There are several ways that you can deal with painful triggers in a relationship, but the first thing is to find out where the triggers come from by revisiting your past experiences. Next, you have to face the fear, seek forgiveness and allow a professional therapist or counselor to help you to learn how to identify your triggers and find healing so you can choose health alternatives to your existing reactions. Read on for more details now!

If you have lived long enough, you must have had different experiences including painful and happy ones. Life is a journey and so throughout this journey, you may stumble on certain situations that are pleasant and unpleasant. Good for you, if you have never gone through a painful experience. However, in the real world, this has not been the case for everyone. When you have gone through the pain, it doesn't mean that it goes away entirely. Some people have to go through therapy to deal with it and still, some or all of the pain may remain. Some people try to handle the pain on their own without therapy and others tend to bury the pain altogether, only to have it resurface again years later. In some cases, the painful experience will trigger certain behaviors and some individuals do not know how to connect the dots nor do they know how to deal with it.

What are painful triggers you may be wondering? Emotional or painful triggers are usually the surprises that catch you off guard when a certain situation or person causes you to react to something very similar to what happened to you in the past. Most times, the pain would have taken place while you were a child, but not in all cases. For example, if a step-parent yelled at you all the time for no reason when you were a child and you attach that fear to yourself, you may trigger the pain as an adult if someone you live with is always yelling around you. Or it could work the opposite way where you are now the step-parent exhibiting the same behavior that you experienced in the past. Or, the same fear could resurface when you see a partner constantly yelling and berating you in the same manner that you experienced it.

A trigger will consume you, if you allow the same negative emotions to follow you through life into your relationship. While, it may be no fault of yours since you may not know how to get rid of the pain, there are things to do in order to turn a negative into a positive. For example, if you found yourself always swearing at other drivers that cut you off on the road and the anger brings you to the point of exhaustion and hate, you may need to address this. If not, you may bring the same overwhelming anger into a relationship. Remember, that kind of anger is not normal. Yes, you are human and can get angry, but if you get overly angry for something you cannot control, it may be time for a pause to check your emotions.

Everyone of us has different past experiences and so not everyone has the same painful triggers. Yours could be a feeling of neglect or rejection and not necessarily fear or anger. If you were ever rejected or cheated on, for example in another relationship, this could be your trigger point. Many people harbor the fear of having this happen again and for this reason, the existing relationship is based on when it is going to happen. So, you become suspicious at the first sign of the unusual. Some people may even start fishing for something that is not really there and in so doing will accuse one partner of cheating when this may not be the case. In the case of an alcoholic parent, for example, you may not have chosen a partner with those tendencies, but over the years, stuff happens and you find that your partner is now drinking a lot. The first thing that may come to mind is the case of your alcoholic parent and you compare the two because both trigger pain. Your past experience will now come to life and be even bigger than it probably was before. It is best to confront your partner and explain how you feel and why you feel the way you do.

Most of the time, painful triggers come on suddenly and create negative reactions as long as it involves a painful past. This is particular true when our expectations are not met. We store triggers deep in the recesses of our mind and just one situation can activate it. Triggers are old emotions coming to life. The brain senses a threat and reacts the same way it did when you experienced pain in the past. It is like awakening a giant. You could currently have a great relationship that may be disrupted by a painful trigger, if you do not handle it the right way.

No relationship is perfect and while in a relationship, there are several possible roadblocks that you can come up on. It all depends on the past baggage that you have brought to the relationship, which has not been dealt with beforehand. However, even if they are not dealt with, it is never too late. Whether you have issues with an ex, family resentments or trust issues, there are viable solutions. It is time to take a pause and find ways to get help so you can address the problem right away. It is time to stop blaming others for the issue and confront them. First, you may need to learn how to forgive.

Some people think that forgiveness is all about the other person that has committed an offense against them, but it is more about you. When you forgive, it takes a whole lot of load off of you. In most cases, the other person does not benefit directly from the act of forgiveness, but the person with the anger, fear and insecurity does. Forgiveness allows you to leave the past behind and forge ahead to the future. It also cleans up the present state of mind and gives you a new lease on life. It could also diminish or reduce painful triggers. The painful triggers may come, but it won't have the same volatile reaction from you. Forgiveness allows us to manage the same past situation in a more mature way. It allows us to stay in control of the situation and is a coping mechanism.

