The first step in quieting triggers is understand a little about something call a conditioned emotional response. Conditioned emotional responses result from what is known as classical conditioning. In the early twentieth century, a Russian scientist named Ivan Petrovich Pavlov showed how automatic responses can be triggered by things that normally have no connection to them.
In his experiment, he sounded a bell just before giving hungry dogs food that caused them to salivate. With repetition, the neutral stimulus (the bell) became associated with the food. The salivating of dogs that is normally triggered by the sight or smell of food was now being triggered by something that had no connection to food. This type of automatic response in now know as classical conditioning.
In 1920 John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner did an experiment that would never be done today in which the conditioned a 9-month-old boy called "Albert" to become afraid of a white rat. They started by making him cry by the loud noise of a hammer striking a steel bar. Then they showed Albert the rat along with the loud noise. At first Albert showed no fear of rat, but after the sight of the rat had been accompanied five times by the loud noise, he cried and tried to escape, showing that the rat had become what they called a conditioned emotional response.
It turns out that classical conditioning and conditioned emotional responses play a major, though usually unrecognized, role in your daily life. Many of your preferences and dislikes result from the conditioning you experienced when you were young. Think of the types of food you like to eat. You probably enjoy food you are familiar with and often do not like food that differs from what you know. Because you have been conditioned to enjoy the sights, odors, and tastes of food you are familiar with, they trigger a positive response when you are hungry.
In the same way, the sights, odors, and tastes of unfamiliar foods or spices may produce the opposite reaction. Just the sight of people eating some foods, such as snakes, grubs, or insects, may even sicken you while others find their mouths watering at the sight of such delicacies. The same can be said of the music you enjoy, as well as many aspects of how you approach work, what you find entertaining, and what attracts you to others. Triggers, then, are a conditioned emotional response where events or situations produce a negative emotional response that is either not logical or more intense than what would normally be expected.
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