets you dabble with the taboo in a way that can point out the absurdity of it. It points out the fragility of uncontested beliefs and can help us improve those same beliefs. This is something we looked at with Streotyping Properly.
Summary
Too often, in our avoidance of triggers, we turn away from grappling with complex problems and turn toward people more likely to engage in idea sex. This creates echo chambers and groupthink that never challenge, never strengthen, and never allow us to grow. Avoiding the risk of trauma virtually guarantees worse trauma through mental weakness and unpreparedness for the brutal reality in the octagon of life.
Allow yourself to be triggered and then grab that feeling and work to understand it. Refine your ideas, cement your beliefs, and allow yourself to learn, unlearn, and relearn to increase your confidence and better solve those complex problems while being able to give and take punches like a champ.
Edit 9/10/2024: I was remiss in failing to predicate that my concept of Mixed Mental Arts is rooted in embracing my white belt of curiosity, humility, and intentional reframing. As Matt from Lost Tempo pointed out to me, it's not about xxx DESTROYS yyy. Instead, my intent was you to allow yourself to be challenged and in doing so, grow. That said, checkout what embracing your white belt means:
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From my perspective, identifying a trigger is an opportunity for many things. Initially, it's an opportunity mentioned is a quote attributed to Viktor Frankl -"Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our choice lies our growth and freedom."
Good article. I remember reading about the practice of ingesting small, non-lethal amounts of poison so that your body builds a tolerance or resistance to toxins. I guess it’s called Mithridatism.