Triggers??

[WillyKat]

Mine include:
- a reprimanding or scolding tone of voice
- criticism
- not being listened to, not understood, especially if it results from laziness or game playing
- being deceived or misled

 

[Walking Alone]

Slamming doors, any sudden loud noise sets me off into a survival mode of alertness and hypersensitivity. It has been witnessed by a few people I work with who give me this look like “Are you ok”? I then feel embarrassed and want to just get away yet the sensation stays with me for a long time until it finally drops all at once and I am exhausted.

 

[anthony]

A trigger is something sensory - touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight, or internal (emotion, memory, etc) that is a reminder of the trauma.

You should have stuck with the first part of that, stopping at the end of sensory. Internal, memory, etc, is not a trigger. A trigger is something sensory that triggers memory, emotion, etc, to occur. Recall, thought, so forth, are just that... they aren't triggers.

 

[Philippa]

I couldn't eat brown pears for 15 years because of an ex who was abusive emotionally to me.

Triggers set off an association with something that left you with traumatic memories. I've only recently been able to pick brown pears up at the markets and not be totally revolted. I think I am desensitized to them now...but I still won't buy them to eat.

People who don't believe me when I share a story of an abuse...that is a trigger for me because my father didn't believe me when I told him about a friend of his who tried to put his hand down my top one night.

Body smells that stick in my mind from a sexual assault years ago.

 

[Nebulustrix]

You should have stuck with the first part of that, stopping at the end of sensory. Internal, memory, etc, is not a trigger. A trigger is something sensory that triggers memory, emotion, etc, to occur. Recall, thought, so forth, are just that... they aren't triggers.

However, there are internal things that can be triggers. I've specifically been told by my therapist that an elevated heart rate (internal) is a trigger for me, as this explains my difficulty dealing with with workouts, other strenuous physical activities, or situations totally unrelated to my trauma in any way that frighten me or get my heartrate up (ex. I almost hit a deer a couple nights ago and had to pull over to get a panic attack under control).

Also - emotional and internal - feelings of arousal are a trigger for me.

Both of those are (technically) still sensory, but they deal with internal senses as opposed to external. I listed internal separately, because most do not realize there are internal senses. I realize though I should not have included memories. I was thinking of memories that can trigger responses, but there would first be something that triggered the memory. So yes, I should have stopped at sensory, BUT - sensory does include internal senses.

 

[anthony]

An elevated heart rate is the sense of touch, even sound if you can hear it within your ears, even though nobody else can hear it. Touch can be a breeze against your skin, warmth of air, which activate further senses to occur that may not be present to another. You can read the science online for yourself about sense. People think literal, but our senses are far beyond literal. If you see it in your mind, it is sight, as eyesight is a replication of what our brain interprets. You get the idea...

It all falls under one of our five senses. If you believe in the sixth sense, which isn't scientifically proven, then you could add that if you wish.