Trigger

A trigger is something in your present life that sets off an old, unresolved emotional pattern. It doesn’t create the pain. It wakes up pain that was already there.
Rachael Sloan uses this idea to explain one of the most confusing parts of divorce: why your ex-wife can seem so relieved, even happy, once you’re out of the picture. The marriage was stressful. You both had problems. When she steps away from that stress, the relief she feels is real. She isn’t faking it.
But distance from a trigger is not the same as healing.
When the thing that sets off a pattern is removed, the pattern goes quiet for a while. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s waiting. When the next trigger shows up, whether that’s a new relationship, a new conflict, or a new source of stress, the same pattern comes right back. That’s why Rachael Sloan sees the same cycle play out again and again. The relief lasts months, maybe a couple of years. Then the old problems return in a new setting.
This works both ways. Your wife triggered old patterns in you, and you triggered old patterns in her. Neither of you created those wounds. Marriage just brought them to the surface.
Understanding this changes what you do next. You stop reading her happiness as a verdict on your worth. And you stop assuming the answer is simply to avoid whatever sets you off.
The real work is noticing what gets triggered in you and getting curious about where it came from. That starts with learning to regulate your nervous system, which is the heart of the Stabilize phase in her work. Once you’re regulated, you have room to respond instead of react.
A trigger you understand loses much of its power over you.