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Poll Trigger poll

  • Thread starter Deleted member 33052
  • Start date

Do you have many different triggers that send you straight to flight/fight/freeze?

  • Just one or two really big ones

    Votes: 21 33.9%
  • Damn near every sight, scent or sound sends me off

    Votes: 7 11.3%
  • Enough to guarantee that I'll be triggered a couple of times a day, easy

    Votes: 29 46.8%
  • You totally missed the mark

    Votes: 10 16.1%

  • Total voters
    62
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Deleted member 33052

I'm confused. Some people talk about having many triggers, and being set off constantly. I have only two: Being lied to by someone I feel I should trust, and either being bullied or seeing someone else being bullied.

There are tons of things that bring me back to my abuse, but they don't actually trigger me. Now, I can't figure out if that's because of the emdr, or maybe they never did. PTSD brain...sigh...
 
I'm with you, @Mal Content. As far as triggers go, especially extremely potent ones, I do not have that many. Definitely less of them after doing processing around them.

And I have a few that have the potential to escalate me, if I don't interrupt them. But I don't consider them the same as the ones I just can't get a handle on yet.

Trigger=massively overused word. Getting extremely upset is not being triggered. Getting kicked into a ptsd symptom-fest is being triggered.
 
I have about 5 or 6. Used to have more. Latley, it seems i can go almost an entire month without being triggered. Today I am having a hard time discerning if I was triggered or just hurt/stressor/grief/jealousy but it is taking a lot of effort to manage my symptoms, and I feel like if my concentration on thought management gets broken, I could easily become very symptomatic, so it is hard to say.

I do think confusion between triggers and stressors is a problem. Something I am thankful for this site in helping me discern this difference although the line between the two seems thin right now.
 
Blargh. I have a lot of triggers & stressors these days.

Once upon a time I had them down to just about nil. But new trauma drop kicked me back to go... Since I'd never sorted most of my trauma issues, just sorted the triggers & stressors. Leave the root cause? They're super happy to come back to play :wtf:

I generally spend a few hours a day working on a few of them.

ETA... I'm including stressors in this, because same reactions, different source. They're already at least one step removed, which is nice. Wet hair in a bike helmet is not wet hair in a real helmet. No matter how many flashbacks & panic attacks & rage storms/fight response it kicks off. Deliberately soaking my head before going on a bike ride? Let's me work on that stressor, so when it rains, it's already blunted from what it was... And I may want to bite someone, but I'm not puking my guts out on the side of the road, and I'm already on notice that I want to overreact... Which makes it a lot easier to control the o-1o response if it strikes out of the blue. :sneaky: Short leashes. The response may strike out of the blue, but *I* don't have to. Motherf*cking self control. Love. It. And everything that gives me an edge to having it.
 
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I have a ton of stressors that seem to make triggers more or less potent. But I have three 'body memory' type triggers - so not external but physical stuff that happens daily - that potentially sends me into collapse depending on my stress level at the moment. There are three other external triggers that can send me into collapse or freeze but always at least into flight.

Stressors on the other hand...omg there are so many. The degree to which I am affected depends on the overall day and how I'm doing in general but a lot of times, these mount up and then a trigger comes along and I'm useless for hours or days.
 
I realized I have one more trigger. It's the only one that puts me in to freeze response. When I'm out at night with my dogs, I get instantly triggered if I see the beam of a flashlight or hear voices or rustling in the woods. I'm not actually afraid of people (I mean, shit, I walk the dogs alone around midnight), but my body is terrified of exposure. It's bad enough that it determines my clothing choices at night. Dark, of course, so that if I see someone coming, I can be very still and I won't be seen. I stick to the shadows whenever possible, and I never use my flashlight unless I need to show someone that I'm nearby.

How have I never noticed that this is my worst trigger? Time to do some more emdr, I suppose.
 
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Blargh. I have a lot of triggers & stressors these days.

Once upon a time I had them down to just about...
I don't know what happened to you, Friday, but your post filled me with dread. I'm glad you're safe now.
 
I'm actually not really sure! I don't always do a check for potential triggers when I go suddenly anxious or dissociative (my bad!). There's only about 4 of 5 really big ones that I know for sure will set me off.

On the other hand, there's a lot of things that remind me of my abuse that are no longer distressing to me. Smell of meat pies? Yup, the little memory wants to take over, but I know what it is, what's happening, and I just diffuse a lot of those thoughts these days.

The only "triggers" that I still have that cause real distress are things that I don't experience very often, so I haven't bothered working through them.

There seems to be different approaches to the whole trigger thing: not just what the word means, but also what the person decides to do about it. A lot of the people in my trauma group seem to find it genuinely empowering to be able to say, "That's a trigger for me, so please don't." Personally I feel like my triggers, my issue, and I prefer to work through them so they just aren't a problem any more.
 
I'm actually not really sure! I don't always do a check for potential triggers when I go sudden...
So, when I'm triggered, I'm off before I even know what's happening. Thank the gods it's not often because I don't know how control myself for those first few seconds. And it's amazing how much trouble someone can cause in a few seconds... :(
 
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