Simplify the Solution to Your Triggers

You don’t have multiple problems to solve, just a single pattern to perceive.

Sep 24, 2025

Usually, I can illustrate an important insight with a single story. This insight, though, requires three…

Our son is a senior captain on the varsity soccer team, and it’s time for the moms to make t-shirts for senior night. One mom takes the lead, and the rest Venmo her the payment. All the Venmo in our house runs through me, so my wife texts me the Venmo amount in the middle of a busy day. I glance at it and forget all about it.

A few days later, when the payment is overdue, she asks me if I sent it—and suddenly, I’m triggered.

Our daughter is a sophomore on the varsity golf team. A few days after the Venmo kerfuffle, we’re following her for eighteen holes at a weekend tournament with a unique format. She and a teammate are alternating shots, so they are a singular unit with one score. It has me even more invested than usual in her teammate’s performance. So, when the young lady makes a long putt, I spontaneously holler, “Atta, girl!”

Two hours later, my daughter tells me that was embarrassing—and suddenly, I’m triggered.

A few days after that, at a nine-hole match, someone in my daughter’s group loses a ball in a patch of poison ivy, and I talk to her casually while helping her find it. The next day, her coach messages all parents, reminding us that we need to remain fifteen yards away from the players and never speak to them, except to cheer them on.

He could be talking about a dozen different parents, but I assume he’s talking about me—and suddenly, I’m triggered.

When we’re triggered, we tend to blame the person in front of us.

My wife doesn’t appreciate how busy I am. She has no right to be upset with me for botching the payment. In fact, it’s her fault for relying on me to send the payment. That’s it: I’m out of the Venmo business forever!
My daughter needs to grow thicker skin. She should appreciate my presence at her meets, not critique my enthusiasm. Maybe I’ll yell it out louder next time, just to prove a point!
Her coach shouldn’t have a problem with me, he should appreciate me—I was just being helpful. What is this world coming to, if being a good Samaritan is against the law!

In one week: three people, three problems to solve. Why does life have to be so complicated?

The Peaceful Pivot Process shows that it doesn’t.

You can simplify the solution to your triggers by seeing the pattern in your pain rather than the problems with your people.

When I reflect back on each of those situations—and my knee-jerk reactions to those people—one simple word jumps out of all the complexity: appreciate.

I felt unappreciated, and that hurt.

This is how the simplification starts, with the awareness that you were not directly triggered by a person but by a pain point that erupted within you while interacting with that person. In scientific terms, this pain point is known as the intervening variable—the thing that actually explains the relationship between two other variables.

For instance, when students get a good night’s sleep, they perform better on tests. Did the sleep cause the test scores? Of course not—if they’d continued to sleep through the test, the scores would have all been zero. Rather, good sleep actually produces better concentration, which then leads to better test scores. Concentration is the intervening variable that explains the relationship between sleep and test performance.

Your pain point is the intervening variable that explains your triggered reaction across various people, places, and situations.

You can be triggered six ways to Sunday by half a dozen people, but you may have only a single pain point common to each of those triggered moments. What a relief. Now you don’t have multiple problems to solve, just a single moment to master—the moment that pain point erupts within you.

I feel unappreciated. That’s the way my pain point first expressed itself across those three situations. I’ve been practicing the Peaceful Pivot Process for years now, though, so I’ve had plenty of time to study the pattern of that pain point.

I’ve learned its layers:

Unappreciated is just the angry surface of that pain point.
The feeling of unimportance that lurks beneath it feels far vulnerable.
Underneath that, there is a little boy, living on within me. He thinks he needs to be perfect to be loved—trying his hardest to be flawless, and failing at it every time. That little boy is downright lost and alone. He is exquisitely lonely.

When we’re triggered, our impulsive reaction to the problems on the surface often makes the underlying pain point hurt even worse.

If I treat my people like the problem, I’ll just make my loneliness worse. A fight with my wife. My daughter will retreat to her room. I’ll become that parent to her coach.

Our primary pain point is like a river rushing beneath the surface of our life, carrying us along in its current. While we are unconsciously caught up in it, we do a lot of unintentional harm in the midst of our triggered moments.

Once you see the pain point, however, you’ve stepped out of the river. You’re free of its flow. You’re watching it rather than being carried along by it. You’re standing on solid ground. The river used to determine your destination.

Now you do.

Pivot #4: You don’t have multiple problems to solve, just a single pain point to perceive.

Does this idea give you hope and encouragement, or confusion and frustration? Something in between? Feel free to share any reactions to this post in the comments, and I’ll be sure to reply!