Triggers CAN make you angry.
I’ve seen a lot of posts saying what triggers do and do not do, and many times, I’ve seen it written that triggers do not make you angry, that they’re more likely to cause strong anxiety, panic, numbness, etc.
But coming from someone whose triggers invoke a gut-wrenching fury: Triggers CAN make you angry. They can remind you of the unfairness, trauma, and hurt of the past, and a normal human reaction to things like that is anger.
It’s not wrong for triggers to make you angry, and you’re not in the wrong for feeling it. Anger is an emotion that rarely gets addressed in relation to trauma, and I think that needs to change.
Your anger in response to triggers is valid.
-Parsifal
Tag: trauma
the amount of
social stigma abused kids have to struggle with is just unreal. I’ve been
hearing it from day one that anyone who dares to be openly hurt
is only looking for attention.I’ve been seeing
trauma victims stereotyped as oversensitive, needy, trouble and attention
seeking, accused of imagining things, and they’re always portrayed as a burden
on society and publicly shamed for whatever they’ve gone thru. Any kind of
pain or discomfort in children no matter how high, apparently needs to be dealt
with as a personal problem and should be kept well away from society who just
doesn’t wanna deal with such nonsense.I’ve seen children
who tried to tell the society about abuse only to be shamed, punished and
humiliated because “they should have known better” and “they
should have taken it better” and “they should just get over
themselves”. Even the notion that their life matters and their pain means
something and that trauma is devastating their life is looked upon as them
being “immature” and “self centered”.Thanks to all
this one big part of being abused and traumatized is the added guilt for
needing attention, for needing comfort and reassurance. Survivors are forced to
feel selfish and miserable for even considering that it should matter if
they’re in pain, that their struggle is important enough to talk about it out
loud. We’re told that we’re pathetic and stupid for even thinking we matter, not only by abusers, but by counselors, therapists, media, television, our peers and society at large. How are we supposed to fight it? How are we supposed to heal? How come there’s no path for us to walk on, and the world acts like it would be better if we didn’t exist? We never asked for this. And we don’t deserve it.All of this, all of the stigma, shaming, apathy and hatred should fall on abusers. Not. Victims.
This is why victims and survivors are afraid to talk about their abuse. And then people ask them why they kept it a secret and didn’t talk about it sooner. It’s hard to know who is safe to talk to and who won’t judge or shame you. We need to be loving, not judging.
smokescreens-n-otherillusions:
In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.
There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.
I realized what happened after about two seconds.
The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.
For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.
I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.
This can be reblogged, if anyone was wondering. I wrote up this post with the intention that hopefully people who read it and didn’t really get triggers would understand a bit.
So, a thing that’s particularly important here: The trigger here is not the bad experience itself.
after my super funtime medical adventure, i had to change all my bath products, because my brain had associated the scent of them with being terrified and in extreme pain.
these were products i had chosen myself because i liked the smell. and they got connected to the medical phobia because i was using them to wash off the hospital reek and the fear sweat and so forth. i don’t know why they became a trigger. maybe because washing off the hospital smell didn’t make me not in pain. maybe because their ‘fresh pine ocean breeze bluegreen spicy stuff’ smell didn’t really replace the hospital stench, just mingled with it.
but for whatever reason, smelling these objectively nice soaps made me do flashbacks and get all hopeless and wobbly. so they had to go.
triggers are random. they’re often something that was simply present during a trauma, and you can’t guess what they’ll be. no one who hasn’t heard me explain this would ever associate suave naturals ocean breeze body wash with unbearable abdominal pain. so i guess the takeaways here are twofold:
– if you have triggers, remember other people can’t predict them, and don’t expect to be protected from them all the time. that’s up to you.
– if you don’t have triggers, don’t assume you can judge what a ‘real’ trigger is, and if someone asks you to accomodate them, don’t be a dick about it. even if you don’t want to make that accomodation, decline politely and apologize, don’t disparage their request.
Triggers are a case of classical conditioning, where association between a stimulus (In these cases, forms of trauma) and a neutral stimuli (such as the garage door or scent of bath products) becomes so interlinked that you associate them as one. This happens a lot to those going through chemotherapy, where the nausea they feel from chemo medication becomes linked with everything they interact with while feeling nauseous (it doesn’t help that this sort of conditioning is super strong when linked with nausea) so even after all chemo treatment is done, they can’t stand to eat what they ate at the time, can’t look at the doctor, or a white room, or smell cleaning products without feeling extreme nausea.
Triggers are subconscious, and we haven’t really got control of them. Even if you go through therapy for them, because they’ve now become learnt, they will still be there and mess with people. Don’t make assumptions about triggers, and try to be accommodating.
For those who are interested, EMDR has been shown to be able to lessen the effects of triggers.
Please be cautious with EMDR and be aware that it is not risk free. I have tried it twice, both times nearly ended up with me hospitalized after a dramatic resurgence of suicidal impulses. My shrink kept pushing for a third attempt, I fired him and haven’t been back to therapy since because everyone wants to do EMDR on PTSD these days.
But yeah, reminded with the great parenting example? My mother actually found James Woods’ performance in The Boost extremely triggering when she watched it, with some way too familiar character behavior. Speaking of running with some salesman stereotypes. That was also when she really started wondering if coke might have been a factor earlier.
Combined with the fact that he was basically working for the Sopranos for a while.
(And, I would add in terms of ethics, happy enough to flog equipment to the destructive mining industry on their behalf for years if the pay was good enough. With all the money flowing around the mining industry, it’s hardly surprising there at least used to be a lot of not so secret Mob involvement. I don’t know about anymore, but it’s not like the money has dried up there.)
Again, I don’t know if the details even really matter as to why he did crash pretty spectacularly and his behavior got way more erratic.
But yeah, I am still kind of conflicted about having had no contact with him (by his choice) since like 1986. It’s also hard to separate out some of my mom’s really unbalanced splitting behavior and wanting to blame him for literally everything that ever went wrong–to the point she kept taking it out on me because I reminded her of the man–from his very real lousy behavior. With someone I haven’t seen or talked to since I was 11 years old. When he was several years younger than I am now.
I don’t know if trying to get back in touch as a grown-ass adult would even be good for any closure there. But, I’ve been thinking about it some lately. My mom is also not around to flip completely out on me in response to whatever I might decide to do there.
(Assuming he’s still around, anyway. I know where he was, and he was still there 10 years ago. But he’d be getting up there, and it’s not like he was taking great care of himself before he hared off, way back when. Who knows.)
I ran across this post from like a year and a half ago, while looking for something else.
Now that it turns out that the man is, indeed, still around and also trying to get in touch? I’m still conflicted in pretty much the same ways.
Honestly, if he hadn’t managed to get his shit together at least somewhat compared to when I was last around him? He might not have made it past 70 at all. His behavior was that unstable back then, just going by what I personally witnessed and trying to leave my mother’s takes out of it. And hopefully he has the sense not to pop up out of the blue to try and start shit. Who knows.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this whole situation more than I wanted to tonight, after getting another mail from my uncle earlier. And apparently needed to vent some–with as close to a neutral uninvolved audience as you could hope for.
(I’m also mad again right now, with the reminder that this neutrality description is the exact opposite of the therapy I got forced into when I was younger. Which was…not what I needed, to put it mildly. But, again, parents as the real clients and conflicts of interest 
My head would not be in some of the specific knots it is now without that. Likely some other types of knots, but not ones installed by professionals.)
Growing up in an abusive household is a fucking trip dude……If you’ve never had someone angrily wash a dish at you or fold a sock in your direction then how are you gonna understand why I get nervous when you quietly do the laundry, or why I ask “are you mad at me?” when you set the bag of groceries down too hard? It’s a totally different way of living and it impacts you long after you’ve left the situation.
This is so important.
Abused kids speak a language you can’t learn
I think a lot of people misinterpret this post to mean that folding a sock angrily at you is abusive, and that’s not what it means at all. The fear abused kids feel at this kind of behavior is a conditioned response because we know what comes after. Its about sitting there terrified and waiting for when they will snap.
This is actually a symptom of PTSD, which is more common among child abuse victims than modern veterans
OKAY
Can we address the fact that people with good parents get super offended when you explain how awful yours were? Saying things like “your parents would do anything for you”, or “you’re lucky they gave you a roof. Be grateful”. Nope. No you are not going to guilt me into thinking abuse was okay just because they met the basic requirements for the care of a child.
It’s wonderful that your parents are great and would do anything for you. But that statistic does not apply to every parent, and it’s so invalidating and dangerous to imply that, so stop. Think, really deeply think about what I’m saying and why.
Totally agree that victim-shaming is disgusting and never okay!!!!
But just an important heads-up: people who get defensive, i.e. uncomfortable, in any way when you tell them about your abusive parents, are abused themselves without knowing it.
Someone who REALLY had good parents would have absolutely no reason to get angry at you for venting about your abuse. Why should they?
The only explanation for people saying things like this is that it makes them extremely uncomfortable, because it forces them to look at their own parents. Another person’s abuse always triggers an emotional flashback to your own abuse. For example, if someone complains how their parents got angry at them for crying, it would immediately make them think/feel of how they feel when they cry, i.e. what their parents taught them about crying through their reaction to them crying.
I know it’s a really unknown fact that most people suffer from emotional abuse, but it really is part of our culture. How people react to your trauma is a good way of telling how much they know about their own trauma (not saying that people who react compassionately to you aren’t traumatised – they either have experience in this (which might stem from their own abuse too!) and/or they already know about their own trauma. Only asking them directly will of course give you the truth.).
But yeah – people with good parents don’t say such things. It sounds like they are just repeating what their own abusive parents would say.
I think it kind of depends. As someone who is disabled I hit a lot of people that deny my BODY is harming me bacause they simply cannot deal with the idea that something like that could actually be out of their control and therefore is a threat to their moral system.
Victim blaming is a thing usually because people cannot accept that if they were in the same situation they would also be powerless. It’s outsourcing your emotional problems to the other person so you can just continue with the same beliefs.
It is absolutely good to keep in mind that it might be denial of trauma but sometimes people are legtimately being abusive dicks about it who are just prioritizing not having to question their world views over not hurting people.
OKAY
Can we address the fact that people with good parents get super offended when you explain how awful yours were? Saying things like “your parents would do anything for you”, or “you’re lucky they gave you a roof. Be grateful”. Nope. No you are not going to guilt me into thinking abuse was okay just because they met the basic requirements for the care of a child.
It’s wonderful that your parents are great and would do anything for you. But that statistic does not apply to every parent, and it’s so invalidating and dangerous to imply that, so stop. Think, really deeply think about what I’m saying and why.
Totally agree that victim-shaming is disgusting and never okay!!!!
But just an important heads-up: people who get defensive, i.e. uncomfortable, in any way when you tell them about your abusive parents, are abused themselves without knowing it.
Someone who REALLY had good parents would have absolutely no reason to get angry at you for venting about your abuse. Why should they?
The only explanation for people saying things like this is that it makes them extremely uncomfortable, because it forces them to look at their own parents. Another person’s abuse always triggers an emotional flashback to your own abuse. For example, if someone complains how their parents got angry at them for crying, it would immediately make them think/feel of how they feel when they cry, i.e. what their parents taught them about crying through their reaction to them crying.
I know it’s a really unknown fact that most people suffer from emotional abuse, but it really is part of our culture. How people react to your trauma is a good way of telling how much they know about their own trauma (not saying that people who react compassionately to you aren’t traumatised – they either have experience in this (which might stem from their own abuse too!) and/or they already know about their own trauma. Only asking them directly will of course give you the truth.).
But yeah – people with good parents don’t say such things. It sounds like they are just repeating what their own abusive parents would say.
Trauma often messes with one’s ability to say “no”.
You either consciously or subconsciously think, “I don’t want to hurt this person’s feelings” or “If I say no, then they’ll hurt me” or “It won’t really be that bad” or “I can handle this” or “I need to do this to prove myself” or “I deserve this”, or you forget that “no” is even an option.
It’s still not your fault if you didn’t say “no”, even if you think maybe you could have. It’s still not your fault. You didn’t deserve what happened to you and you didn’t bring it upon yourself. It was never your fault.
Consistent experiences of boundary violations can also effect your ability to say no. Like getting misgendered all day and being unable to safely address it. Experiencing consistent racism microagressions and not being able to safely address is. Experiencing sexual harrassment in the workplace. Women, trans people, people of color, learn that ‘no’ is rude, unacceptable, dangerous.
If ‘no’ is not an option during everyday boundary violations and if the feeling of always having your boundaries violated is the backdrop of your emotional life, it becomes difficult to say ‘no’ at all, or to acknowledge that a significantly more serious boundary violations took place.
If you didn’t say ‘no’ or if you said ‘yes’ but had an experience you did not want or came away feeling violated, that is real. You are allowed to say that your boundaries were violated, because they were. You are allowed to call that experience non-consensual, because it was.
I fell in love 6 years ago. They rejected me in a traumatic way. It hurt so bad I attempted to end my life several times, last time in 2017. I couldn’t move on, couldn’t trust anyone. In my darkest moments, I wrote a story about a boy and an older man who rejected him, where the boy commited suicide but was brought back by magic and then didn’t know what to do with his life. Idk if it’s cope shipping or not, but writing that story helped me stay afloat. Non-survivors need an outlet for pain too
I mean, gonna be real, part of how I deal with ANY breakup is going out and reading crushingly sad, heartbreaking fic about terrible relationships to give me a reason to cry that isn’t endlessly agonizing over my ex. It’s catharsis, a badly needed distraction, and sometimes even a support network if I get involved in the fandom. And it works, so there’s that.
Like, sure, there’s a unique aspect to using fiction to cope with serious trauma, but it works for the same reasons in everyone. Sure, maybe we could deal with less traumatic events without fiction, but we don’t have to; that’s the whole point.
Trauma isn’t always proportionate to the expected scope of the traumatic event, either.
People can sometimes undergo traditionally traumatic experiences – a sexual assault, a combat situation with bombs going off – and take minimal emotional damage from it. Other times things that seem much less blatantly traumatizing can do permanent harm, because of how they intersect with someone’s past experiences or mental weak points.
Lots of autistic people wind up with unconventional types of trauma because we’re primed for it by cultural gaslighting and reactive neuroendocrine systems.
Sometimes the stories we need to write and read are not about the exact events we’ve experienced, because sometimes we have too much aversion to them, or the thing that makes them traumatic isn’t easy to make visible without reflecting into other things.
I have invisible disabilities and sometimes it’s easier to confront my relationship with my body by writing about characters dealing with pain and damage that is visible to others. In my daily life I often can’t navigate what it would take to have these personal bodily betrayals witnessed, seen, cared for; I have enough baggage around my own disabilities that it’s often hard for me to accept that care even when it’s possible for other people to recognize and offer. (Early in life my being in pain was often dismissed or not believed.)
So it’s absolutely understandable to me that people write about one kind of sexual or emotional trauma when they’re dealing with another, because I write about different kinds of physical trauma than the ones I’m experiencing.
Lots of autistic people wind up with unconventional types of trauma because we’re primed for it by cultural gaslighting and reactive neuroendocrine systems.
I needed to hear this today. Thank you.
for the record, ‘not feeling anything’ is a valid and not unusual response to trauma or grief
so if you feel empty and devoid of feeling, it’s not because you’re a cold and uncaring person.
Sometimes, not feeling anything is the only way you can cope.
Be prepared for a delayed reaction, too. It’s very common to be totally calm during a crisis, and then days or weeks (or years) later suddenly get hit with a tidal wave of “HOLY SHIT THAT HAPPENED.”
Sometimes your mind waits until it feels safe to start processing things emotionally. It’s a powerful survival strategy, but it can really blindside you, because just as you start to feel like things are okay, you’re overwhelmed by the realization of how not-okay things were before.
This may not happen, and that’s okay too. But it’s something to watch out for when your initial reaction is numbness.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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