Why your smallest annoyances can trigger a stress spiral — and what you can do when they happen

Stress isn’t always triggered by the huge things happening in our lives. From running out of coffee to perfectionism, experts explain why seemingly small events can tip us into a stress spiral — and what we can do about it.

Words: Yasmina Floyer. Images: Shutterstock

Most of us will have heard the adage that stress is a killer. I took this for hyperbole growing up, thinking it was simply one of those meaningless things that grown-ups said like, ‘drink more water’ and ‘go to bed earlier’, though being a grown-up now myself, I can finally see the sense in all of this acquired wisdom.

Whereas once upon a time I saw being stressed as a badge of honour due to its connotations of ambition, hard work and success, we now know that whilst stress itself won’t send you to an early grave, the effects of prolonged stress can negatively impact our physical and mental wellbeing causing a range of issues for us to deal with.

I remember a biology teaching explaining to me that stress is characterised by feeling out of control and this is something that stuck with me. I now use this distinction as a means to determine whether I am feeling under pressure (not pleasant but feel very much in control) or stressed (feeling out of control of my circumstances).

A recent study conducted by The Priory Group reported that ‘75% of adults have felt so stressed at some point over the past year that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope.’

Stress is defined by The World Health Organisation as a state of mental worry or tension that comes with a range of accompanying symptoms such as anxiety, headaches, and trouble sleeping to name a few, highlighting that not all people respond to stress in the same way. With that in mind, this month we’re focusing on understanding what triggers our stress, in order to better deal with it.

We’re breaking these triggers down into three categories: the seemingly inconsequential things that set us off but are down to internal factors within our control; external triggers that we can’t help which come in the form of life’s curveballs; and those triggers we sometimes feel too ashamed to admit actually bother us!

Getting under my skin…

To be triggered is a term that has slipped into our everyday speech, where it is more often than not used as a hyperbole to describe anything from a mild annoyance to something that causes significant irritation or frustration, but has no lasting consequences. From a psychological perspective, a ‘trigger’ causes a person to have a strong, negative emotional response, but the reality is that triggers can range in terms of their severity.

At one end of the spectrum are people who live with forms of PTSD, for whom triggers are capable of eliciting a trauma response and are themselves connected in some way to the trauma that was experienced in the first place. Seen this way, it is easy to assume that triggers must be loud, violent things, with a weight to them capable of flooring us.

But what of the inconsequential occurrences that we experience that send us tumbling into a stress spiral? The splash of tea on a white shirt; the missed phone call; the struggle to park, let alone the late train; the sold-out gift idea; the smashed phone screen. These are all seemingly minor triggers that we feel we should overlook because it seems counterintuitive that such mundane events can be catalysts to our stresses — and perhaps we may even be a little embarrassed to admit that these are the things that have set us off.

Like that morning a while ago when I woke up and realised I had no coffee pods left so stood in the kitchen and wept, feeling my grip on the day ahead loosen and unspool before me in a slick, sticky mass that I felt I had no way of gathering back up. It seems silly, right, that running out of pods could reduce me to tears?

But it wasn’t so much the fact that I was out of coffee that triggered my stress, but the fact that as a busy working parent who was under a lot of emotional and professional strain at the time, my morning coffee ritual felt like one thing I had control over; a tiny pocket of time in which to breathe and savour before life’s demands began pawing at me.

This example makes me think of how easily we can become triggered when we haven’t taken care of our core needs. Whether it’s snapping at the kids for being too loud over breakfast when we’ve had a lousy night’s sleep, or taking offence at a message from a well-meaning friend after a long day when we haven’t eaten enough, it’s so easy to find ourselves reacting in negative ways when we’re not quite feeling at our best.

Chartered psychologist and author of books including Self-care for Tough Times (Octopus Publishing Group, £12.99) Suzy Reading tells me about what she calls ‘energy bank basics’.

