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Difference Between Being Triggered And Dissociating?

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PreciousChild

MyPTSD Pro
I suddenly became confused between being triggered and dissociating. I saw Love, Actually again the other night. I loved the movie, but I was triggered or something. I've been irritable with my son. I think it's that I never got love, but give him lots of it. I was and am having what the author of Healing Developmental Trauma calls "protest behaviors" (aka getting mad and calling out for my need to be met). When I sat down tonight to write out my thoughts, I could tap into what was triggering me and I felt this huge sadness for myself. I realized how I have never actually been shown love, not even by the man I married (now divorced). I was writing how as the lack of food makes a body perish, does the lack of love make anything perish inside? Will I always be capable of love or have I lost it? These thoughts were part of what was triggered and I cried a lot.

But then I came to the insight that the lack of love also probably left me feeling like it was my fault. That I was not loved because I was unlovable. Then, all feelings left me. This is dissocation, I suppose. Or is it? I always thought the experience of dissociation came with a background of intense emotions. I thought that the dissociation part of it was that I wasn't able to articulate what that feeling was - that it remained the "nameless dread". But what I observed in myself tonight is different. I was thinking back to all the years when I was probably hiding this deep dark secret that I am unloveable. Intellectually, I understand that it's a painful thought, but I'm not feeling it.

I remembered a section of Body Keeps the Score when the brains of a husband and wife are scanned during their episodes of ptsd. They had the same traumatic event - a car accident in which they heard a little girl burning to death above them, but they couldn't get out of their own damaged car to help her. The husband's brain became highly reactive during these episodes, signified by dark patches every where. The wife's brain became completely white. It was startling. It's dawning on me that it's not so much the intense emotions that speak my truth because these things are available to me. It's the things that I have no reaction to at all. Or not? If my mind goes completely white, and my secret self goes completely under cover, how am I supposed to recover it?
 
There seems to be a lot going on in your above post (which I view as a good thing--there's a lot of gears turning and work being met :)), but I will attempt to answer your title question about the difference between being triggered and dissociating.

I think people experience dissociation differently, but I definitely think of it as a "blankness," an "absence," a numbness... sometimes I think of it as "the veil" or like emotionally (and sometimes physically) under water--everything is muted, muffled, or blank/black. I often see/hear it described as "checking out," which is very accurate to my experience.

I think of being triggered as experiencing something that is directly related to my trauma and "brings me back" to the time of trauma. I lose my sense of presence in the current moment and feel as if I am back in a traumatic moment.

I hope that helps some!
 
I don't recall any discussions before about the difference between triggering and disassociation... or articles.
The only one I found was Anthony's article on Triggers v.s. Stressors (link: https://www.myptsd.com/threads/stressor-vs-trigger-what-is-a-trigger.13912/ ) but I'll think on it and see if I can articulate it. Honestly I'm not sure I understand it or can discern it very well myself.

But as far as the last bit, "I remembered a section of Body Keeps the Score when the brains of a husband and wife are scanned during their episodes of PTSD. They had the same traumatic event - a car accident in which they heard a little girl burning to death above them, but they couldn't get out of their own damaged car to help her. The husband's brain became highly reactive during these episodes, signified by dark patches every where. The wife's brain became completely white. It was startling. It's dawning on me that it's not so much the intense emotions that speak my truth because these things are available to me. It's the things that I have no reaction to at all. Or not? If my mind goes completely white, and my secret self goes completely under cover, how am I supposed to recover it?" I think it's a really sketchy conjecture that your brain goes completely "white"... though the issue really is the question of how to recover?

I think I'd unpack/self examine more "But then I came to the insight that the lack of love also probably left me feeling like it was my fault. That I was not loved because I was unlovable."
 
Hmmm... doubled back to add, that in either case (triggering or disassociating) two of the tools I learned to use was pausing for 60-90 seconds to see if my brain will kick in and grounding. Took a cursory look around but didn't find an article on this... so good topic. Think this could be hashed through a bit more for most everyone's benefit.
 
Yeah maybe... in my mind a trigger is the activating event (sight, sound, smell, situation, touch... etc) and disassociation is the response to said event... the default way a person with disassociative tendencies or DID reacts. But I'm not diagnosed DID... though I do have disassociative tendencies so am not so well versed on the topic.
 
Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. I'm still reflecting about the meaning of all feelings leaving me at the moment I had the thought that I "probably" was left feeling unloveable as though it were an abstract idea. Why didn't I feel the pain of it the way I felt the pain at the thought of my parents not loving me? I think that one possible answer is that it's easy to point a finger at them who caused me pain, but I'm finding it harder to accept that there's something wrong with me on the inside. So yes, I totally agree with you, Albatross when you say

I think I'd unpack/self examine more "But then I came to the insight that the lack of love also probably left me feeling like it was my fault. That I was not loved because I was unlovable."

I had a few comments and questions about these:

I think people experience dissociation differently, but I definitely think of it as a "blankness," an "absence," a numbness... sometimes I think of it as "the veil" or like emotionally (and sometimes physically) under water--everything is muted, muffled, or blank/black. I often see/hear it described as "checking out," which is very accurate to my experience.

I think of being triggered as experiencing something that is directly related to my trauma and "brings me back" to the time of trauma. I lose my sense of presence in the current moment and feel as if I am back in a traumatic mome

So, Simply Simon, I hear you saying that dissociation is like an ongoing mental condition that has an indirect connection to trauma and being triggered is a mental state more directly related back to the trauma that is more momentary. Did I get that right? In my recent experience, at the moment when "the feelings left me", I wasn't feeling particularly foggy. Though when I was deep in a depersonalized state in college, I felt like that all the time. My recent experience was eerie because I really felt absolutely nothing. Except that I know it was something because just one second before I was feeling extreme distress. Does this sound like dissociating?

This sounds right:

Wouldn't "dissociation" be a response to a "trigger"? It's the brain's attempt to find "safety" by kind of "leaving" the situation? The "trigger" signals some sort of danger (accurately or not) and the dissociation it the response?

What was scary to me was how completely blank I was. And I'm wondering if I'm just not reading into it. I've had moments in the therapy office when my eyes roll back and I touch the sides of my head as though I had a headache, and I was starting to think that was a sign of dissociating. But there were definitely emotions there, however much I wanted to escape from them. Is it possible that I could be dissociating to such an extent that I don't even feel any trace of it? I thought I was a self-aware person, but this brings me to a whole new level of denial.

Albatross, do you really think that the completely white brain is implausible? Van der Kolk seems highly knowledgeable and respected.

That sounds about right too, Fridayjones:

Disassociation is one of the possible reactions. (As are flashbacks, panic attacks, fight/flight, etc.).

Thanks again so much for taking the time to respond to my thread. This is so helpful to my process of figuring out what's going on with me.
 
Actually, I was somewhat indisposed when I was typing a response yesterday, and @scout86 and @FridayJones very succinctly summarized what the end game of my response was going to be, which is that a trigger (or a stressor) is something that prompts a symptomatic reaction, whereas dissociation is a symptomatic reaction. :)

For instance, when triggered, I may react by flashing back, dissociating, spiraling into depression, etc.

I don't think dissociation is necessarily always a foggy experience, although I personally experience a numb dissociation differently than I experience what I would call extreme emotional detachment. :cautious:
 
I just went to see my therapist and have an update. After discussing at length about how disturbed I was by the complete absence of any emotion at my thought of feeling unloveable, at the end I considered for a moment, however unlikely, whether the absence really was just an absence. She thought that that was the most plausible explanation, given other things I've been saying, which sounded positive to her. So here I am trying to dig up and generate the emotions behind the idea that I'm unloveable. But my therapist thinks that it's possible that the idea might have ceased to have power over me. But I'm so used to being messed up, that to me, the idea of not being messed up is so weird, I can't accept it. I was laughing about it all the way home.

It's true that I've worked really hard to explore myself since accepting the ptsd diagnosis. Maybe it's working? Today, I've been feeling a bit disoriented, but also a sense of some comforting nostalgia stirring somewhere in me.

I'm not yet decided what this is all about, but I do think my therapist might be on to something.

Thanks Simply simon and Albatross for responding. Do either of you think it's possible to have no emotion at all in a dissociative state? I mean, I really didn't feel any dread, emotion, or energy "knocking at the door" of my awareness at all.
 
Sounds a bit more like depersonalization than disassociation to me but hard to say. Just cuz of all the thoughts/thinking that went before the episode.. depersonalization is like a side step or sorts. One of the definitions of depersonalization is "to make impersonal"... however that being said, when I've had dissociative states, physically pain induced or triggering yeah they tend to be objective and without emotion.

I think I'd roll with this, "my therapist thinks that it's possible that the idea might have ceased to have power over me. But I'm so used to being messed up, that to me, the idea of not being messed up is so weird"... I've gone through that myself and part of my recovery process I'd just call "chronically uncomfortable" cuz when I'd break out of the pattern it felt weird and strange and uncomfortable.
 
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