Why I Don’t Believe in Protecting Ourselves From Triggers
A friend sent me a photo this morning of a wildfire burning nearby. It instantly hit me—tight chest, lump in throat, heart pounding. We lived through a fire. Lost so much. And even now, the mere sight of flames sends my nervous system into overdrive.
She texted back almost immediately: "Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think. I should’ve checked with you first."
I replied, "No, it’s totally fine. I can handle it. Triggers are just uncomfortable but useful paths toward healing."
And I meant it.
Because here’s the thing: I don’t believe in shielding ourselves from everything that stings. I’m actually in the opposite camp. I believe we need to walk toward what makes us flinch.
We’ve created a culture obsessed with comfort and safety—and while those things have their place, we’ve started treating discomfort like danger. We think if something triggers us, the best thing to do is avoid it, block it, or tiptoe around it.
But that strategy doesn’t build resilience.
It builds fragility.
From a scientific perspective, avoiding triggers actually wire the brain to associate those stimuli with even more danger. When we dodge discomfort, we reinforce the idea that we can’t handle it. Our threat response gets louder. Our window of tolerance gets smaller. We become more reactive, more fragile, less free.
But when we turn toward the thing that shakes us—when we stay with the discomfort instead of running from it—we signal to our nervous system: "This is hard, but I’m not in danger. I’m capable."
Over time, that rewiring matters. Our threshold for stress expands. Our capacity to stay grounded in chaos strengthens. We stop bracing against the world and start living in it.
Do I like feeling triggered? Of course not. It's uncomfortable, sometimes deeply painful. But it’s also where the healing lives. It's where I meet the parts of myself that are still tender and offer them care. It's where I prove to myself, over and over, that I can survive things I once thought I couldn’t.
And that?
That’s power.
So no, I don’t want my friends to shield me from wildfire images or hard conversations or messy truths. I want to stay in the real world—the one where hard things happen, and we keep showing up anyway.
Let’s stop treating discomfort like danger. Let’s stop calling avoidance "healing."
Healing lives in the fire.
And we are far more capable than we give ourselves credit for.
With love,
Dr. Zelana
Want to go deeper? See this week’s free resource ‘Turning Triggers Into Tools for Healing: A Practical Guide to Feeling It, Facing It & Freeing Yourself From It’.