Is it normal to feel triggered after creating boundaries?

[maybeiamabear]

So recently I told this girl that I had been seeing that I should stop talking to her because there is a huge mismatch with respect to how we feel towards each other. She was happy to have me around as a friend, I seek for more and I did not want her to start feeling pressurised because of that.

And neither did I want to continue hide my feelings or continue waiting for her to figure what she is seeking. So I know I made the right choice. It's healthy for both of us.

However, this pause - which had been brewing in background for a while became very intense. It ripped open my abandonment wound which I guess was already boiling and hurting. We shared a lot of intimate moments and in actions - she was there for me, we were together. But she kept pointing towards her confusion - how she was not sure about us.

And that started bothering me a lot.

She proposed that meeting IRL will help her resolve this but she continued to feel similarly.

And I feel awfully bad (my inner child does) - that despite it being so good, I had to pause and learn to value my own needs.

But I am only feeling shitty for my needs. For feeling so intensely. For feeling in love with her when she did not and I feel ashamed for my needs.

I know this is coming up from my relationship with my mother, how I always felt like I had to fulfill her needs and when I could not - I will feel ashamed of my own wants and limitations.

Despite being a beautiful human, I feel shit.

I tried writing ten things which I love about myself that helped me feel good but this trigger to abandonment feels so embarrasing - I showed her my vulnerable parts. She showed hers too but she did not love me. Like my parents don't.

Is what I feel a spillover of my trauma? How can I learn to manage it better?

 

[KayW]

In my experience of my life, it's normal for setting boundaries to trigger feelings related to trauma. But people have different experiences and what's normal for me might not be normal for someone else - likewise, what's normal for someone else, I might find difficult to understand because it's not normal for me.

Sometimes, I think looking for if it's normal to feel a certain way is linked to fears that something is wrong with us... In my case that is certainly linked to childhood trauma.

Therapy has helped me to be more gentle and accepting of my child part. I'm not able to comfort that part yet (I think that's the goal), but I accept that she has those feelings and that those feelings are okay to have.

 

[arfie]

Is what I feel a spillover of my trauma? How can I learn to manage it better?

inside my own skin, i believe this is conditioning. by the time i could walk, i had younger siblings to care for. i was somewhere between servant and disposable trash. i still feel like the source of all evil for having needs of my own. i remind myself often that this is a feeling, not a fact. the feeling still plagues me here in my senior years, but the reminders are settling in more easily, deeper and faster with each go-round. parts of it are a natural part of life. it is human need validation and reassurance every day of your natural life.

i opine that your learning process is well underway. be gentle with yourself and patient with the process.

on the subject of feeling triggered when setting boundaries, it is typically a trigger event which sets the need for a new boundary. i am typically already triggered when the need arises. it takes a while to come down off the adrenaline shot which accompanies a trigger event.

 

[Movingforward10]

I call it a "backlash" rather than a trigger. Doing something new, whether that is setting a boundary or behaving differently/more healthy, creates a "backlash". It's unfamiliar. It's unknown. And it creates confusion inside as a result.

The more you do it though, the easier it gets.

 

[hithere]

It's probably both spillover from your mother emotions, and just the loss of not seeing this person. I do believe with time ot will start to feel better.

I recently did some inner work of breaking emotional, physical, and spiritual bonds with my mother and other people that I had an unhealthy attachment to. Some of the folks werent bad, but the unhealthy aspects of the bond werent good. So broke off all unhealthy attachments and bonds, and blessed good attachments and bonds. I broke soul ties
and then bonded to my all loving higher power. It helped a great deal!