‘Just as a car needs petrol to function, we need to be resourced to meet the demands of our day and the triggers we will naturally encounter in modern life,’ she says. ‘Sleep is essential for mental clarity and patience. We need it not just for our health but the health of our relationships.’ She goes on to explain that research shows that when we’re poorly rested, we tend to interpret neutral facial expressions as more hostile.

Movement, Reading explains, provides us with an opportunity to digest and process our feelings (and also promotes better sleep, so is a double win). ‘Being sedentary for too long also has its own health consequences for our stress levels — the rule of thumb here is to get up and move every 30 minutes to aid circulation and a release tension.

Exercising in green space is also shown to reduce anxious thinking. ‘And finally, if you want to stay anchored in a compassionate perspective and constructive self-talk, you need to feed and hydrate your brain.’ But besides improving our self-care, when I catch up with psychologist Dr Lesley Perman-Kerr, she reminds me that is also important to understand our personal stress triggers, and the way our mindset can affect the way we respond to them.

‘How we assess situations and people — including ourselves — is key to tackling negative stressors and finding balance,’ she explains. ‘Negative thought patterns often take root in childhood, stemming from bad experiences and familial, school, peer group and societal expectations dictating how we “should” think, behave and look.’

She explains that our triggers can also include life circumstances and the demands we make on ourselves, and that often the two interact to our detriment. ‘If we have a demanding family life and a perfectionist mindset, the combination will significantly impact our stress levels,’ she says. When things don’t go quite as planned or expected, a perfectionist mindset tends to view this as an overwhelming negative, and this becomes a stress trigger.

By letting go of perfectionism, we no longer categorise certain events as unequivocally bad, but allow ourselves to view them in a more neutral fashion, cultivating resilience in the process. It has taken practice, but personally when I am now faced with an unexpected setback, I ask myself, ‘is this problem resolvable?’ If the answer is yes, I let it go!

Dr Perman-Kerr suggests we embrace a combination of letting go and reaching out by finding ways to make small positive changes to create mental ‘breathing space’. ‘Notice and challenge any negative self-talk in reaction to these small changes,’ she says.

‘Ask yourself what it tells you about your stress triggers? What do you need to challenge and let go of to reduce the negative self-talk?’ She says that when we combine this with reaching out to others, this creates a powerful positive trigger, to counter the stressful one.

‘Making positive connections with people you can trust and who can offer support triggers the release of the bonding hormone oxytocin, which has a protective effect on the brain and body in stressful situations.’

It can also be helpful to remind ourselves that whilst we can’t control what triggers us, we can control how we react to them. Mental fitness and self-love coach Patricia Ahern says that when we invite our triggers to teach us, they can be the entry point to reconnecting with ourselves. ‘It is useful to ask ourselves questions such as “how would I prefer to respond?”,’ she says.

She also advises taking ownership of the feeling: ‘Saying to ourselves, “this trigger is mine, this reaction is mine,” is not to shame or blame ourselves, but is an act of empowerment, because once you take responsibility for your triggers and your reactions, you’re no longer at the mercy of situations and circumstances that don’t go as you intended, you’re no longer at the mercy of someone else’s words, opinions, or behaviour. You become the author of your life script and your own healing; this is the path to empowerment from the inside out.’

Life’s little curveballs

Modern living has given us a false sense of security that everything in life is predictable, and under our own control. Our heart’s desire can be conjured into the palm of our hands with a single click.

Apps magically forecast the weather a week in advance. We have wearable tech that calculates our sleep, steps, respiration, even our stress levels, ironically enough. Yet none of this protects us from life’s curveballs; the external events that are out of our control and can catch us completely off-guard.

Like the landlord who serves you two months’ notice to move out when you’re seven months pregnant. Plans falling through at the last minute that you had been looking forward to for months. Kids falling sick the week of that big work deadline. Events that we have no way of forecasting — or controlling — can trigger our stress in a big, big way, so how do we cope with them?

