Triggers – Good, Bad, or Both?

***TRIGGER WARNING***

This article discusses trauma, including sexual references that may not be appropriate for all. 

My name is Elizabeth, and I am a survivor of CSA and unimaginable trauma. I have lived through a childhood full of sexual torture and witnessed several murders. Yet, I am here now, a fully grown woman able to share experiences from my childhood. Somehow, I survived all of it, and I got a do-over on life. I was lucky to survive, and I feel that society today is so full of ignorance and “know-it-alls.” Most of these “know-it-alls” have never experienced being hungry, neglected, or deeply hurt, physically and sexually. Most people do not have any idea of what it is like growing up in an abusive home. How could they possibly know what it is like if we do not speak up? People who do not know often start going wrong in their bubble of thinking because they haven’t experienced the worst life can throw at you. There is an assumption that you just need time to “get over yourself” or “snap out of it,” and then, voila! You have been cured of a life of trauma. How I wish I could do just that!

In this post, I aim to explore triggers. Although most survivors will say they hate triggers because of how they make us feel when we flash back into a traumatic memory, can they also be good for us in our healing journey? Have you ever thought of the possibility that triggers can be both good and bad?

Triggers are everywhere!

As survivors of abuse and trauma, we see the world in a more intense way than others who had a good childhood. It’s like living a life through the lens of a magnifying glass. We have experienced so much hurt in our past and as a result of whatever else life throws at us, that it feels like living on a knife-edge sometimes. Even the most mundane tasks like slicing bread with a knife can be a trigger and make an entire day go in a completely different direction than was anticipated. I know because I’m living this kind of life. For me, there are triggers everywhere, and they can happen at any time. Don’t get me wrong, I have come a very long way in my healing process, and I am no longer living in constant fear. I can brush off most triggers because I’ve had them before, and they do not affect me as much. These types of triggers are more like painful memories that I have dealt with in therapy. They have not gone away completely, but they are not hurting me on a deep level anymore.

I can only speak for myself when I say that, for me, triggers have been both bad and good. A healing journey is unique. My childhood was so riddled with abuse and trauma that when I finally admitted to myself that I needed professional help, I was a mess! I didn’t know what was up or down anymore. I was in a bad way. I bounced from therapist to therapist. My husband was suffering through my never-ending nightmares, despairing about what to do to help me. Each of the therapists tried to help but none of them really saw the big picture. I wasn’t ready to let anyone in. The memories were just too much, too terrifying, and too encompassing. Some of the therapists started to focus on how to handle triggers with various techniques like grounding and breathing. They worked to some degree, but the deep hurt was still shielded by my own deep layers of protection. I was a bit like an onion, shielding my most painful memories deep inside a series of layers. I was still not ready to go “there” yet.

Painful triggers are un-processed trauma memories.

There are times when I do feel absolutely terrified when triggered. When I get to this kind of fear, I pay attention to my breathing, grounding myself in the present until the shock and pain subside. This kind of trigger feels shocking, like being suddenly immersed in fire or having an ice bucket thrown over you. The pain feels real, just like it was in that traumatic moment. These are un-processed trauma memories that have not been put into the correct part of the brain yet. They are raw memories floating around in the wrong place like shards of glass that resurface sometimes. These memories will keep “poking” you until you have dealt with them, processed them, and your brain has recognized them for what they are and put them in their rightful place. This process is not an easy thing to go through. It can take years of processing memories with professional help, but it can be done. I am living proof.

Have you ever been in a situation where you get so triggered that you cannot escape it no matter what you do?

This is what happened to me when everything changed. I had a mind-blowing trigger! It was all-enveloping and all I could think of. It was floating in my mind like a blazing red light at an intersection. I couldn’t escape it, no matter what I did – it was right there glaring at me to go back “there.” The place I just couldn’t understand was so terrifying for me that I couldn’t process it either. I was stuck in a past trauma memory and I couldn’t move forward.

