Hmmm. There's most of your post, and then there are the last two sentences. My impression from the former part (and the part of your post that I omitted) is that you defended yourself very well and said everything that needed to be said. And then, as you say, "the offender hasn't been heard from since."

But then we come to your needing to disable your triggers and "get your hand out of the jar." I'm not sure I know what the latter means, but as to the former, relating to triggers, it would seem to me that by having what used to be called "hair-triggers" you're only setting yourself up for future misery. There ARE all too many people in the world who are nasty. I'm not saying they're a majority. They're just a fact of life. Which (to me) means that one must learn how to deal with them without one's blood pressure rising.

Those people are just going to be there from time to time and you can learn how to deal with them without doing so in a self-harmful manner. If you think about it, they really can't do you any harm. There is no real reason to feel threatened by them. They're far, far away on a computer screen, as are you. They don't know your real name and they know nothing about you at all. So the "threat" is about as minimal as can be. Try to use that knowledge to keep control over your feeling threatened. It is not at all like facing a bully in a schoolyard.

So. To me, the major danger in such situations is not from the nasty person. The major danger is permitting such people to get under your skin and raise your stress level, which has all kinds of negative physical consequences, as well as just feeling very uncomfortable. If you really internalize the fact that such people on the web are not dangerous, if you really accept that as a fact (which it is), you ought to be able to modify your own reaction and treat them with the cool, relaxed, contempt they deserve.

Hope this helps! Take care.