‘Human rocket fuel’

While we often talk about stress as something negative that needs to be eliminated, the fact is that from an evolutionary perspective, stress is simply the body’s reaction to a perceived threat. So thinking in terms of our cave-dwelling ancestors who faced hostility from the natural world, stress would not only have been a natural bodily response to the myriad threats they faced, but an essential reaction that helped to ensure survival.

‘The “human rocket fuel” of adrenaline and cortisol provides us with the energy essential to meet mental and physical challenges, this is positive and necessary,’ says psychologist Dr Lesley Perman-Kerr. However, she adds that when a challenge is relentless, like constant arguing with a partner, or work demands that never seem to end, then longer term exposure to these powerful hormones can have wide-ranging and serious negative impacts on the health of both the body and the brain.

‘Early negative impacts include feeling overwhelmed, irritable, anxious, unable to cope or think clearly with an increased vulnerability to sleep disturbances, colds and flu, digestive problems and high blood pressure,’ she says. ‘Longer-term risk factors increase for serious health issues such as depression and heart disease.’

Bolt from the blue

Thankfully, our society has evolved to mean we don’t need to worry about the life-and-death struggles of the Palaeolithic era — but our hardware hasn’t. So while we may no longer encounter sharp-toothed predators on a semi-regular basis, what we do have are events that completely blindside us: the shocks that come like a bolt of lightning out of the blue and trigger our bodies to have the same stress responses as our distant ancestors on the barren plains.

Mental fitness and self-love coach Patricia Ahern tells me that the first step to coping with these sorts of triggers is to let go of our need for control. ‘Life is full of circumstances and situations which are outside of our control, which can test our patience and our tolerance, but perhaps the real question to ask is; “Why do feel the need to control everything?” I believe it’s due to fear, and fear is part of the beautifully designed survival system within us all.’

React and respond

When we’re triggered by an offhand comment from a mum at the school gates that cuts to the quick, or by the fact we planned the perfect day and something unexpected happens and ruins it, Ahern explains that yes, its normal to feel disappointed, sad, let down. However, she says the question you need to ask yourself is: what are you going to do with those feelings?

‘Do you react instantly with anger, frustration, stress, resentment, or do you take a moment to choose how you respond?’ she says. ‘It helps to remember that we can’t necessarily change our feelings about things that happen to us, but we can always choose our emotional responses.’ She says that when it comes to our emotional reactions, we may in fact be reacting from a subconscious level, which was shaped by our previous personal experiences.

‘These are thoughts and beliefs which are ingrained into our lives, and which I believe we can get blindsided by. ‘Simply put, we react by force of habit, an ingrained autopilot feedback loop in our brain which was laid down somewhere in our past. This is based on what neuroscience has established is the fundamental principle, that “the neurons that fire together, wire together”.

This means that when our reactions become so familiar and habitual it can be challenging to move away from them.’ So the more our brain has followed a certain route in the past, the more likely it is to follow it in future — our brains really are creatures of habit, but the question for us is whether or not that habit is beneficial for us now.

The power of the pause

When I ask Ahern how we can go about separating the events we experience from our responses to them, she recalls Vicktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor and psychologist who formed the theory: ‘Between every stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response.’

Ahern tells me that his is the space where we practice awareness and the power of the pause. ‘We all have blind spots, and emotional triggers. Our self-sabotage can live in our blind spots: those parts of us we become so familiar with that we no longer are aware of them.’ She says these blind spots are usually shaped by the environments we grow up in, the messages we absorbed, and the survival strategies we learnt, often without even realising it.

‘As children, we are like emotional sponges, wide open, taking in everything around us: words, glances, tones, moods, silences, expectations, energies. We don’t just hear what is said, we feel what is felt, and when we’re young, we make meaning out of all of it.’ Ahern says that when we fast-forward to adulthood, we’re still operating from those same old stories, beliefs like ‘I need to be perfect to be loved’ or ‘It’s safer to stay quiet.’

