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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1.What do you do to manage painful emotional experiences?
I try to distract myself from them in any way I can. Knitting, drawing, forcing myself to talk to friends...Just any way I can focus on something besides what cause it.
2. Have you been triggered lately?
I was a bit when I heard about someone that was possibly going through the same thing I did. I managed to get in contact with them and help them through it, at least. However, it was still kind of painful for me.
3. Are there signs you might become triggered?
If I start spacing out more and remembering what happened super vividly. Also, my breathing gets kind of weird (sometimes leading into hyperventallating if it's a really bad spell).
@SentientCozyTeacup hey hey!
Distraction is a very good way to manage painful emotional experience indeed 
i do it by myself aswell.
Its so inspiring that ,even though you felt triggered, you still reached out to them and helped them 
wow i am so proud of you!
best wishes!
Heya! :)
1.What do you do to manage painful emotional experiences?
Distraction, like sports or spending time outside with friends :)
2. Have you been triggered lately?
Gladly not *woho*
3. Are there signs you might become triggered?
When i kind of space out and am quiet and everything i see reminds me of it.
1.What do you do to manage painful emotional experiences?
distract myself. i'll talk to friends, watch videos on youtube, play video games, or color.
2. Have you been triggered lately?
...yes. last night, specifically.
3. Are there signs you might become triggered?
my anxiety spikes and i get really spacey / start dissociating
@Moonberrycat
I watch YouTube too. My favorite videos by Therapist Kati Morton to help me cope with emotionaly painful times.
So what triggered you last night a smell? Place? Person?
I also dissociate as well. It can feel fuzzy. I'm glade your doing okay.
@SoftForestHSP77
aaa that's cool! i don't think i've heard of her.
it was something i saw online last night. today, however, i got triggered by a person. which was kind of confusing, because the person i saw that triggered me didn't even remind me of anyone who's hurt me.
yeah, it can feel pretty fuzzy! how are you doing, by the way? are you doing well?
1.What do you do to manage painful emotional experiences?
I listen to really loud music so I can't really think about anything but the music.
2. Have you been triggered lately?
Surprisingly, I have not been triggered this month. That must be a good thing.
3. Are there signs you might become triggered?
I usually dontd know when I'm going to get triggered. Sometimes I think I might because of a certain conversation.
Being sick.
Having a crush on someone.
Feeling a burning need to feel powerful and worthy.
Because early in life, I was programmed to believe that my life purpose was to have things done to me and done for me and that I had no control and no power and no worth.
Carol
@SoftForestHSP77
Someone rejecting me in some way is a trigger. -- The first time I felt rejected after opening my heart was .... I remember writing a guy I loved a letter back in high school, and him ignoring me. Wait, I can go back. Middle school. I rememberrrr.... feeling self conscious at school dances.... uncertainty with guys I liked..... [[these seem normal enough. where is the traumatic connection?]]
Someone leaving me (or the threat or even the thought that they might) is a trigger. I start thinking that's what people always do. -- I had a boyfriend leave me traumatically a few years ago... I had another boyfriend leave me traumatically about ten years ago... I remember feeling emotionally like my dad left me in high school... or even middle school.... physically he did leave, because he lost his job and had to get a new one and didn't live at home for a little while because he was working... I don't remember feeling any closeness or reassurance really at that time...
Helplessness over painful situations is a trigger. I start thinking it's all my fault and I feel panicked. -- I definitely know where this came from. I was helpless at the state of my parents' marriage in high school, helpless at how my dad was verbally crushing my mother and my siblings (and maybe myself, but if so, I've blocked that out), guilt in retrospect for not doing anything about it.... helpless over my dad being emotionally unavailable and unsupportive toward me.... helpless over my mom giving me too many hugs.... helpless over not receiving the emotional support I needed.....
Someone discounting or ignoring me is a trigger. -- I know I felt discounted growing up... I remember my dad dismissing things I'd say, my mom always coming up with a rebuttal to things I'd say, always trying to teach me, to train me, to see things differently, so rarely "agreeing" with me...
Someone being unavailable to me is a trigger. -- I think I already addressed this, my parents feeling unavailable when I was in high school... chronically stressed and unavailable in the way that I needed....
Someone giving me a disapproving look or tone of voice is a trigger. -- oh, god. My dad. or my mom. Did this so. much.
Thinking of movies or music often can be a trigger, or TV. -- this is from my ex, in college and later. He was constantly watching movies rather than spending time with me... playing music rather than spending time with me... watching TV rather than spending time with me... working on movie/music/TV projects rather than coming to bed with me.....
I STILL feel guilty over that last one, as though I ought to "grow up" and "be an adult" in a relationship and "not demand or expect so much".... I still think perhaps my ex was right, and perhaps I was too needy.... I kept going to therapy in order to try and heal myself enough to function in the relationship with him... (did he ever go to therapy? no)... I still don't know.
Many things do trigger me. There are more than are on this list.
@SoftForestHSP77
I was bulimic, I began at age 14. I un-learned it at age 21 and began forcing myself to do other things, instead. I don't know how successful I've been.... it's been off and on. Through a lot of turmoil. I've gone back to unhealthy eating patterns many times (although never engaged in bulimia again). Maybe I am still bulimic? I don't even know. It was hard to know how to "stop" when you still have to eat. Or maybe I just use that as an excuse.
Yes, I craved sugar and certain foods for years and years and years..... yes, I was using that physical activity I guess to suppress or dull the emotional pain. My mom says otherwise....
I have trouble emotionally communicating to my family in particular, because after all these years the patterns are still the same; they work with me a little, but it's been tough work to do on my own without support from a partner on my team or a therapist helping me, and I end up leaning on my parents for support instead when my life has been difficult and challenging for all these years.... I don't know that I am able to clearly communicate my feelings towards my family. It's really hard for me. And I need my family, because I need people supporting me in my life.... I have trouble knowing my emotions, understanding them, and voicing them. I am an HSP and so often I just berate myself for having so many emotions so often, and feel overwhelmed and want to give up at ever being able to understand them all. Also life gets in the way and I have to earn a living, which requires numbing out a lot...
I will ponder that Viktor Frankl quote....
Maybe I need to accept who I am....
@SoftForestHSP77
1. To manage painful emotional experiences, I do the following: Get on 7cups and write in my trauma diary. Text or call my mom or dad to talk. Go for a run or exercise. Get on social media and look at other peoples' lives to distract.
2. Have I been triggered lately? Yes.
3. Are there signs I might become triggered? Sometimes I can recognize patterns -- like if I meet a new individual who has many external characteristics in common with someone who hurt me in the past, I predict that it will be extremely likely to trigger me sooner or later, whenever my defenses are down.
@SoftForestHSP77
1.What do you do to manage painful emotional experiences?
dissociate, eat, hide, hurt, trying to change these to better like grounding and healthy distractions but hard
2. Have you been triggered lately? now abit, lots earlier
3. Are there signs you might become triggered?
dizzy, nausea headache, panic, foggy, dissociate, forget to breathe, rapid switching, extreme negativity and self hate