Grief in the past can be painful, if you have not fully grieved and gone through the process. People grieve in different ways, but if you bottle it all up, it can come to haunt you later on in life. For example, if you lost a close relative such as your mom or dad, it might have been very painful and scary, and deep down you may believe that you will lose someone else again. You may live your life fearing that you may lose your partner and that is not good for the relationship. If your partner were to get very ill, this could trigger the scare and fear that you have felt all along. Then, you may be worrying more than you should be and that is not good for you nor your partner. While you may never get over the loss of a close loved one, if you do not allow the feelings to get through your system, it won't make matters better. It is best to allow yourself to grieve; whether the loss is from a death or a broken relationship.

There are healthy substitutes to dealing with painful triggers and these are necessary in order for you to grow. Your thought patterns will often sabotage your relationships. So, you have to deal with your mental health first. How you handle the inner fears is important. A professional therapists or counselor could help you to dissect your thoughts to learn more about how to embrace positive thoughts instead of holding on to the negative thoughts of the past. This is one of the most difficult steps to dealing with painful triggers of the past. Another difficult step is recognizing the triggers and your unconscious timing to produce a response. A counselor will help you to figure out the things that have triggered a reaction and the things to expect that will trigger a reaction. The counselor will dig deep into your past and force you to go back to the pain. It is going to be a painful experience to revisit the past, but in the end, it will help to get rid of the negative emotions that you are holding onto.

Healthy boundaries are important to helping you during a painful trigger. It forces you to take the positive route instead of the negative. Setting boundaries makes you accountable to yourself and others who may be affected such as your partner. It may be time to use what you have learned in therapy to practice healthier boundaries. Once those boundaries have been created, it will act as a blockage to your negative behavior. It helps you to filter the incoming trigger and the outgoing reaction. For example, it will help you to see a one-time alcoholic episode by your partner as nothing more than an innocent over-indulgence and not as alcoholism. Your partner may not have ever given you one reason to doubt the relationship or his or her action any other time. However, this may be where your fear lies, only because you may have had another partner in the past cheat on you. Do not let negative thoughts and actions win and overstep the healthy boundaries that you have created. You are going to need strong resolve to overcome taking the easiest way out.

Sharing past memories with others can be a great tool to handling painful triggers in a relationship. It is a way to relieve your pain when you have someone else helping you to carry that burden or at least listening to you vent your feelings. If you have a confidante or therapist, you can share your painful memories in a wholehearted way without reservations. As long as you feel secure in sharing private details of your past with this person, then this would be advised. This allows you to relinquish this heavy load or at least, some of it. Getting it out in the open gives you validation that you are not crazy and it allows you to get rid of the fear of the past and what it can do to you in your relationship.

A past relationship can be detrimental to an existing relationship, especially if it was a bad relationship. If not resolved, the experiences of a past relationship can seep over into an existing one. For that reason, the way to deal with this is to have a conversation with your ex-partner and get your feelings out in the open. If your ex-partner is a jerk and does not offer you a listening ear, you cannot come away feeling hurt all over again because you have to at least forgive in order to move on. However, try to communicate with your ex without applying blame. Be honest about your feelings, but do not point fingers. In so doing, you could come away being more empowered for doing so. It will help you to move past any bad feelings that you were carrying around and make your existing relationship better.

For the most part, triggers are usually childhood or even teenage beliefs and so, this can change, if you allow yourself to have a renewed mindset. in an attempt to save your relationship. You have to address this or it could destroy the union between you and your partner. If you found the strength to release those past triggers, you would be able to view things differently rather than through the eyes and ears of an apprehensive child or teenager. While the change may not happen all at once, you can make small changes until you get it right. If not, the pain will consume you and before you know it, you will be a miserable, angry and unhappy person and this will seep right into your relationship. It may not show up right away when you meet your new partner, but gradually as you have to compromise and maintain a relationship, it may rear its ugly head, if you do not change. In a perfect world, the change should probably begin before you start a relationship. In most cases, it doesn't.

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