‘We’re reacting from our unhealed wounds, our fears, only now it looks like overthinking, anxiety, control, avoiding conflict, people-pleasing, or explosive anger,’ she says. ‘When we are led by fear and anxiety it means we are living in a constant state of survival mode. We cannot be in survival mode and thriving mode at the same time.’

Thinking about this idea of survival mode brings into question the role that safety has to play when it comes to the way we process stress. Chartered psychologist and author of books including Self-Care for Tough Times (Octopus Publishing Group, £12.99) Suzy Reading explains: ‘Feelings of safety are fundamental to moving out of the stress response and into the “rest and digest” mode, where it is easier to empathise with others, problem solve, and delay gratification enabling us to take values-led action.’

She shares that we can cultivate a feeling of safety in a physical way by causing the vagus nerve to send a signal to the brain and stimulating the parasympathetic (rest and digest) aspect of the nervous system.

You can do this by many different means, including…

Connecting with a sense of grounding (feeling your feet against the ground, pressing your hands firmly into your thighs or tenderly placing a hand on your heart)

Focusing your senses to feel connected with the present moment and the environment around you (in particular, concentrate on things that pique your sense of curiosity, or use natural beauty as an anchor)

Using only kind words: speaking to yourself with tenderness can really help you to avoid overwhelm

Using gentle movement and self-massage to release tension in the eyes, jaw, shoulders and neck. Creating ease in these muscles is a cue to the nervous system that it is safe to come down from high alert. (For example, run your tongue around your top row of teeth ten times one way and ten times the other way and then opening and closing your mouth a few times, and the ‘shrug and sigh’.

Using your breath (in particular, making the exhalation longer than the inhalation, and breathing deep into your belly, known as diaphragmatic  breathing)

Flying under the radar

Our reality is that whatever is really going on, we can only deal with the triggers that we are comfortable to acknowledge, that’s why there are some that we happily let fly under the radar, since we would rather pretend they are not there. Often that’s because they illicit feelings we aren’t so comfortable to confront, such as shame, or envy.

You know, like receiving your best friend’s wedding invitation weeks after your own relationship breakup; seeing a colleague’s pregnancy announcement on social media when you’ve had a difficult journey with fertility yourself; or perhaps seeing someone close to you experiencing real professional success whilst you feel like your own career is stagnant.

Whilst the outward response expected by society is of course to congratulate others on their good news, internally we may feel upset and triggered. And, rather than face these feelings, we bury them. But the trouble with this is that they can take root and sprout like weeds, creating a gnarly tangle of stress and anger that we may not even be able to trace back to the trigger we tried so hard to ignore in the first place.

When I ask psychotherapist and author of Real Talk (Octopus Publishing, £18.99) Tasha Bailey about this, she tells me that it is healthy to have complex feelings when change or stress is happening around us, but what isn’t healthy is suppressing those feelings and avoiding being honest with ourselves.

‘Your triggers aren’t flaws, and they aren’t there to torment you,’ she says. ‘Instead, they want to teach you what you are yet to process and heal. These feelings are temporary phases that we go through as we navigate the complexities of life, but refusing to acknowledge them can leave us stuck and frustrated. To move through it, you have to take the time to acknowledge and recognise what is triggering you. You have to feel it to heal it.’

However, it isn’t always easy to allow ourselves to feel the discomfort if we are experiencing a sense of shame around them and trying to suppress it. Bailey agrees that rather than giving our feelings permission to exist and pass through, shame tells us that we’re wrong or bad for feeling what we do.

‘Shame shows up when we silence or judge ourselves. When we’re stressed, our inner critic — that harsh, judgmental voice — tends to get louder too, sending toxic shame our way.’ She says the first and most powerful step is to notice when we are in that negative thought spiral. It takes practice, but she tells me that over time, we will get better at catching it.

‘Try tuning into the story your mind is telling you and ask yourself: “Where have I heard this before?” Often, these thought patterns are rooted in outdated coping strategies. ‘A helpful tool is to name your inner critic — giving it a name like “Barbara” or something playful that can help you separate and externalise it from your true self. That way, when it starts to get loud, you can say, “Not today, Barbara” and take back control.’

