What can trigger the urge to offend?
A ‘trigger’ is also called a cue, prompt or call to action. Triggers are what come before thoughts, feelings and behaviour and can lead to a response or change in emotion and behaviour.
There are different types of triggers:
These are triggers that come from within you. This includes thoughts, feelings and attitudes linked to lifestyle problems.
Examples include feeling unhappy, frustrated, bored, resentful, stressed and anxious.
These are triggers that come from outside of you. They are like an alarm sounding and could be something you see or hear.
They might come from different situations and come from our daily routines. For example walking through the kitchen might trigger us to open the fridge, or going onto adult pornography websites might trigger sexual thoughts about accessing sexual images of children.
What are your triggers?
Triggers often appear at the beginning of the cycle of offending and can prompt behavioural responses. Being aware of your triggers is essential to increase your ability to stop the cycle as early as possible.
On the downloadable worksheet identify your triggers – internal which includes emotional, and external which include situations, sights and sounds.
It is likely that you will have several triggers. Sometimes these will work by themselves and sometimes they will work as a combination.
| Internal | External |
| Lonely | Pop-ups |
