getting triggered, usefulness and risks:

Sometimes getting triggered can save time, whether that triggering is accidental, surprising, or even prospectively (and retrospectively) net undesirable.

Somehow, someway, the meditator will make it all the states/places in their bodymind state that they need to or want to, to have things change in ways that are nonmonotonically, retrospectively good. One doesn’t need an external trigger, in the limit, which is good because sometimes triggers aren’t available, e.g. a childhood context or friend or enemy who’s passed away or unavailable. (Often, though, too, something far removed from an original context has an element of, or enough of a similarity, to an original context/person/situation, to serve as a trigger or cause triggering.)

But, if triggers are available, sometimes they can cause really fast pinpointing and learning, if the meditator is ready. Sometimes, this will alleviate a bottleneck, and it’ll be doubly useful. Even if they’re not ready, it’s still data that will be useful later.

Whether intentional or accidental, getting triggered isn’t always safe, because being triggered can sometimes involve an increased propensity for destructive behavior. (Part of being triggered is sometimes not realizing one has been triggered, and then destructive things sometimes feel "right" or "justified," in the moment.

Being mindful of safety, sometimes it’s better to avoid being triggered, and sometimes it can be net-helpful to be triggered. And sometimes undesirable triggering can happen, and it can be useful, even if it’s partially or net-problematic.

Finally, "retraumatization" is a thing—being exposed to "triggers" too early can also cause net more "layering" and "compensation" and thereby make things take fractionally longer, on net. This can be discouraging if one didn’t intend to be triggered, but it’s normal to get triggered and retriggered, and it’s very possible to think one os being "re-traumatized," etc., but it’s actually net "redo-to-undo," and net progress. It can be hard to tell in the moment, and, in any case, getting triggered is par for the course, grist for the mill. It’s ok.

All that said, it can be fine good to systematically, actively seek out some triggers, some of the time, when you’re ready or as a careful (or accidental) experiment.

informal working definitions:

trigger ~= something that can or does cause an abrupt (negative) state change, or change to local, behavioral propensities, that doesn’t depend on the rest of the environmental context

trauma ~= bodymind state/feeling/content/material that’s needs extra steps to be safe to re-experience, that in its dormant/latent state is a bottleneck/dependency on other/further valued changes