What Is Your Biggest ....?

[Snowflake]

What is your biggest, or most frequent trigger you experience in your day to day life and why?

 

[lostforgottensoul]

The only trigger ive identified is being told (or thinking someone's intention is to say) im bad, a horrible person, did wrong, did bad, etc and why is a bit obvious to me, that was the entire theme of my life; its why they told me was my role of the cult, it was why i was punished, etc. and its still the theme of my life...

These kind of questions make me sad for some reason. Makes me feel a bit hopeless, like its never gonna change...

 

[Snowflake]

The only trigger ive identified is being told (or thinking someone's intention is to say) im b...

I agree... This is my next area in therapy and I am nervous

 

[Jnean]

It seems I have different triggers all of the time lately. Just last night, in the dark, my night light turned off and I kept seeing shadows in the darkness in my room and I felt like a child again in a room I once had growing up for a few years. My worst triggers are body sensations. These are the worst. The one night I had felt like I was being raped from behind and all I could do was freeze and cry and pray for it to be over almost like it was happening again and I was young again

 

[Snowflake]

It seems I have different triggers all of the time lately. Just last night, in the dark, my night light tu...

Boy do I understand! I hate darkness...I have a light on in hallway and if it dims or goes off-I am frozen. Body sensations are often too.

Thanks for sharing

 

[lostforgottensoul]

@Snowflake i understand being nervous but its important to know what and why something triggers you and then follow it backwards to a moment in your past to work past it.

Identifying triggers is def important...and ive only got 1 ID'd, i may only have 1, i dunno.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

I hate darkness.

Me too, i never thought of that being a trigger but i fear. I have plenty of those!

 

[Virtues]

My biggest trigger is anywhere that my brain is over stimulated such as crowds or somewhere where there is multiple things going on at once (especially if my children are with me, because I fear for their safety more than anything). In Iraq we were not fighting a uniformed military. We were fighting men, women, and children; everyone was a threat. I can generally do a rapid threat assessment on anyone and determine if someone is or isn't a threat, but when there are too many people present (such as large crowds) or too much going on to distract me, that's when things get complicated and I tend to get triggered. I'm working on reconditioning my brain to not feel the need to do a threat assessment on every man, woman, and child I come in contact with, and I am getting better over time. My TBI also makes it difficult to concentrate when too much is going on at once.

 

[ladee]

Being put on the spot in public. Someone pontificating how I SHOULD be..... I freeze, go blank, don't remember getting home and have horrible headaches.... pretty sure from unleashed adrenaline..If it happens in private, I go with it... and say what I need to say. Have been on downward, yet see saw spiral for months now because of such a situation.... my guard was down... this hasn't happened in a very long time... makes me question if my 'healing' was real, to be thrown back this hard and having such a hard time regaining ground.

 

[mary1979]

Criticism
Being yelled at
Someone leaving or ignoring me

In the height of my ptsd pre treatment during my late teens when my triggers were at their worst

Being touched unexpectedly from behind (accidentally broke someone's nose for that)
Crowded places
Making phone calls to strangers for appointments and such (funnily enough I work in a call centre now)
Purple carpet
My parents or any mention of them
Any stress at all (my cup was overflowing then I guess)

 

[Ronin]

Something extremely common, subtle, and deeply dehumanizing.

Incidentally ties to multiple super funny trauma histories so yeah, some days I just want to punch a hole into something and f*ck off to another galaxy.

 

[Panda Bear]

Lights
Noise
Crowds
Touch
New, unfamiliar surroundings and people