We need to retire the phrase “you made me feel.” It is a comfortable lie we tell ourselves to avoid the deeply uncomfortable truth of our own internal architecture. The psychological reality, which happens to be anchored in a millennia-old biblical framework, is far more confronting: no one actually triggers you. You get triggered.
A trigger is a small mechanical lever, and a lever is entirely harmless unless it is connected to a loaded barrel. When someone says or does something that sends you into a sudden spiral of anger, defensiveness, or anxiety, they are merely pulling the lever. The gunpowder was already yours.
Modern psychology frames this through the lens of emotional ownership and cognitive appraisal. As pioneering psychologist Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), established in his ABC Model, an Activating event (A) does not directly cause our emotional and behavioral Consequences (C). Rather, it is our core Beliefs (B) about the event that generate the reaction.
Similarly, psychologist Julian Rotter’s foundational work on locus of control demonstrates that when we blame external forces for our internal state—operating from an external locus—we forfeit our agency, handing the remote control of our nervous system over to whoever happens to walk into the room.
Long before clinical therapy articulated the mechanics of emotional regulation, the biblical text was relentlessly focused on the internal origin of our external reactions. In Proverbs 4:23, King Solomon gives a precise architectural directive: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Notice the instruction is not to guard yourself against difficult people, chaotic circumstances, or perceived slights. The ancient Hebrew understanding of the heart (lev) wasn’t just the seat of emotion, but the center of intellect, will, and character. It is the wellspring.
Jesus drove this paradigm shift home in Matthew 15:11 (and Matthew 15:18–19), radically reorienting the religious culture of his day. He declared that it is not what goes into a person from the outside that defiles them, but what comes out from within. As He articulated in Luke 6:45, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Your reaction always exposes your reservoir.
If we accept this, a trigger ceases to be a weapon used against us and becomes an extremely useful, albeit painful, diagnostic tool. As clinical psychologist Dr. Harriet Lerner explored in The Dance of Anger, our emotional spikes are signals pointing toward our own unresolved boundaries and internal vulnerabilities rather than proof of someone else’s malice.
If a colleague’s passing comment makes you feel violently inadequate, the colleague didn’t create your inadequacy. They merely bumped into an unhealed bruise of insecurity you were already carrying.
James 1:14 captures this internal dynamic with surgical precision, noting that a person is dragged away and enticed by their own desires and inclinations. In James 4:1, the text asks bluntly, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?” The external hook only catches because there is something inside of us hungry enough to bite it.
Taking accountability for our reactions requires cultivating the sacred pause—what psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl famously described as the space between stimulus and response where our power to choose resides. This aligns directly with the wisdom of James 1:19–20 to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,” and Proverbs 25:28, which warns that “like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.”
This fraction of a second is exactly where psychological resilience and spiritual formation meet. It takes immense courage to feel the sudden spike of adrenaline, bite your tongue, and ask, “Why did that just hit me so hard?” instead of immediately launching a counterattack. It requires trading the cheap, fleeting satisfaction of being a victim for the difficult, enduring work of becoming whole.
Freedom begins the moment you stop waiting for the world to stop poking you and start tending to the bruises that make the poking hurt. You cannot control what people say, how they act, or the chaos they bring into your orbit. But you are the absolute sovereign of your own reactions. When you finally claim that jurisdiction, nobody can ever pull your strings again.
Curator’s Caveat: I do not claim to offer any original thoughts in this piece. Rather, my goal is simply to gather these enduring insights from scripture and clinical psychology and present them in one place for reflection.
Sources & Further Reading
Biblical Texts
Proverbs 4:23: On the heart (lev) as the internal wellspring of all outward actions.
Proverbs 25:28: On the structural vulnerability of lacking emotional and behavioral self-control.
Matthew 15:11, 18–19 & Luke 6:45: Teachings of Jesus on how external reactions and words reveal what is already stored within the heart.
James 1:14, 1:19–20, & 4:1: On the internal origins of temptation, reactivity, and interpersonal conflict.
Psychological Literature
Ellis, Albert (1962). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy. Lyle Stuart. (Foundational text on Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and the ABC Model of cognitive appraisal).
Frankl, Viktor E. (1946). Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press. (On human agency and the cognitive space between external stimulus and internal response).
Lerner, Harriet (1985). The Dance of Anger: A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships. Harper & Row. (On using emotional reactions as internal diagnostic signals rather than tools for external blame).
Rotter, Julian B. (1966). “Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement.” Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28. (Foundational research on internal versus external locus of control).