Getting professional help is a necessity.

I searched for a new therapist, and I happened to mention it to a friend. She had a friend who had been to see a good therapist who helped her tremendously through a traumatic divorce. I was skeptical at first because I had seen so many therapists and none of them had helped me much. This therapist was supposed to be amazing, so I made contact. This time I hit the therapist jackpot! We instantly clicked as I laid out my history and what I was looking for in a therapist. We agreed on a plan to move forward in my healing journey.

I am not ashamed to admit that I have needed therapy to help me process and deal with my childhood traumas, and it has been useful for me. Through therapy, I saw myself in a very different light than I used to do. My new therapist opened my eyes and made me recognize the hurt and pain I was living with every day. I was made aware of how much I suffered during my childhood, that the abuse was not my fault, and, most importantly, that I absolutely had to love and take care of myself first. Taking stock and recognizing the trauma you have lived through is a huge milestone for survivors. It is also painful to do. My trauma was dealt with in such a way that my brain could process it for what it was. With my therapist’s help, I made sense of what had happened and why I was reacting the way I did. I was guided through the trauma slowly at my own pace, and I realized that this was my body telling me that it was time. It was time I put the demons at rest and moved away from the past. A good therapist will be able to guide and support you through this process. It is worth the time and effort to do this with a professional because they will know when to stop and when it is time to push on.

Learning to recognize and process a traumatic memory always feels out of reach at first. It’s just too much. It is a bit like the childhood riddle: How does a mouse eat an elephant? The answer is this: in small bites! If you think of it this way, suddenly the situation is a lot more positive. Instead of telling yourself, “I can’t do this,” tell yourself, “Yes, I can do this, and I’ve got it.”

From Darkness to Light: My Experience

My most painful trigger was watching the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie when it came out a few years back. I was with my friends, and we were curious about the movie everyone was talking about at that time. I felt odd after seeing the movie as a flash of darkness hit me like a developing migraine. For days after, I had the same vision of darkness as I saw more and more flashes of things I had buried deep within. They were so terrifying that I wanted to run away from my own head. I didn’t know what they meant, and I was in denial that I could have witnessed such things as a child. I couldn’t understand the visual of “The Red Room” from “Fifty Shades” in my own life. I saw through the eyes of my 4-year-old self, a different red room with people in it who were familiar. It was a sex warehouse full of items, the same as those in the movie: whips, handcuffs, rope, and different types of sex toys. Those “tools” have haunted my unconscious mind for decades, deeply embedded in my brain.

My therapist was brilliant at guiding me through the horrific trauma memories that were raw and child-like. I was guided to expose those memories and go back to the child I was, turning everything I knew and narrating the trauma into a comprehensible memory. In doing this, I was able to understand what had happened to me and what I saw — in a completely different way. I replaced the trauma memory with an adult understanding of what had happened to me. Rewriting a trauma memory was life-changing for me. As traumatizing as my memories were, I could now move on. I accepted that it was my own past and that it was not my fault. There was nothing I could do at the time to get away. I was able to think about it as a bad time in my life, and, although the memories are painful, they do not hurt me as much in the present. I have moved on.

By looking back and rewriting the most horrific trauma memories with a new narrative, I exposed the pain and hurt. The triggers were hurting me deeply, but now, after therapy, those same traumatic visuals are just a bad time in my past. The triggers came at a time in my life when my brain decided that it was right to deal with them. Even though the triggers were from the most terrifying time of my life, those same triggers were processed into a narrative that I could understand. In understanding what had happened to me through therapy at my own pace, I turned this huge negative piece of me into something real. I was no longer scared. The nightmares subsided, and the flashbacks slowed down. I could talk about it, and it was a huge relief to do just that. I was devouring my “trauma elephant” piece by piece.

Do not be afraid to seek help regarding your triggers. It was the best thing I did. Remember, you do matter. Be kind to yourself and follow your heart.

 

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.