[Myzen]

Hi folks,

On a recent thread, someone (I think it was Wants) mentioned that analysts believe we can have triggers at an unconscious level.

This made me wonder how we can cope with triggers if we don't even know we are having them. Then I wondered how we do cope with our triggers, and so that's my question.

How do we cope with our triggers?

As I understand it, a trigger is a painful mental event coming from some stimulus in our environments or just from inside our own heads. These events are replays of past pain or fear of future pain. Some of us have many conscious triggers every day, especially when we are in depression.

My method, which seems to have worked quite well, is to remind myself that the pain is coming from the trigger and not from the event I am remembering or are afraid of happening. As psychologist Dorothy Rowe said, "It's not what has happened to us that makes us ill, but the way that we deal with it."

So I am on duty most of the time, redirecting the triggers, until they start passing me by of their own accord. It's a long job, but I think it works if we can stick with it. I remind myself that every bad thing in the world is not automatically pointing at me, other people have suffered as well.

There was a time when triggers caused me to act (in a bad way), and then a time when triggers caused me to hurt fresh every time, and nowadays there is a lot of time when triggers are just boring. They are still there, but I'm not suckered by them anymore. Let's hope it stays that way.

Does this make sense? Anyone else have coping strategies?

Cheers, Myzen

[kimmydawn]

what a good subject! i wish there was a coping technique that i learned to manage triggers, so that i could utilize it when i still need it.

however, i think time mostly has helped with them. that and therapy....understanding them and why they affect me so has taken alot of their powers away...and the fact that i've learned to make my world safer from triggers. i'm careful about t.v., movies, ppls, etc.

all in all, my triggers have greatly reduced, as well as the effect they have on me.

hope that makes sense too

[lenjan]

Yay Myzen! That sounds positively healthy.

My mom was my abuser. I saw her fairly recently, and it finally hit me, what everyone has tried to tell me for years: She can't hurt me anymore. She's going on 76 years old, I have 4 inches and (sadly) probably 100 pounds on her, her vision and hearing are disappearing, she had a hip replacement a few years ago that she didn't take care of and now she can barely walk again -- she's an old woman and there's nothing she can do to me anymore, at least physically.

But while some of the panic attacks I've had this week have come from stress or overwork or whatever, at least one came because I was having a flashback to the abuse. I don't know how to get around that. Rationally, I can tell myself I'm fine now, but when your mind convinces you you're still back there, I don't know how to tell it it's not.

If you have any ideas on that, I'd love to hear them. :-)

Candy

[Wants2Fly]

Hi Everyone --

re: Myzen: "This made me wonder how we can cope with triggers if we don't even know we are having them. Then I wondered how we do cope with our triggers, and so that's my question."

It sounds like you have an effective strategy for the coping in place, Myzen. Bravo!

The way I've interpreted the remark @ "don't even know we're having them" is that therapy (self, group, through books, whatever) makes us conscious that there is/was a trigger. Until that happens, we sit around feeling blue, helpless to do anything.

I don't even go back into the past most of the time to identify a root cause. I just look at the situation. Say, I feel badly because my work was rejected.

Okay, so -- that's normal. Does it have to destroy my life or me? Can I put the rejection into a narrower context in terms of consequences? Can I look at who the rejectors were and decide I don't care about their opinion so much that I need to make myself heartsick over it?

Dealing with the here and now (instead of with long-ago root causes) as pragmatically as possible helps me. There are techniques for working on one's stinkin' thinkin' in Dr David Burns Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. They only work if one writes them out -- and I have done that many times. After all, when I'm deep depression -- or even milder depression -- what the heck else am I doing that's so important.

Thanks for bringing up this excellent topic for discussion.

[lenjan]

Just a note to say that I found Dr. Burns and his stupid book completely useless. It works wonderfully, I'm told, on mild depression of the single-episode sort. It doesn't come close to making a dent in the heavy-duty, chronic stuff I have. That's actually why I switched therapists -- the one I had was absolutely wedded to dear Dr. Burns and wouldn't leave his parameters to try anything else, and it wasn't doing jack for me.

Just my .02, which as we all know, buys nothing these days. ;-)

Candy

[vacantangel]

Myzen, first congratulations for finding effective ways to deal with what triggers you.

As for myself, I don't know if I have any triggers on a unconsious level. I feel that I'm always aware of what triggers me. I have flashbacks quite frequently to my childhood traumas, so they are always fresh in my mind but not to the point that they will send me into a tailspin. However; I can definitely be triggered by seeing things written here, elsewhere or IRL. And what triggers one person may not trigger the next. So, marking a post as a 'trigger' can only go so far. There are perfectly mundane everyday things in life that are very real triggers for me so going into any post puts me at risk.