Sensing and suppressing

I wonder how we can go about detecting what triggers us when it comes to those feelings we try to suppress? For example, how can we recognise that something has triggered us due to envy, if we can’t acknowledge that the envy is even there in the first place? Bailey shares that the first step in recognising our triggers is noticing what happens to you when you are triggered.

‘Triggers are essentially emotional or sensory cues that alert the threat-detection system in the brain — the amygdala — that something might be wrong. A barking dog, an urgent email from your manager, or even the familiar scent of an ex-partner can all signal to your amygdala that danger is near. In response, your brain may activate the stress response: fight (aggression), flight (avoidance), fawn (people-pleasing), or freeze (dissociation). Understanding how this shows up for you is a superpower — it helps you identify your triggers and learn how to regulate yourself when they appear.’

Criticism and compassion

Being able to separate our inner critic sounds like such a useful tool to remind us that we contain a multitude of feelings that can at times conflict but can very much exists at together. I speak to Bailey about my attitude towards emotions: I try not to view any of them as ‘bad’, but allow space for whatever comes up.

She shares that it can be challenging to adopt this attitude, as often we grew up being taught to dismiss our feelings — or were told that some emotions were ‘good’ while others were ‘bad’.

‘These early messages can deeply shape how we understand and handle our emotions as adults,’ she says. ‘We have learnt to be emotionally unavailable to ourselves, and finding compassion for what we feel can be hard if we have never experienced that before.’

Taking the approach of welcoming all the emotions and reactions that come up for us, shame included, can help us to better recognise complicated feelings we may have surrounding some of our triggers.

‘Emotions are neither good nor bad — some simply feel more comfortable than others,’ says Bailey, before adding that all emotions carry important information about our deeper needs. For example, anger helps us identify and protect our boundaries or speak up when we’ve been hurt. It’s not a ‘bad’ feeling, but when we ignore or project it, it can lead to unhelpful reactions.

‘Think of each emotion as a houseguest — they’re just showing up to tell you something. Open the door and give them a moment to connect with you before you go on with the rest of your day.’

My own attitude towards becoming comfortable with my full range of emotions came as a result of learning about the teachings of Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung, who created the concept of ‘Shadow Work’ and how this can help up to acknowledge thoughts, desires and emotions that we may repress due to discomfort.

Bailey says: ‘A familiar concept in therapy is the shadow self — the idea that when we hide parts of ourselves, like difficult feelings, past traumas, or aspects of our identity, they don’t just disappear. Instead, they live quietly in our subconscious, shaping how we think, feel, and respond to the world.

As I like to say, “whatever we don’t address becomes a mess.”’ She says that shadow work invites us to meet those hidden parts of ourselves with curiosity and compassion — especially the ones we try to ignore or feel ashamed of. In doing so, we move toward accepting all parts of ourselves and begin to heal as the full, complex humans we are.

Whilst much of our discomfort surrounding seemingly negative emotions can be traced to feelings of emotional insecurity, I love that Bailey shows us that we can learn how to give that safety to ourselves and in doing so, learn to become more comfortable with the triggers that make us uncomfortable.

Meet the experts:

Dr Lesley Perman-Kerr is a consultant counselling psychologist who specialises in trauma, burnout and profiling with clients worldwide. DRLPK.co.uk

Patricia Ahern is a mental fitness and self-love coach, author and podcaster. She’s passionate about helping people move from self-sabotage to finding peace with themselves. pacoaching.co.uk

Tasha Bailey, aka @realtalk.therapist, is an author, psychotherapist, speaker and creator. Her book, Real Talk (Radar, £10.99), helps readers go deeper — on their own terms. realtalktherapist.co.uk

Suzy Reading is a chartered psychologist and coach and author of eight books including Rest to Reset (Aster, £16.99). She specialises in habits and supporting people during stress, loss and change. suzyreading.co.uk