Triggered has become a sort of “hot button” word over the past year. It was the year of the Bully and it is a not-so PC term that is still found acceptable to make fun of.
It’s pretty clear to me that the people who typically use personal terms to be hurtful, generally have no idea what it means or would actually feel like to be in that position so I wanted to talk about it a little bit.
This is a state of mind that has been so incredibly familiar to me that I didn’t realize what it was until this past couple of years that I’ve begun to acknowledge my PTSD and the roll that it plays in my everyday life. It’s also become more and more clear to me just how many of my daily choices have been made under the condition of being triggered.
Being triggered is described in psychological terms as resorting to the instinct of “Fight, Flight, or Freeze”. Fight or Flight are considered the two basic options, but there are just as many times that neither of these are available. My experience is described in this Psychology Today Article, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201507/trauma-and-the-freeze-response-good-bad-or-both
Keep in mind that if you’re a small child, your developmental capacity to protect yourself is markedly limited. So, rationally or not, you’re likely to experience a whole host of situations as threatening to your survival. Merely a look of rejection or scorn in the eyes of a disapproving parent, for instance, can make you feel so uncared for, so unloved and abandoned, that you may feel compelled to numb yourself out. And this is why the freeze response occurs far more commonly in children than in adults. …
Though it’s almost always entirely unconscious, some circumstance in the here-and-now can remind you of a trauma suffered years (sometimes, many, many years) ago. Never fully “discharged,” the original fear or panic linked to that memory compels you to react to the current-day trigger as though what happened in the past is—right now—happening all over again. And so your original reaction of self-paralysis—however mystifying it may be to you, and to those around you—can’t help but repeat itself. Your mind goes completely blank, your rational faculties missing in action.
What this looks like for me is agreeing to things that I shouldn’t. Making plans based solely on my codependent need to be accepted but never really developing my own interests, and resulting in shallow relationships. Never actually following through on anything because what I’m really chasing is the validation.
This looks like my son getting his way 90% of the time and becoming almost completely unmanageable at times that he decides to dig his heels in because of how many times he’s been successful at pushing me over. Friends that decide to push us away or out altogether because he doesn’t behave properly, because he is whiny demanding and bossy. People that I want to connect with so badly that just never feel any connection to me. More isolation.
This is the journey for me. Waking up. Seeing the triggers. Being triggered.
Feeling so alone.
What now?