Triggers can be anything, but they are something which makes you relive your traumatic experience. For some peoples they can be specific smells or sounds which occurred during the event. However other situations like if your trauma occurred in a small room you might then avoid them in the future as that could be triggering. But also, say if you were in a car crash, going back into a car may trigger that memory and make you relive it therefore being in a car can become very distressing.
As triggers can be anything, I am going to discuss my personal triggers, and how they affect and/or affected my life.
After my initial rape in December 2017, I avoided my bed, because being on it, in it etc. at first just made me uncomfortable and unsafe, because in the first month I could piece my memories together to actually realise what happened to me. I knew something was wrong due to the feelings towards my bed. Once I realised and started to process my experience, every time I laid in that bed I relived my experience. I no longer suffer from this trigger due to the fact I moved away as soon as could. But because of this, I got very little sleep, which was incredibly difficult because of my work schedule of being a chef.
The main trigger I still have today, which has mainly come from my experience with domestic and ongoing sexual abuse, is unsolicited touch. If someone I don’t know, or especially if I don’t trust touches me, even if it isn’t meant to be harmful, I jump away from the touch and I relieve the experience of different times of unsolicited touch, especially in an unwanted sexual way from my abusive relationship. But also if anyone touches me around the neck I get triggered very easily. But this also continues to when I am upset, nearly anyone’s touch can trigger me because my emotional state is already in the same condition as it was in those time. I have been triggered from people at work and even my brother.
Similarly tv shows, not necessarily watching them, but the noise they produce, specifically family guy, as it was the tv show my abusive ex put on every night to go to sleep and it was on many times when traumatic experiences occurred.
There will probably be others, when I hear the name Adam, sometimes I experience the feeling of like maybe he is around, but that normally quickly dissipates. I had to get rid of any connection of him and my previous ex, Sjur, off all social media because any mention, photograph I found very triggering. Sometimes people something that reminds me of them, and my experience and that can be triggering. I still get triggered by several things and they come out of the blue at random times. I have found in general the discussion going on after Sarah Everard’s death being quite triggering and I can only digest it in small chunks. Sometimes I go months without being triggered and then one little thing throws me back into that time. Not that long ago, I was at work, and a guy walk past, and I immediately thought it was Adam, I quickly calmed my self down, but it was like I had the entire 6 months flash before my eyes, and those deep emotions of fear brought up, that I wanted to run and hide. Due to my naturally logical self, I was able to calm myself down, because even though they looked similar it probably wasn’t there, why would he be in the City of London, had too expensive shoes on. Those little details really helped grounded myself. But I also talked through the situation of what would have happened if it was him and if he spotted me and how I would deal with it. And realising no-matter what it would be okay. I was okay.
However, I dealt with a lot of nightmares when it feel happened, nearly every night, I would wake up, sweating and terrified and that was really hard to go through the day with those memories haunting me at night. I still have nightmares frequently, and I haven’t identified a trigger, however I have them around 2-3 times a month.
Nightmares for me are more in depth than triggered flashbacks. For me flashbacks are normally quite short, and normally are a feeling of intense emotion from a memory, with little snippets of visual memories. Where nightmares, I experience the whole ordeal again, and I feel even more trapped than before, like all my emotions are on overdrive, but also it brings the memory back really fresh, when it could feel like it was fading for a while. I think it is my minds way of stopping me from dissociating, and forgetting what happened, like it is telling me, remember this, it might save you one day. Which heavily relates to the research I did on how memories formulate during traumatic events.