Emotional “triggers” have a unique purpose, and it’s NOT about desensitizing oneself as much as it is about emotionally healing issues that were brought forth by actions that triggered these inner issues within yourself. If you desensitize, you’re not doing your job of self-healing. One has to face themselves squarely, resolve what it was within themselves this trigger is bringing forth, and healing the issues within that lay behind each one.
For each major emotional event, there are lingering emotional “triggers”–also known as emotional “residue.” This includes left over feelings that were unresolved within a person experiencing these.
Emotional “triggers” are defined as past emotional “memories” brought forth to be relived by events that are just like or similar to an event lived/survived through at a prior time. Emotional “triggers” are also a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, and time is one factor that helps in healing, because time heals all wounds. God, if you have a relationship with Him, is the second factor. The third factor is your willingness to go through this process that leads into full emotional healing.
Once a full emotional healing takes place, your emotional past, becomes a “fact” that is simply remembered, rather than a “feeling” to be relived. I remember so many things that happened, and I remember how I felt–but to relive these? No, I relive nothing, because God wrought a full emotional healing within my psyche, and restored my emotional health to full.
I don’t remember everything that happened unless someone asks a pointed question. However, “forgetting” is one of those aspects or by-products of full emotional healing. The only aspect you don’t forget, is the lessons that you have learned from this experience. There is no purpose in pain, if you don’t learn the lessons set down before you. In order to reach full emotional healing, you must walk through this road of pain and emotional triggers–it is the only way to complete this process in full.
However, until that time of full emotional healing, a date, a time, a smell, a similar action, words spoken, certain feelings, and even seeing something(like a certain place), can “trigger” a emotional memories that are ‘relived’ causing one to experience feelings that are attached to past hurts.
When the mid-life spouse abandons the left-behind spouse, for example, this brings forth a past emotional trigger, but this trigger had been buried for a long period of time. All of our fears are based in childhood, on painful events that happened long ago.
An emotional trigger can also be described as a “ripping open” of a past wound. Until this is healed, it will continue to be ripped open over and over again.
A good example is the feelings that are experienced due to an affair. Even after the mid-life spouse returns, your feelings aren’t automatically “healed”–there is a process you go through that leads into this healing. You have to accept that this event happened, forgive in full, and only then healing will come forth within you.
It’s the same process, regardless of what kind of emotional event you may have experienced for yourself. These triggers are all tied into past issues that were triggered into existence, when you got hurt.
I’m long past these things, but I went through the same process–and it WAS the same process, whether I was facing my personal past issues, OR the issues my husband triggered, and then compounded by his actions during his mid-life crisis.
I had to examine each one, process each one, and look within myself to see where the actual root of my triggers were coming from–that was only the first step.
Then, I had to look at the actual event that happened, and process this, learning to accept what had happened, understanding that what was done, was NOT about me, it was about the person that did it against me. I had to give myself permission to feel the feelings, grieve the loss these feelings brought forth in within myself. As long as I refused to accept and even embrace what had happened, my triggers continued–because of what? FEAR that it might happen again, FEAR that I would never be happy again, and FEAR that things would never resolve.
FEAR is at the root of refusing to accept, and refusing to forgive. If you can’t accept, and forgive, you certainly cannot heal–and you’ll cycle continuously.
During this process, I had to understand that I could only accept, embrace, and learn to resolve my feelings, plus learn to understand that the person who did what they did against me, was truly broken. I also had to learn that not everything was automatically my fault, that I didn’t carry all of the responsibility for what had happened. Those aspects that were not mine, I laid at the feet of the Lord, and it was NOT easy to do.
For a long time, I experienced emotional triggers as I struggled through my own process of accepting, forgiving, and healing. This was a major part of my personal journey. There were so many aspects of each event that I had to work through, and resolve the emotional “triggers” that came, because I had suffered so much pain.
Also, coming into the understanding that not everything that was done was about me, but that it was about him–was also part of this process.
We even suffer emotional triggers when we witness something traumatic, like someone’s death, or a car wreck, things of that nature. If we are not at an emotional place of understanding that we didn’t “cause” these things to happen, we suffer emotional guilt that also leads into emotional triggering.
We don’t just come into mental understanding, there is an emotional understanding we must also come into, in order to heal within ourselves. We learn to relinquish power we do not have over what other people do, and we learn to detach from the actions of others that we might think are intended to hurt us, but will actually hurt the one who is doing these things.
