Triggers
A Mirror to Ourselves
This morning I was sitting on my phone, scrolling.
The news was playing in the background from an app on our TV. There was talk of Trump and his visit to China, along with commentary about Alberta applying for a referendum to separate from Canada.
For a moment, I caught myself.
I quickly locked my phone and tossed it face down onto the table beside me.
“What’s wrong?” my wife asked.
Have you ever noticed yourself while consuming modern media?
Not just watching it — but watching yourself watching it?
I ask because lately I’ve begun catching something in myself. A tension. A quiet agitation.
What frustrates me isn’t necessarily whether the stories are true or false. It’s the realization that my attention has been captured by them at all.
Modern media is designed to hold attention. Every headline, every dramatic pause, every perfectly timed reaction is engineered to keep us emotionally engaged. Once you begin noticing it, it becomes difficult not to see the staging behind it all.
You start asking strange questions:
Why was someone filming this exact moment?
Why does every clip feel edited for maximum emotional effect?
Why do these stories arrive in endless succession, each one demanding outrage, fear, or allegiance?
And then comes the uncomfortable realization:
I allowed myself to be pulled into it.
Click-baited.
Propagandized.
Emotionally hooked.
That realization is what triggers me most.
But lately I’ve been trying to look at being “triggered” differently.
A trigger can act like a mirror.
When something provokes a strong emotional reaction, it may be pointing toward something unresolved within ourselves — some belief, fear, insecurity, or contradiction we haven’t fully examined.
So when deception triggers me, I have to ask:
Where am I being deceptive in my own life?
Where am I performing instead of being honest?
Where am I editing myself for approval?
Where have I traded authenticity for attention, comfort, or belonging?
Maybe that’s the deeper lesson hidden beneath all the noise.
Sometimes the things that disturb us most in the world are reflections of the things we still need to confront within ourselves.
Being triggered may simply be life’s way of handing us a mirror.
