Perhaps what needs to take place is finally thinking about these triggers differently.
When a human being is "threatened" and they go into "auto react" or even "freeze", that does get registered in the brain in areas that are much deeper then the frontal cognitive part of the brain. Like "all" mammals we are designed that way so that we become aware of possible dangers and develop a deep sense of "knowing to stay away or something is a potential threat".

However, we also have to ability to "consciously" address these "deep response " messages and "learn to manage them better through "learned knowledge" too.

For example Sam, you now "believe" you have to sleep "dressed and ready" to escape at a moment's notice. You began to make a "conscious" decision to "follow" the instructions that come from these "deep signals of a possible danger". What you have decided is that you "have to be on high alert" instead of consciously working on being "ok" with wearing just night closes that mean "bed and rest and comfort".

When I developed PTSD, what began to confuse me more and more was how I often "over reacted" to things that triggered me that would "happen" before I chose to be upset in a "conscious" way. I went through a fairly lengthy time, about a year, where I would react with "anger" that just shot out of me without my consciously deciding to be "angry". I was very "taken back and confused" with that too. The situations that encouraged that to take place "were" situations where "someone was doing something wrong or addressing me in a confrontational or controlling way", so it wasn't like I was reacting "wrong", however, the reaction I had was "stronger" and more "automatic" then the way I typically handle these kinds of situations.

Well, for a while I decided to "not just decide to feed into these triggers" but to pay attention "after" they came out. I began to work them out on a "conscious" level verses just decide that "I was just going to "react" and had "no control" over it.

I have been considering how the brain "can" get injured just like any other part of the body. When we have an injury and it needs time to heal, we "are" more sensitive to that injury and try to "avoid" anything that may "interrupt or further compromise that injury". If someone were to accidently "brush up against that injury" it is "normal" to react and "react quickly" even with "anger" in order to "protect and send a message", hey you hit my injured leg, be careful, don't do that, can't you see I have a bad injury?

We are never going to "forget that injury or how we got it", however, we can be patient, allow it to heal and get to a point where we don't "defend and guard it so much".

It is a little different with our brain because we can't "see the injury" however we "do" have the same reactions "to defend and protect" and "want to heal". But we do not have to keep telling our brain to "keep holding onto the injury". We can, on a conscious level slowly realize that we "no longer have to sleep in our clothes or that we have to be alarmed by crickets, or over react when another person does something that may trigger us.

I will always probably be "more aware" if someone taps me on the back or surprises me in some way. But I do not have to "feed into it" and decide to develop a more elaborate way to get even "more" defensive.

The therapies like CBT and DBT help someone develop "skills" to help with these troubled areas and these therapies "do" help. I imagine that EMDR also does this because it encourages a patient to retrieve these triggers and "face them" and "process them better" until the patient slowly learns they don't have to keep reinforcing the "cause of injury".

OE