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Why do I purposely trigger myself?

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The re enactment. It’s pleasurable. Plus I want to be punished.
I trigger myself on purpose for a lot of different reasons. The 3 most common are:

- I have a thing about repeating things, over and over, until I can get them “right”. AKA just a function of my personality :sneaky:
- Exposure Therapy / Chipping away at the trigger or stressor until it no longer evokes any kind of response. Physiological or mental/emotional.
- Consciously triggering myself because unconsciously I’m trying to work myself up/spin out/lose control. Not really any different from picking a fight, getting wasted, or any other unhealthy coping mechanism. WHY I’m tying to spin myself up? Also varies. A lot of the time it’s the whole rage trumps despair, thing. Other times I just want to feel justified in treating the people around me like shit, or blowing off something I really dont want to do, but don’t have the balls to just call it. Sometimes it’s for the distraction. Very often it’s because I need a break from my emotions, and ramping up high enough & hard enough is an easy way to have them just shut off. Sometimes I’m just avoiding sleep, or the opposite, needing desperately TO sleep, and banking on the adrenaline crash. As well as a not short list of other things.

Parsing out what benefits I’m reaping (cui bono?) from what I’m doing will let me both reverse engineer that shit... as well as give me a whoooole lot of better options, if I’m doing it as a f*cked up coping mechanism, rather than as a function of personality, or as a way to gain more control over my life.

Then, in my experience, that’s probably why... or at least a large part of why.
The re enactment. It’s pleasurable. Plus I want to be punished. I feel dumb this has been staring me in the face and maybe that’s dissociative blindness? Hope so. If I go in and talk about this with the therapist this week, I’ll get a star on my forehead. I like the blue ones. That’s not to say I’ll stop doing it. On whatever level, it’s working still. I’m always having big realizations.

Something happened to me yesterday that was or would have been a really bad trigger and afterward I thought, did I just walk right into that, or even cause it?

I don’t know the answer. But it didn’t bother me that much. I felt foolish for wanting to be triggered.
 
I found the house where it happened to me on Zillow. Because I searched up the address, it comes up on my email once a month with all 32 pictures. I take a tour, I look for more clues, proof that I have the memory right. Yup... I end up writing my T about it. In session she either says “I really wish you would stop doing that“ or asks if it’s “helping or hurting“—our mantra.” She knows I won’t stop, maybe the day I do is the day I know longer need therapy? I also, research scientific articles on memory, therapy, csa, rape... All of these trigger me, but I’m a huge “why?” person. I need to understand why. I’m starting to realize that there is no black and white answer here, but I keep trying.
I was looking for an answer to the 'why' so long. And in the end what really helped me was understanding that there is no good answer to that. Yeah purpetrators might have had shitty lives too. So? It certainly doesn't make me go around and hurt others, so why should it be a good reason for anyone else?
Look... We have so many options. If I'd ever feel like I'd do something that bad to someone... I could seek help or just run away and become a wood chopper. Like... Everything else!
No why will ever be a good one, because there is no good one. No answer will ever feel satisfactory.
 
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