Humans respond with exquisite sensitivity to emotional triggers in the world around us. Without even knowing it, we constantly pick up on cues of safety and danger, then respond accordingly. Triggers are cues around us that signal a potential threat. Their opposite, glimmers, are cues that signal safety.

Emotional triggers activate the two branches of our autonomic nervous system designed to deal with threats. First, the sympathetic nervous system sends us into fight or flight. Second, in the face of overwhelming danger, the dorsal vagal nervous system causes us to freeze or shut down. As a result, triggers create shifts toward anger, urges to get away or to shut down. These shifts can be subtle or sudden. We might be aware of these shifts, or we might not even notice them. Typically, movements happen without noticing the triggers themselves.

In contrast, glimmers activate our ventral vagal nervous system. Beautifully, they cause us to feel more relaxed and open to connecting with others, ourselves, and the world.

Responding to triggers and glimmers, the three branches of our nervous system reflect the level of danger and safety around us. Psychotherapist and author Deb Dana coined this use of the terms triggers and glimmers, working closely with Steven Porges, the neuroscientist who developed Polyvagal Theory. Porges’s theory explains how our autonomic nervous system responds in different ways to social and emotional situations. For more information about their work, visit the Polyvagal Institute. 

The sudden appearance of a barking dog is an obvious trigger. Usually, however, triggers refer to subtle or unconscious cues that send our nervous system into a state of self-protection. In particular, humans are exquisitely sensitive to emotional triggers in relationships. As a result, triggers are often very subtle facial expressions, tones, vocal pacing, and body language.

Emotional triggers are personal and unique to each person’s nervous system. Our lifetime of distinct experiences shapes our nervous system. For one person, a specific smell might suddenly trigger an unconscious memory of childhood trauma. In another example, one person might have a stronger emotional trigger to being left out of a conversation than another because they have more history of rejection.

Glimmers are less familiar to most people. At the same time, they are far more plentiful and beneficial to our sense of well-being. Indeed, they are everywhere, all the time. We enjoy glimmers through all our senses. Nature is one bountiful source. Notice how taking in the sun, winds, sky, rain, earth, trees, plants, flowers, birds, and animals can all produce a sense of happiness and well-being.

Our homes, workplaces, and buildings are a second, limitless source of glimmers of protection, comfort, and beauty. Taking in the smells and sights of cooking provides sensations of comfort. Looking further, consider how artistic decorations, the color and texture of fabrics, the supportive design of furniture, the comfort of a modern mattress, a stack of books, and music are all designed to provide us an abundance of glimmers.

Third, we all have a profound source of glimmers within ourselves. Specifically, sensing our breathing, ability to walk, strength, dexterity, language, and intellect all bring feelings of safety and well-being. Lastly, people around are sources of glimmers. Let’s not forget the pets, too! Examples of these glimmers are a kind gaze, a smile, tilted head, acknowledgment, and receiving a response to our request. Cues we are seen and valued by those who matter most to us are so important we pick up on even the most subtle cues, like sparkle or uplift in another’s eyes.

Our nervous systems prioritize responding to triggers rather than glimmers. Nonetheless, meditation practitioners have known that we can turn this state of affairs around through conscious awareness for millennia. With practice, we can become more aware of and more responsive to the glimmers around us. As a side benefit to this practice, we can become increasingly less reactive to our triggers.

If you would like, take a moment to tune in through all your senses. See how many glimmers you can count.

If your emotional triggers still overwhelm your responses to situations in ways you don’t like, no problem. That’s why professional help is so widespread and available. If you do seek professional help, here are four reasons not to go it alone.  

Photo by Chewy on Unsplash

Learning Emotionally Focused Therapy and Internal Family Systems

I first came across Sue Johnson and her model of couple therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), at a large psychotherapy convention many years ago. I had no interest in doing couple work. Imagining—correctly—it would take a lot to learn. Believing—falsely—couple work was more superficial and less transformative than individual work. At that introductory workshop, though, I was delighted by what I got for myself. Answers to the questions I’d been asking for years about what had gone wrong in my past marriage. Finally, I could let go of my self-questioning, and be excited to commit to my new relationship.

Because that short workshop was so powerful for me personally, I did pursue EFT training. It fundamentally changed how I work with clients, and the depth of healing I’m able to facilitate. I jumped all in, doing as much training, supervision, and teaching as I could to master the model.

Over the years, I continued to learn other leading models of therapy to see what they could add to my skill set. Most trainings increased my confidence in and appreciation for EFT. Delightedly, I also found Internal Family Systems (IFS), which opened a whole other world for me and my clients.

EFT and IFS have core common principals

Emotionally Focused Therapy and Internal Family Systems are complementary models. They have a core of common principles. At the same time, each emphasizes a unique energy that is distinctly powerful in the world of psychotherapy.

Both models see all behaviors and emotions as having beneficial, positive intentions. Well-intentioned but unsuccessful behaviors and emotions are simply blocked from growing and healing for reasons that make perfect sense.

EFT and IFS both understand the way out of suffering is not through talking and analysis. Rather, healing happens with new, felt experiences of compassionate connection. Finally, in both models, the therapist must do an enormous amount of their own internal work to provide these experiences.

EFT and IFS emphasize different therapist stances, and different sources of healing

EFT and IFS have fundamentally different source of compassionate connection. For this reason, each emphasizes a different therapist stance. In EFT, the therapist walks with the client in their shoes, joining them in their experience. The therapist feels with, reflects, shines curiosity, and conjectures in search of deeper resonance. Clients experience more clarity and self-appreciation through safe and accurate connection.

In IFS, the goal of the therapist is to invite and guide the client to experience their own Self-energy: an infinite source of curiosity and compassion. The client explores their own internal world with their own Self-energy. With compassion and curiosity, they discover and befriend the parts of themselves that are burdened. Parts, for example, that are angry, self-critical, empty, or engaging in extreme behaviors, open up and communicate directly with the client. They share their stories, hopes, and concerns, and learn to trust the client to understand and care for them. As the parts gain trust in Self-energy, the Self-energy can go deeper into the client’s internal system, bringing healing and transformation.

When therapy works as intended, an EFT client feels deeply, safely, and compassionately held and seen by their therapist. They learn to give and receive those same experiences with their partner and in their life. An IFS client experiences, with awe, a new world inside themselves full of compassion and wisdom. Clients develop trust in their own ability to care for, protect, and heal themselves.

EFT and IFS working together can bring more power to the therapeutic process

Over the past several years I’ve worked to integrate EFT and IFS into a unified model for my own client work, and to share with other therapists. Learning IFS has made me a better EFT therapist, and learning EFT has made me a better IFS therapist. By integrating the two, and flexibly moving back and forth between stances as best suited to the client needs in the moment, I’m able to bring more range and power to the therapeutic process than with either model alone.

If you have experience with either one of these models, or both, I’d love to hear if the work was helpful for you.

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash