Even when you feel like you’ve done all you can do, you understand your patterns and you've processed your emotions and you’ve spoken your truth, some things are still going to get to you. Triggers can come from anything, and come in the form of a lot of the scaries that we’ve already talked about. There is no one way to be triggered, and there doesn't have to be a perfect explanation for what does trigger you; even if it is seemingly insignificant, it’s important to understand anything that makes you upset.
Some of the experiences that I’m sure I share with a lot of you is the difficulty of looking at pictures, recalling moments, and having items from your abuser. I tend to be sentimental even when relationships end and I like to hold on to things for the sake of memories, but this time I got rid of everything; I donated clothes, threw away gifts, cut up Polaroids, and deleted every picture I had. Seeing anything that brought back a memory, or even having a memory occur on its own was so painful for me. I would immediately panic and feel like I was trapped in that moment, despite trying to push it out of my head. Any time I think of that period in my life it still seems to have the same effect on me.
Those same feelings come from being in the same places and driving the same routes. They come from hearing certain songs and seeing certain haircuts or types of shoes. My honest solution for all those things is I avoid them. I don’t want to make it seem like everything I tell you is perfect and tied up with a little bow, and I most certainly do not have all the answers. Triggers are hard to deal with, and I don’t have any answers as to how to make them any less frequent or upsetting. They’re unfortunately just something that comes with the territory of what we’ve been through. The only thing I can really say is that you come to know yourself; you see situations that hurt you and you learn that those aren't places you want to be, regardless of if they’re mental or physical. The power is in your hands now; you know what you want, what you need, what you like, and what you don’t.
I think that this newfound awareness of all the things that relationship made me hate made it easier for me to stick up for myself and ask for what I wanted in my new relationship. I wasn't going to allow myself to re-live any of those experiences, so I started being more honest about things that upset me. In understanding everything that makes you feel uncomfortable, comes the ability to control and prohibit those feelings. Triggers may be inevitable, but letting them control us isn't.
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