Traumatic Experiences Community Daily Check In - Tuesday April 24th 2018

Good Morning Trauma Family,

Today let's focus on naming our emotions and looking at what our triggers are. Identifying your triggers is the first step to healing from them.

We all have emotional triggers.
Someone rejecting you.
Someone leaving you (or the threat that they will).
Helplessness over painful situations.
Someone discounting or ignoring you.
Someone being unavailable to you.
Someone giving you a disapproving look.
Someone blaming or shaming you.

Places can be triggering

Smells can trigger us.

People can be a trigger.

Hearing certain sounds.

Many things can trigger us. Especially when you have gone through a trauma. In the moment knowing what has put us into an altered state helps us deal with the events more gracefully. Knowing your emotions and dealing with the trigger in a positive manner is key.

Once you know your triggers, you can consider the origins of them. If you identify with any of these, ask yourself what they might relate to from your childhood experiences. Only you can heal your triggers, so take a little time to go inside and make sure to be patient, kind and compassionate.

Addiction or other self-destructive behaviors or habits are learned responses to environmental and emotional triggers. You can un-learn these responses and create new ones, thus building a healthier way of engaging with the world, your emotional landscape, and your family and friends.

Because our responses to triggers usually occur at the subconscious level, and we are completely unaware of the firing and wiring we have created, we are doomed to repeat self-destructive behaviors until we identify our triggers.

Physical

We crave certain substances (food, sugar, alcohol, drugs, etc.) This happens because the emotional pain triggers our habitual way of indulging in some kind of physical activity that we are using to suppress the emotion or dull the pain.

When it comes to physical reactions, it helps me to create space by doing something else, for example, taking a walk.

For emotional reactions, it helps me to clearly communicate my feelings. Mostly I had to learn to understand my emotions, acknowledge them, and then give them a voice.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. ~Viktor E. Frankl

1.What do you do to manage painful emotional experiences?

2. Have you been triggered lately?

3. Are there signs you might become triggered?

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