Triggers are a kind of emotional guilt, too–carrying the thinking that we could have done something to prevent a major event from happening. As a result, we carry a kind of residual guilt that leads into an emotional “trigger,” but, we’re hurting ourselves when we think and feel this way.
A lot of inner Self-sorting must be done to get at the actual source of our emotional memories that keep causing us to emotionally “trigger” every time we see a reminder of a negative experience that brings back a bad emotional memory.
It all takes time to get to a point where you won’t trigger anymore, and it’s truly a process that won’t complete overnight, nor in a week. For some people, it takes years to heal. Each person is different.
One other thing–when you’ve gone through this type of process, know what it’s about, learned the lessons, other traumatic events in the future are less likely to cause you to suffer “aftershocks” that would lead into experiencing emotional triggering. This is partly because you’ve resolved your inner issues, and partly because you will know right then to sort it out for yourself, so you won’t trigger going forward.
My traumatic experiences that came later, didn’t end with his mid-life crisis. I realize this is hard to understand, but life is filled with such events. The only difference I experienced, was in my ability to handle things that happened that could have led into bouts of emotional “triggering,” but didn’t, because I knew what I needed to do for myself.
I see a lot of pain and suffering, and it doesn’t cause triggers in me. I must be the Queen of Processing pain and suffering, because I keep myself in a place of healing. Real life has contained many nasty surprises for me, but I handle them, and process them into a place of the past. A good example was an incident that occurred when I working as a professional truck driver. I drove an eighteen wheeler for ten years, saw my share of near-misses, and part of my training was to “always expected the unexpected.” If and when the unexpected happened, respond as safely as possible, and try to ensure that no one was hurt.
I was driving through Toledo, Ohio, with a load bound for Michigan, when out of nowhere, a huge rock dropped from a railroad overpass, striking my driver’s side windshield. It bounced, sprayed glass in my face, my chest, my lap, my floorboard, and took out my left mirror. God was with me, because if He hadn’t been, the rock would have come on through, broken my steering wheel, my hands, and hurt me badly, if not killed me.
Thank God no one was in the left lane. Though I reacted in terror, and tears, I held my lane, checked for traffic, changed lanes, pulled over onto the shoulder, and called 911. No one got hurt besides me, and I didn’t lose control of my truck.
My son said later that in his eyes it was attempted murder. However, had those kids been caught, they would have been charged with criminal mischief. But that’s another story.
I not only dealt with the police, the people they sent to make sure I was OK, (who picked the pieces of glass from my face, etc.), I went on, delivered my load on time. In a couple of days, I replaced my windshield, and kept on trucking. No, they never caught the two kids who did it.
Thank God my little buddy Bandit was in the sleeper. Had he been in the floorboard, (which was where I had kept him when he was a puppy), he would have been covered in glass, and probably blinded. Bless his little heart, he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t touch him until I delivered my load, found a place to park, thoroughly cleaned up the glass from my seat, and floorboard, got a shower and changed clothes.
Once I resolved the problems at hand, post-traumatic stress disorder caught up with me as I grew very paranoid, watched overpasses, had nightmares, etc., but the fact is, I didn’t stop driving. I faced this, and overcame it, plus the “triggers” that were associated with this event. It all took time, and it involved a process that only I could complete for myself.
This was a good example of post-traumatic stress disorder, involving emotional “triggers” that were suffered until I went through this entire process of acceptance, forgiveness, and healing within myself. Plus, I let time do its work.
One of the major trigger behaviors people often face, is the “What could have happened,” scenarios. Yes, many things COULD have happened, but the fact is, they did NOT happen. What happened, happened, and there was nothing I could do but learn to deal with the fallout of what had actually happened, be thankful it wasn’t any worse than it was, and leave it, along with what I could not control, at the foot of the cross.
In other words, in time, I resolved this, slid it all off of my back, my mind, my emotions, and went on with my life. It didn’t stop me from living my life forward for myself.
Though it’s not the same as an unwanted emotional bomb, the fact is, I didn’t have control over what happened that forced me down a road of decision that I was called upon to handle, and resolve for myself. On a side note, it cost me nearly 500 dollars to replace both windshield, and left mirror. However, money is money, and God met the need I had, when I needed it. 🙂
Do I trigger now? No. Through God, time, and this same process, I survived the experience, overcame and thrived, in spite of it all, and it’s what you want to do for yourself. However, you cannot skip any part of the process that will take you to this place of healing from emotional “triggers.” The only way out is THROUGH.
