Triggerd trauma management - Building a trigger map and response plan

(To be completed in your journal)

Purpose: This exercise will help you identify your personal triggers—things that bring up distress, fear, panic, guilt, or shame. By mapping these out, you can predict when they might happen, understand why they affect you, and create a response plan so you can regain control when they occur.

Step 1: Identifying Your Triggers

Think about times when you’ve felt overwhelmed, anxious, or emotionally flooded. Triggers can be people, places, conversations, dates, smells, sounds, or even thoughts.

Write down as many as you can. Here are some common trigger categories to help:

People: Contact with your ex, family members who downplay your experience, mutual friends.
Places: Areas where you lived together, courtrooms, certain workplaces or public spots.
Situations: Co-parenting exchanges, legal battles, seeing a happy couple, hearing about someone else’s relationship.
Words or Conversations: Someone blaming you, being asked about your past, hearing your ex’s name.
Anniversaries & Dates: Birthdays, holidays, the date you left.
Sights, Sounds & Smells: A certain cologne, music from that time, text notification sounds, certain films.

Reflection: Which of these triggers affect you the most? Are there any that you weren’t aware of before?

Step 2: Understanding the Reaction

Triggers bring up automatic emotional and physical reactions. Some common ones include:

Emotional: Sudden fear, sadness, guilt, anger, shame.
Physical: Rapid heartbeat, sweating, nausea, shaking, dizziness.
Cognitive: Overthinking, self-blame, flashbacks, feeling stuck in the past.

Write down what happens to you when you experience a trigger. Which emotions and physical sensations come up the most?

Reflection: Do you notice any patterns? Are there certain emotions that always follow your triggers?

Step 3: Creating a Response Plan

Now, let’s plan for when these triggers happen. The goal is not to avoid life, but to have a clear strategy for handling distress when it arises.

For each major trigger, write down:

What the trigger is
What emotions and physical reactions it causes
A plan to soothe yourself in that moment

Example:

Trigger: Receiving an unexpected message from my ex

Reaction: Heart races, panic, urge to reply immediately

Response Plan:

✔️ Pause: Remind myself I don’t have to respond right now.

✔️ Breathe: Take five slow breaths to calm my body (or use the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Exercise)

✔️ Reality check: Read the message objectively—what is the actual content, not the emotional pull?

✔️ Action: Decide on a response later (if needed), not in a panic.

Reflection: How does it feel to have a plan in place? Do you already feel more in control?

Step 4: Building Long-Term Coping Strategies

Triggers lose power over time when we learn to soothe ourselves, predict difficult moments, and take back control.

Write down three things you can do often to build resilience. These might include:

Practicing grounding exercises (breathing, 5-4-3-2-1 sensory grounding).
Journaling when emotions feel overwhelming.
Preparing a “calm down” kit (music, scents, fidget items, affirmations), see link below.
Setting clear boundaries around people or situations that regularly trigger you.

Final Reflection: Triggers may not disappear overnight, but you are not powerless against them. Each time you predict, plan, and soothe, you weaken their grip. What’s one thing you can do today to start feeling stronger?

Conclusion:

This exercise is a starting point to managing trauma triggers. Keep your trigger map somewhere accessible, and update it as you learn more about yourself. You can take back control—one step at a time.