Secondary Triggers

[sun seeker]

I chose instead to see it as him being a bare assed coward who went retreating down the driveway because he couldn't beat a 'woman'. lol. Makes me laugh still.

If I understand what you're saying here, it's triumph over the trigger by finding how you are stronger than it is, in this case to the point of being being able to laugh at it. Am I getting this right? I'm stumped thinking about how to do this with a few specific triggers of mine, but I'll keep thinking.

This again reminds me of something from Harry Potter: the lesson on boggarts. J.K. Rowling is a genius.

 

[shimmerz]

Yes. Looking for the empowerment (which can be hard at times) or the love or the laughter. Laughter is always a great way to overlay a trauma feeling because there is a physical component to laughter (you hear it you feel it, your body does it physiologically). It just takes one time to break the connection. Just once. And it is magic when it happens.

 

[Sandstone]

Yes, I experience it. For instance, I have a trauma that involved waiting outside a rail station, but since I saw a man a bit like X waiting at a bus stop, I'm having problems with Bus stops as well as stations.

I read something about Conditioning that seems to explain it

"The patient can be intruded upon by a ... traumatic memory. Theoretically, this intrusion constitutes a classical conditioning process since it exposes ...traumatic memory that involves inherently aversive ... sensations, affects….. Thus, traumatic memories constitute aversive unconditioned stimuli. As a result, stimuli that .. preceded or refer to the (trauma) can become conditioned stimuli .... The consequence of these types of associative learning is that Conditioned Stimuli which signaled the reactivation of the traumatic memory, or that refer to it, will tend to re-evoke the traumatic memory, as well as responses that are similar to the ones that the original trauma elicited. ... When the patient….has learned these associations, he or she will try to avoid, or escape from, the Conditioned Stimuli that reactivate the traumatic memory "

adapted from http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/nijenhuis-2004.php

 

[LadyUndomiel]

I just did a search because I was wondering if this was a thing. Sadly I was triggered on my birthday the past two years, unfortunately by the same person. So now I'm dreading my birthday next year. This person told me he's not going to do it again but I think why the hell not? It's happened twice already so why not a third time? But he seems to have a better idea of what was actually happening now, he figured out I was in so much pain that I wanted to die. My birthday's not until May next year but depending how I'm doing by then I may need to initiate a "conversation" of sorts ahead of time...