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Trigger?

  • Post starter Post starter Deleted member 27340
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Deleted member 27340

So, there are two things I'm not entirely sure whether are triggers or just me not liking them in a normal way.

The first one is a language. It's not even entirely a language, it's just one of the two written versions of Norwegian. I'll call the one that may be a trigger NN, and the one I normally use BM. I used NN daily and in school during the 8 years I lived with my mother. I was always able to write BM, but I never used it. During those 8 years with my mother most/all of my traumas happened. After I left my mother to live with my dad instead, I had about one and a half year of school where I used BM only. Now I've reached a level in school where it's mandatory to learn both NN and BM. I know NN, so it's not hard, but I never get around doing my NN homeworks and can't make myself pay attention during the classes. BM works just fine, so does English and Spanish. Languages are not really a challenge.
Could NN, the whole language itself, be a trigger? Or am I just simply hating it, just like most other students?

The second isn't one thing in particular, but a variety of different foods I simply can't eat, or can't eat in a certain way. One of them is some kind of sauce my grandmother made yesterday. The taste was fine, but I just couldn't eat it or look at it or anything. I freaked out inside, it was a disgusting consistency. Same goes for other stuff of the same/similar consistency, I just can't eat it. I'll panic and find the first and fastest way to get it out, I'll spit it out in the napkin or chug loads of water to get it down as fast as possible (not exactly a safe thing to do when you can't really think clear).
Is this just extreme reactions to not liking a food or triggers?
 
To me a trigger is something that activates my limbic system instantly putting me into fight, flight or freeze. Once I'm in this heightened state I am not paying attention, or I am numb.
Children prefer to use the language they were loved in. This is proven. WEre your parents using NN or BN when you were a baby? I mean this to suggest that if you were being abused in a language that would pose a problem for you.
As for the food. Well if you have PTSD you are super sensitive to smells and textures. You smell or feel something you don't like could just be your personal preference.
 
That's what I consider a trigger too, or something that is just about to throw me into that state (because I've become better at grounding quickly).
I prefer to use English in most cases. English is my second language. My parents were using their dialects (NN and BM are written, spoken Norwegian consists of about 2000 dialects). They divorced when I was 4, I ended up living with my mother. She wrote NN, and her dialect was closer to NN. My dad's dialect is closer to BM, but he's cool. Home abuse came from my mother during the years I lived with her. So yeah, I guess you could say I was abused in NN and a certain dialect.
Then I'll hope the food think is just me being a little picky :)

Thanks
 
Some English regional accents stress me. I'm avoiding a narcissist at the moment, but in the area that I'm staying with friends, I keep hearing people with the narcissist's accent, and it gives me the creeps.

Custard, still stresses me - the only thing I could ever link to my being dragged to the school headmaster - being left to sweat for what seemed like hours outside his office, in the strong sharp, smell of the chemicals that were used in the mechanical copying machines from before the days of photocopiers, and the stale cigarette smoke, then I got shouted at by a big man and threatened with a cane...
- was having eaten custard. It never bloody failled. There was no consistent pattern that I could find in anything else.

A friend's lovely old mum (she's about 80 now), kindly fed me a few days ago, and she put custard on the apple pie. I know now that there's no rational reason to fear custard, and I ate it without saying anything, but I still felt very uncomfortable doing it.

Those copiers have been obsolete for decades now, but I bet if I smelled the chemicals again, I'd get a lump in my throat, my mouth would go dry and the blood would drain from my face...
 
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