We all have triggers. They fill our day, often on an unconscious level. It might be pleasant triggers such as walking past a bakery brings back memories of visits to our grandmother who loved to bake. It may be unpleasant triggers such as watching a child get spanked in public and being spun back in time to when your father used to beat you with a belt till you passed out.
People who were abused as children, especially sexually abused, have more triggers than most. And their triggers can make their day either sad and painful or joyous. Even if you go through recovery and do a good job you aren’t guaranteed never having painful triggers. Every once in awhile something will happen in my day that resurrects a memory of extreme abuse. It may be a fleeting moment but it could be enough to create down time in my day if I didn’t know how to handle it.
It is so important to recognize when we have a trigger where it came from. Something could happen in present time (our husband hollers at us and we become afraid) that triggers a former domestic violence partner’s abuse. Once we realize that the trigger was more about a previous time, ask our husband why he felt it necessary to holler at us and get an embarrassed response of, “I’m sorry, I thought for a minute I’d lost my cell phone,”all is well. The more you pinpoint the source of your trigger the easier it will be to stay in present time. Communication is important if you are responding to another’s actions.
Sometimes the triggers are layered. That is when it is most difficult to cope with them. Something unpleasant happens in present time; it swirls us back to a painful experience with someone we dated and that swirls us back to a time when we were 13 and our mother told us we were stupid and lazy. So how do we deal with this? First, remember that it is important to stay in present time. This is your life now, your mate (and or family members or friends) now and the memory that the action took you back to was not your fault or resolved already or a misunderstanding or something you can’t do anything about now. Get in the habit of staying in present time and recognizing where the action that was unpleasant was getting ready to take you to. Have your own words of wisdom that you can immediately access. Words like, “I’m okay”, “The only thing that’s the end of the world is the end of the world,” “I wasn’t at fault” or so on can become a great habit, one that will change the course of your day.
Recent Comments