I've only recently started individual therapy so I haven't reached a point of effectively dealing with my triggers and actually we haven't even delved into my past yet. There seems to be too much going on in the here and now in my life to get to anything any deeper. I do realize though that the way I react to things in the here and now probably has some relationship to my past traumas and childhood and until I deal with them and can lay them to rest, if that's even possible, then I may always be reacting in a negative way to things in the here and now. Gosh, that sounded all jumbled when I typed it, hope it makes sense when you read it.

Bottom line though is that I am a baby work-in-progress when it comes to dealing with my triggers, so at this point I don't cope well at all. They usually bring on a major mood swing, as I am BP.

[adieuolivaw]

MYZEN: Unfortunately, I had zero insight into the fact of my own discomfort, much less what might be causing it, until I came to PsychCentral. You name it, and I repressed it instantly. But I had a dim awareness that I used food and escapism for some reason. Thanks to the nonthreatening environment here, I've finally learned to pay attention to my body and mental states instead of defending against them immediately. Now I've realized that I'm in a state of chronic anxiety and depression, which can switch back and forth quickly and become worse with certain triggers.

When I find myself being transported back into the triggering event, I either think or say very intensely --- "Stop-Thought!"
If my mind drifts back again, I will repeat "Stop-Thought!" as many times as necessary.

Then I consciously insert a useful or pleasant theme into my thoughts.

I keep a sort of mental library of good places to be. One of my favorites is lying on lush green grass, playing with my dog. Another is swimming in a natural leafy pond in the high desert, surrounded by spring frogs. A third is rowing down a stormy river in a small canoe, fighting to keep from being dashed against the sheer rock walls, arriving safely and exhausted on the beach. A fourth is remembering the first horse I ever rode at summer camp, a beautiful grey named Silver, that galloped like the wind and put all horses since to shame. The others scenes are from lakes and rivers, forests and jungles, and the animals living there, because those are my strongest impressions of beauty.

If the trigger sparks a strong negative self-image, I may need to bring up an image of something good I have created. Or, I may visualize the last hard work I did, delighting in the positive outcome. These are the most difficult triggers for me to overcome. I can stop them, but they will start up again because I have a very skimpy library of good self-image thoughts to put in their place. I've tried the "affirmation" route, but somehow that doesn't ring true.


So, for me, lovely natural scenes and the delightful creatures that live there are the most effective trigger-busters.

Adieu

[vacantangel]

Adieu, is that effective for you all the time. I think I'll try that myself. I'm sure I can come up with several images that I would find most pleasant. Not sure how successful I would be in maintaining the new visuals but I'm really going to try hard at that. Thanks for your ideas.

[Wants2Fly]

RE: "I found Dr. Burns and his stupid book completely useless. It works wonderfully, I'm told, on mild depression of the single-episode sort."

I’m not going to get in a contest with anyone to prove “nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.” That my woes are bigger than yours. I think it's inappropriate for you to imply that you can diagnose how severe someone's illness is by whether he/she found found cognitive behavioral therapy effective.

One of the things that the Psychological Forums does very effectively is validate that each person’s feelings are as real and deep to him or her as anyone else’s.

I would be the last to say that Dr. Burns' techniques caused an "Eureka" moment and a sudden cure to my depression. A multi-pronged approach has been helpful. I'm still not out of the woods yet, and I'm not sure that I ever will be, given that depression seems to be lifelong and cyclic.

I would not expect that Dr. Burns' books could help all people, anymore than one med is able to help all people. But the topic here is how we cope with triggers, not what "cures" depression and not bashing what may have helped someone else.

[obsids]

I have so many triggers right now that it is hard to even deal with. In fact, reducing my reaction to triggers is what I am working on primarily right now in therapy.

My first step was to end a very poisonous friendship on my own terms, rather than allowing this former friend to continue to get me to take responsibility for her pain and problems.

Next, I reduced the amount of time I spend online by about 80%. Mostly, I stopped going to all the yahoo groups I used to belong to. And I stopped reading Google news.

I am pretty reclusive these days, kind of withdrawing into my little microcosm, ignoring everything that does not affect me personally (such as politics, news, online drama on LJ). I am very careful about what I expose myself to... mainly tv and online.

And I start mentally drowning myself out when I trigger.... telling myself over and over 'stop it' or 'it doesn't matter' or 'it's not my problem'.

