Hot Buttons and Triggers are emotional responses that occur when various incidents that happen in our daily lives take us by surprise, and pop in our faces spontaneously. We are surprised at the passion of these reactions, but seldom take time to consider, much less analyze, why they happen. Let's take a look.
As I use these words here, *Hot Buttons* are those things which set off that place in our spirit where the violent emotions of hate and rage are stored. *Triggers* are switches that are flipped to bring up joy, sadness, fear - our non-violent memories. These are not emotions which we call up by choice. Rather, they spring upon us with such force that we are often left emotionally drained for the rest of the day.
Let's look at a *Hot Button* situation. Imagine that a baby had an older sibling who was jealous of the family's new addition. To torment the baby, the older one would constantly take things out of its mouth; the pacifier, the bottle, the teething ring. Of course, the baby would cry. As the baby got older, it would see food taken from its plate, or its favorite dessert eaten, or other such things that involved tampering with the very bread of life. We have full blown temper tantrums now with screaming and throwing things. The baby is now full grown, and at a very elegant dinner party. A friend innocently reaches across to take a taste of some food from its plate. This adult baby flies into a rage and a very unpleasant and embarrassing scene plays out. Everyone is surprised at such a strange reaction - most of all the adult baby. What has happened? A *Hot Button* has been pushed!
Kenny G has given us a perfect example of a *Trigger.* He says that he would play his saxophone directly at his wife's stomach when she was pregnant with their son. He did this on a regular basis. After the boy was born, Kenny G played for him constantly and kept him by his side when he was working on new music. The baby quickly associated the sound of the saxophone with "Daddy," and would reach for the sound; even on a recording. There is an album cover of this boy sitting in the sunlight reaching for the saxophone as Daddy plays. As this baby grows, the sound of saxophone music will always mean love, and family, and happiness, and security — and memories of Daddy. A *Trigger* of positive emotional reactions has been built for him at a stage in his development when he will remember it always.
The subconscious mind stores all things: what we see, what we hear, what we smell, what we taste - even what we think. We have no control over this. We are born with past-life responses stored in our subconscious mind which have carried forward in our soul's memory banks. We begin to build additional experiences in the womb before we are even born. The subconscious mind does not discriminate. It stores everything; happy/sad, good/bad, etc., and it stores actual physical events as well as the non-physical sensory perceptions and experiences. Imagine a giant warehouse filled with filing cabinets. We are born with some memories already in the drawers of those cabinets. From the instant we draw our first breath of life, those filing systems are accumulating more and more data.
We should be very careful of what our eyes see, and what our ears hear, for these things are being stored. Suppose we fall over a toy red truck as a baby - the filing cabinet says "O.K. Red=pain, falling, fear." As we grow, every time the color red comes up, the subconscious says "Oh, I know this one," and immediately adds another paper in the "pain, falling, fear" file. You will never be able to explain why you won't own a red car, and wouldn't think of getting into a red truck. See the pattern? Good experiences are treated exactly the same way.
We react in the same way to pleasant stimuli. Does a passage of beautiful music make you want to cry? Does the power of a sunset, or a cloud formation or other scenes of nature's beauty fill you with wonder and awe? Are there smells and sounds that take you back to another time? The smell of Tabu perfume will always take me to Nassau in the Bahamas. I am instantly transported to that city with all its sounds and activities, and can even see the vendor stalls in the Straw Market and the storefronts along Bay Street. I am there - and I traveled there on a simple smell!
The dangers here are that the emotional reactions called up by such *Hot Buttons* and *Triggers* is all consuming. We leave our present world and travel backward to experience the full power of that incident, be it good or bad. Especially dangerous are the violent emotions which respond to a *Hot Button* being punched. From the instant that button goes off, we do not hear or see anything else. Explanations do no good. Even if you are quiet and say nothing, your mind is in full whirl and everything that is said or done beyond the instant that memory surfaces is lost. There is no logic and reason here. I was witness to one such event that is a perfect example. A friend asked her husband if he took out the garbage. Simple question. He flew into a rage. "Why did you ask me that? I don't know why I put up with you! I can never please you. You're always on my back. You do nothing but nag, nag, nag. You don't think I can do anything right." She was floored, and looked at him in amazement. She kept trying to get him to calm down, and said over and over that she didn't know what he was talking about. She tried everything to calm him, but he didn't hear a word she said. He stayed in that state of rage until he went storming out of the house, still ranting. She looked at me asking what in the world all that was about. Well, clearly, he had a *Hot Button* pushed that sent him flying back to something in his childhood that had caused him great pain and unhappiness. Whether or not it actually had anything to do with garbage is doubtful. It did have to do with circumstances he saw as a challenge or distrust of his reliability, responsibility, and trustworthiness.
It is possible to re-program our reactions, and to re-stock our filing cabinets. If you are troubled by situations which keep you in emotional upheaval, and which make you difficult to live with, you can begin to control your reactions. It's not easy. It takes work. It can be done. Go to the exercise section, and let's begin.
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