I never sat down to write a list of my triggers, I have always been afraid that it would make them too blunt (makes sense?).... I have studied my migraine triggers and I know that understanding helped me, so I am taking a step here...
Some triggers make me react differently. Some make me feel like a cornered fox...I become ultra aware of my small frame and disadvantaged position and I get desperate. Some triggers conjured up an ancient feeling sort of challenge to my honor and make me push my chin out and take risks I probably should not take, as in responding to a challenge with "oh yeah...you and what army?.... " Some make me feel like fleeing and being unable to makes me feel like I am drowning. Some send me into isolation mode. There might be others, or I might be wrong, this being my first try....
-Cornered Fox: Men, even my husband, getting really close to my face. Men hitting things or swearing harsh with angry faces.
Feeling faint when ill. Fainting in public is a huge fear. Even my grandmother said I suffer like birds...I go into hiding.
Strangers making comments about my body. People commenting on my eating or not (Food was withheld so often as punishment, I was in hospital 6 times with dehydration and malnutrition). I often eat best when I am alone. As soon as I notice people watching me eat my appetite dies.
-Desperate: Being close to running out of money or gas in the car, makes me feel trapped and in danger.
Not being able to get anything right. Like when I bring an issue that needs care up to my husband and he goes in self defense mode. No matter how I bridge it, I can't get through, feel set up...then trapped...doomed.
Making mistakes (Others mistakes seem forgivable... why are mine so damming? They seem to erase all my good). Breaking or damaging other's stuff (I do not drive my husbands anything nor do I touch anything I can help not touching. I rather go without than borrowing. I know the potential consequences)
- Honor Challenged..Put them Up: Men looking at my teen daughter in "that way". My husband getting really tall over me.
People telling me I am unwanted (I disappear from their lives and never come back..ever). In one case a man told me he would find me wherever I went...so I moved countries two hours later. It was not one of my fear-runs..it was more of a "wanna bet?"
- Fleeing: People horse playing. People that think that jumping up and scaring me is funny. Arguments, Harshness, Not having access to a means of escape (such as my car, being literally cornered, ...)
- Isolation: When it smells Catholic (sorry..not sure how to make this make sense to others). Migraines (the memory of what mom used to say to me when I had them). Being to tired to put up a fight, I isolate.
There is a kind of thing I cannot name, when I am ironing, using boiling water, fire, really really hungry, crowds: I feel panic rise. But my family, I think, know this, so they (mostly my daughter) know to just leave me to it. When my husband thinks it is funny to test me at this times (like playing by hot things) I feel like starting to scream and never stopping till I die from it somehow, but sadly, I can yell and talk loud to puff up so I look bigger, but I cannot scream out loud. Never could, and the abuse from my mother was always harsher but sunk me deeper in silence, which made her hurt me more, but by then I had left my body and just waited for it to be safe so I could go back down to that little girl and try to help her get outside, away from home, in the wild...where it was safe.