It doesn't always work. But that is how I am coping these days. I think it will get easier with time.

Obsidian

[Myzen]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>

But while some of the panic attacks I've had this week have come from stress or overwork or whatever, at least one came because I was having a flashback to the abuse. I don't know how to get around that. Rationally, I can tell myself I'm fine now, but when your mind convinces you you're still back there, I don't know how to tell it it's not.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Hi Candy,

You've hit on the exact point I was talking about.

The trigger is always a trigger 'to' something, a reminder to feel pain.

The mind, subconscious or whatever, has this unfinished business and it wants things put right - it wants justice. But that's not going to happen, these events that hurt us so badly did happen and that can't be undone.

So every time we get a trigger (it could be something as simple as a piece of clothing or one word) the mind goes straight to the pain place. It says "Look, this happened and it still hurts".

The big thing I tried to achieve was to square up the pain, and admit that it happened, and then square up to my mind with the awareness that it is not the event that is hurting me now, it is my own mind. For me, the crucial point is knowing that it is the messenger that's hurting me now, and that messenger is me!

One further strategy. When the trigger happens, instead of thinking 'Oh dear that hurt ME so much' I think 'Yes, that stuff happens to so many of us, and we survive it'. This gets away from the special victim thinking, and it's a really powerful strategy for me. As I've said before, 'survivor' is a tag I will accept anytime, and proud of it.

So, when the trigger comes, it doesn't just remind me of the pain, it reminds me of the strength of survival. I think psychologists call this positive reframing. I don't know what it is, but it has helped me.

Cheers, Myzen

[Myzen]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>

The way I've interpreted the remark @ "don't even know we're having them" is that therapy (self, group, through books, whatever) makes us conscious that there is/was a trigger. Until that happens, we sit around feeling blue, helpless to do anything.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Hi Wants,

Yes, that's the core of it, recognizing the trigger for what it is.

Cheers, e.

[Myzen]

Thanks for the replies folks: Kimmy, Adieu, Angel and Obsids, Candy and Wants. Before coming to Psych Central I was so hung up on this stuff, and now it's shared. What a relief.

Cheers. Myzen

[lenjan]

I read this before I left for work and didn't have time to reply, but I wanted to mention a few things.

Dr. Burns, in the introduction to his own book, which I read cover to cover every 6 months for 5 years because my therapist thought it was divinely inspired by God, says that his techniques work best on mild to moderate depression, and if you score over a certain amount on the test he gives in the front of the book, you need more help than he can provide.

Also, in the drug forum, every day people tell others what has, and especially what hasn't, worked for them and nobody gets p*ssy about it.

It wasn't a personal assault, Wants, and shouldn't be taken as one. It was an opinion. They're just like bellybuttons -- everybody gots one, and in the country where the first amendment to the constitution provides for freedom of speech, everybody's entitled to share them, as well.

Candy

[Wants2Fly]

I shared mine, you shared yours, and I don't the attitude started with me, Bear.

[TryingBelieve]

I once told my therapist -- if I could do the excercises in the Feeling Good book, then I wouldn't need therapy. I am still trying to identify my triggers.

[(JD)]

It might have been me that mentioned being trigger subconsciously with PTSD.

Since so much of PTSD is working at the subconscious level, it is important to have a therapist who is expert in PTSD. The doctor has studied the subconscious extensively, and understands how to help you cope with PTSD.

How does one know if the triggering is on this level? The T teaches us how to recognize OUR FEELINGS and OUR ACTIONS that result from being triggered.
There are good triggers ...ones we use to comfort ourselves... often smell (and often food scents!) ... places we go for "vacation".... etc. Hypnosis uses subconscious triggers to help someone quit smoking, for instance.

One of the ways we learn to cope with PTSD is by identifying these feelings and actions: that they are happening probably because we were triggered. Once we can begin to note when or where these feelings happen, then we are on the way to identifying the actual trigger. This might never happen.

The good news is, that due to PTSD events, ppl, memories are not FILED properly, but the brain tends to MISFILE similar events in the same place! WHy is this good news? Becaue once you are able to REFILE an event in it's proper place in the brain, often the brain REFILES all those that are MISFILED in the same place and relocates them to the proper place. So not all events, triggers etc need to be identified etc.

Once we can stop and recognize that we have been triggered, then we can begin with the coping of "it isn't happening now" " I am safe now." etc reframing that the T will give you.

I hope this explains what I was talking about.

[Wants2Fly]