Why Small Things Set You Off
By Andy Petranek
The moment is small. What it touches is old.
You know the moment. A small comment in a meeting. A shift in someone’s tone. An email that lands a little colder than usual.
And something in you goes off like the thing was 10 times its actual size.
I watch this in the founders and executives I coach, and I catch it in myself. The reaction is way out of scale with the event. That mismatch is the clue.
When the reaction is bigger than the moment, the reaction came from somewhere else.
Here’s the pattern, and it runs fast. Something happens. A meaning gets assigned. And a mask you’ve been wearing for years feels the threat.
The reaction is to the meaning. And the meaning got written a long time ago.
Feedback lands, and underneath it becomes: I did it wrong. I’m not enough.
Someone goes quiet, and it becomes: I don’t matter. I don’t belong.
Uncertainty shows up, and it becomes: I’m not safe.
Your body gets the memo before your mind does. Tight chest. Spinning thoughts. That defensive edge in your voice you can hear but can’t seem to stop.
Then there’s the piece that took me the longest to see: the mask.
When we were kids, things happened, and we drew conclusions about ourselves. Then we built something to cover the conclusion. Achievement. Control. Being needed.
Mine was achievement, and it worked. It carried me through leading a Marine platoon in Desert Storm, through building CrossFit LA, one of the first CrossFit gyms in the world, which I grew from 8 members to more than 350 before selling it. The mask built real things. Which is exactly why it’s so hard to see.
A trigger is what happens when something small slips past the mask and pokes the old conclusion underneath. The one the mask was built to cover.
So a trigger is information. A flare going up from a part of you that decided something about itself decades ago and never got the update.
Which means the next time a small thing sets you off, you’ve been handed something useful. Before you defend, before you fire back the email, get curious for 10 seconds. What did I just make that mean? Which old conclusion did it poke?
Seeing it clearly is what softens it. Most days, the seeing is enough to loosen the grip.
With love, Andy