On Being “Triggered” and the Ground Beneath Us

Some years ago, I moved to a small holding. When we arrived, we had pigs and let them graze for several seasons: rooting, turning, tearing up the ground. The surface looked ruined. Churned mud. Broken turf. Uneven, unsettled earth. It didn’t look promising.

Eventually, we decided it was time for sausages, and the following spring, we planted sunflowers. Hundreds of them. They grew absurdly tall. Taller than me. Thick stems, heavy heads tracking the sun. It turns out all that rooting, the breaking of surface, the turning over of layers, had enriched the soil.

At the time, I thought this was a small miracle of gardening. No doubt it would have seemed entirely obvious to anyone who knew what they were doing. Yet the more I learn about soil, the less miraculous it appears and the more profound it becomes.

Soil is not inert dirt. It is a living system. Fungal networks. Bacteria. Decomposed matter. Minerals cycling through roots. Invisible exchanges happening constantly beneath our feet.

Healthy soil depends on disturbance, but not relentless disturbance. On diversity, but not endless diversity. On decomposition, but not to the point of being overwhelmed. On rain, but not to the point of being flooded.  What looks like a mess can be metabolism. What looks like order can be depletion.

And once you begin to understand soil, you begin to see these patterns everywhere.

Compacted Ground

I have learned there is such a thing as soil compaction. This is when land is overworked, over-plowed, repeatedly driven over, or chemically forced into productivity; it hardens. Water cannot penetrate. Roots struggle. Nutrients thin out. Life below ground reduces.

From the surface, it may still look neat. But it cannot absorb shock. Rain that would nourish healthy ground floods compacted soil. It runs off. It pools and erodes.

But it would be foolish to say the problem is the rain. Rather, it is the ground’s capacity to receive it.

The Word “Triggered”

My colleague had invited me to think about the word triggered. It is a word that once had a fairly specific psychological meaning: originally rooted in trauma psychology, where a trigger referred to a cue that activated old memory networks. It later appeared in behavioural and cognitive‑behavioural contexts, where “triggers” described antecedents to certain responses. From there it migrated into everyday speech. The word now travels widely. You hear it in classrooms, workplaces, social media, political commentary. Sometimes spoken earnestly. Sometimes defensively. Sometimes mockingly.

The word itself carries many associations. We speak of hair triggers, trigger points, people being trigger‑happy. The language has drifted far from its original clinical home, but the metaphors have stayed close to ignition — spark, suddenness, something catching fire.

But what if “triggered” is less about sparks and more about soil? What if it is rainfall landing on ground that cannot absorb it?

Depletion in the Social Field

We are living in heavily worked terrain.

Manualised pathways of care are everywhere. PowerPoint learning. Digital acceleration. Computer says no. Moral urgency. Institutional mistrust. Rapid social change. Historical wounds resurfacing in real time. Public discourse sharpened into performance.

Our collective ground has been ploughed again and again. Language is driven hard. Positions are fortified. Nuance compresses. Diversity of thought narrows into monocropping. I am not trying to make a political observation here. Rather an ecological one.

When soil loses diversity and organic matter, it becomes reactive. It cannot metabolise disturbance. Even small weather events feel catastrophic.

In such a landscape, “triggered” becomes a common word. Of course nervous systems are sensitised. Of course reactions are heightened.

The question is not simply why people are triggered. The question is: what has happened to the ground.

Disturbance Is Not the Enemy

Back on that land, it wasn’t the pigs’ disturbance that harmed the soil. It was the absence of balance that would have done so.

Healthy ecosystems include rooting, grazing, decay, regrowth.

The problem arises when disturbance becomes relentless, or when the ground is over‑controlled and sterilised in an attempt to prevent all disruption.

In contemporary spaces, we often oscillate between two impulses: Eliminate all triggers. Or mock those who are triggered. Both these suggestions stay at the surface.

An ecological perspective asks something slower: How do we increase the depth of the ground? How do we restore diversity? How do we allow decomposition without collapse?

From Sparks to Stewardship

The word “triggered” might be pointing to something real: not about fragility alone, but about depletion.

If our social soil is thin, if our language is compacted, if our relationships are shallow and rapidly mediated, then nervous systems will react sharply. There is less depth to absorb the impact of inevitable disturbance.  Life does not stop lifing simply because we would prefer it to.

The work, then, is not to shame rainfall. People are not wrong for expressing distress, nor are others necessarily wrong for expressing disagreement. The question is often whether we have enough depth to receive what arrives.

Instead, my invitation is to tend the ground. To build networks of trust. To allow difference without monocropping. To let difficult material decompose slowly. There is no rush. To reduce the relentless ploughing of public life.

Because what is facilitated (sunflowers or erosion) depends on soil health. And the condition of the soil will tell us more about the future than the sparks ever will.

If this reflection resonates, feel free to share it with someone who might find it useful. You can also find details of upcoming workshops and groups at libbynugent.com.