Understanding PTSD- Part 2, Triggers
Everything finally feels normal. You are not thinking about the thing. The fear is gone, and you are enjoying life. Then you see the word, hear the sound, smell the thing and you are right back there again. It is hard to describe. Perhaps your mind goes blank, or maybe intense fear sets in. Either way, what you just experienced was a trigger.
In part 1 of Understanding PTSD, I wrote about what happens in the brain when trauma occurs. Triggers are one of the parting gifts that the trauma leaves behind after the "event" is over. This, of course, gets more complicated with complex PTSD, which is when you basically live with the lion that continually wants to eat you instead of having a single experience with it. A little more on that later (gonna do a whole blog piece on that one).
Remember I said that you are wired for survival? Well that is the reason the triggers are there. As horrible as they are, they are the little alarm bells that go off when your brain says "this is close to that thing that tried to hurt us before, remember? Let's do what we need to in order to stay safe". But here is the thing, recall when I talked about the parts of the brain that are affected by trauma. It is because your brain struggles with memory and higher thinking when the trauma occurred that it did not log the trigger as being a specific type of vehicle, driven by a specific person that brings the fear. Nope, it is simply the sound of diesel that makes you stop breathing. That is a trigger. It is a general thing that is connected to what threatened you before.
So, thankfully, there are ways to help with those triggers so that they do not impact you as often. These two are some long term ways to reduce the impact of the trigger:
If you are with a partner you trust, share those triggers with them so that you can get comfort and reassurance when they occur, making them less scary and the trigger less powerful.
You can also work to narrow the trigger from being so general to more specific, causing the trigger to happen less and less. (It is no longer just the sound of any diesel motor, but the sound of a diesel when connected to the specific person that caused the threat).
Second, it is helpful to have ways to deal with the trigger in the moment. When the trigger happens, what is occurring in your body is that it recognized something as a threat, and you are left with the message that the threat is still occurring (rapid heart rate, tension, heaviness….you know what it is). So you need to tell yourself that the threat is over, you escaped and have survived.
Physical activity- take a walk, jog, do jumping jacks…get the tension out
Give it a good scream or cry…get the tension and emotion out
Progressive muscle relaxation- take control of and release the tension in your muscles
Give yourself a massage or some other body care activity- show your body it is safe and can relax
There are things you can do to take the power from the trigger and heal. You got this!
