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People around here avoid their triggers. So if that music or video triggers you..... Avoid it. We have tons of things we avoid around here. For my "sufferer" and my own peace of mind. Good luck!
"So if that music or video triggers you..... Avoid it." The problem was I didn't know that it was going to trigger me. I think sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't (depending on what I happen to be thinking). I don't think it actually triggered me properly, in that it didn't give me the immediate heart-racing etc. that then lasts for hours and days on end that I usually get on being triggered (or usually begins two or three hours, sometimes first thing the following morning, after I have been around something I am then, at that point, aware has 'triggered' me). This one was more a case I felt I could not continue to watch the video/hear the song, within seconds of starting it up, perhaps for fear that it would, or could, trigger me. I certainly felt something bad though that made me not keep it on - not the language but the visuals (identical in both the 'explicit' and 'clean' versions and reminded me of when that song, its video, came on on the television in the leisure centre that was the cause of all my problems those years ago).
I'm at the stage when, after avoiding things for several years, I'm not sure if avoiding things is always the right approach. I think it potentially builds up likelihood of being triggered, perhaps then more heavily, when inevitably I then encounter something in a public place that triggers me that I was unable to avoid. There is something to be said for exposure therapy (done in the right way, that I don't know how, at the right time). The problem is that seeing the video triggers me (or did here - I didn't know it was going to do so or at least stop me watching). However, when I then can't watch things, or have to avoid certain public places in which triggers exist, or may or are likely to do so, I then get upset at not being able to watch the thing or upset at not visiting the place and at being unable to carry out normal life, so that triggers me too. So, I either get triggered if I watch the video or, if I don't, I then get triggered by that too. So either I am triggered or I am triggered. I just can't avoid and simultaneously not avoid the same thing, as have to avoid it triggers me in its own way too. So I am stuck in that and not able to 'win'. I don't think that avoiding things is always right. The problem is I want to be able not to do so. I don't want to avoid what is one of my favourite songs (at least at home and not in public places in which it makes me uncomfortable (or has done so)) - I just thought I'd put it on, not knowing what it was going to do, that I couldn't watch it - maybe I need to avoid the video and the audio alone, on my sound system instead of the internet website, would have been fine?
It's just that not being able to watch the video, after very few seconds of it starting, highlighted my own problems, nine years after the event, and led to me posting on here. I did have sort of quivers of my heart too that arose at times over the next three days after having it do that, so did, unknowingly, trigger myself a little. Whilst also having on other days since other things that have triggered me more and yet not getting me bothered enough to post about them (?!? - illogical emotions over that again) but I think that's because these other things are not the original trigger and I want to resolve the original trigger, which is this (which has been going on for over nine years). So the answer is to avoid the video. I think that's possibly building the problem up as I ought to be able to watch that video and I don't think it would trigger me on every time. I don't know - I haven't watched it much anyway and I think this was the first time in many years that I happened to go and watch it and found I couldn't. It was because I had the song in my head, from nowhere, and thought I'd go to watch it for the first time in many years. Then found the problem that I couldn't do so. The avoiding of it in a way is the problem. The advice is to continue the problem(?). Thanks for your help in any event - it's just me questioning things.