No Such Thing (As a "Weird" Trigger)
This is something that I've seen people talk about over the years of my healing journey is that others (and myself) feel bad for having 'weird' triggers. One thing I've come to realize is there's no such thing as a 'weird' trigger. It might seem odd or even harmless to someone on the outside but it still relates to something very real and painful to you.
Some I've noticed for myself are:
Highlighting word searches (when in the ER for suicide evaluations I was allowed my word search book but no pens or pencils so they gave me a highlighter to use. I can only use highlighters on my word searches under those circumstances)
The phrase "life's a b***h/life sucks and then you die" was used by my abuser a LOT. It's unfortunately a common sentiment and a phrase used pretty liberally by the older generations.
Feel free to add your stories as well
(Edited by Teen Forum Star @Emily619 for language)
People smiling, small sky blue rectangles, tortilla chips, Forrest Gump (and all songs from it), raw spaghetti, really white teeth, recliners, quadruplets, silence, loud laughing, chewing food, the sound of pencil on paper, talking in person after 9pm, seeing anyone who knew me before , filling out forms/ paperwork where the letters go in individual boxes, I could go on... I dont believe there is such a thing as a weird trigger. I have so many and each new one is a tiny piece of the puzzle helping me regain control and sanity. Triggers are suffering that teaches.
Hello, how is everyone here doing? Not sure if I'm necroposting but here goes.
Recently I was sexually assaulted and I have mostly numbed myself to the incident until an even more recent online harrassment (stalking) situation escalated - funnily enough on 7Cups chat. I live in a police state and we don't really have privacy here - it is a tradeoff for relative safety so yes, the person who harmed me physically was caught. This is a first for me to feel that there is justice since a bunch of things also happened when I was a child and in my youth, and later with an NPD lover who caused my first broken metatarsal.
Due to the backward religious family culture I'm in, though, the victims get blamed for being assaulted and the abusers are excused for doing what boys do. My own parents were and still are especially toxic to me as they blamed me and the way I dress, etc. I am a bit of a tomboy and usually find myself having interest in things that women from my generation don't really care about so most of the time I find myself as being one of the guys. Even my workplaces are mostly all-male work environments. I bro-zone all of them quickly and insist that hey, I am a boy too to ensure that no one gets too close me. Men were the ones who assaulted me, but maybe if I am a man, just like them, I would be invisible and not get hurt. The women closest to me were the ones who made me feel ashamed for having a body so they can't be trusted either. My mom and aunts (and even this particularly religious teacher I had in my secular high school) used to berate and take jibes at me for not covering it all up, and wearing a bra like other women (I get gender dysphoria at times, so I hate all these reminders of misplaced body parts.) Some counsellors and doctors here can be condescending and at the same time they can't really guarantee privacy and confidentiality especially if one speak publicly about how the cultural system is not working for them - as I mentioned, panopticonian police state - so I am very selective about the people I can truly trust.
And as such adult people from my ethnic and national culture, and all those men who have made explicitly expressed unwanted sexual advances or worse, who have actually physically assaulted me or even disrespected themselves by flashing and cyberflashing, etc, become my trigger. These people with these likenesses and these behavious and mannerisms have traumatized me before and I have developed a form of allergy around the especially backwardly conservative ones - unless of course I protect myself with the gloves and mask of feigned interest and polite niceties, which kills me just a little bit more inside with each interaction, because, holy giddens! this feels like self-racism and unhelpful bias to my progressive sensibilities.
However, we have to come back to this very basic biological premise of the self-protecting human organism. My father once told me about a serious bout of food poisoning that he had when eating shellfish he had collected with his friends from a quite polluted beach. Dad grew up very, very, poor and food was scarce so they would eat everything the family could salvage - even food from the trash of 'white people'. My late grandfather was a garbage collector. As such, shellfish, even ones from not so pristine beaches, were a delicacy. And oh boy did he enjoy those - until the wretching and vomitting and diarrhea that comes after. It was a serious one but they couldn't afford to go for the standard western medical treatment with an IV drip and so on and so forth so he ended up in bed for days on end with traditional and over the counter medicine. Some time later, his grandmother cooked a shellfish dish that he liked but instead of excitement, his immediate reaction was that of revulsion. We all have a simple, little Pavlov dog somewhere in our primitive human brain, and I know my complexly traumatized one can't deal with further exposure to certain people who have abused and rendered me powerless and in extreme physical and emotional pain throughout my life.
Maybe one day I will overcome it, but as of now due to unavoidable life circumstances, I am back to living in the same situation and culture and having to interact and still being harmed by some of the same people who had abused me, so there is no place of healing and repair for me now, just a kind of quiet surrender. Shikata ga nai. If I don't get out of this situation I don't know how much longer I can survive here.
