Can't triggers be useful?

I'm just wondering if trying to totally insulate oneself from all things that are triggering is useful/therapeutic?

I ask the question for a few reasons-- 1) I have often felt that I have had the term "you are triggering me" used as a sort of weapon to silence or at least modify me in speaking about something that is important to me. 2) I just feel that it can be totally impossible to not come across something that is triggering on occasion. 3) If we never allow ourselves to be in a triggering situation, then how do we ever learn to work ourselves into living in the world around us? How do we turn on the TV, internet, or radio in today's world? Those things at times can trigger even the most healthy people.

I also ask this because I find that I put myself in situations that I know will be uncomfortable for me (and sometimes dangerous), just to prove that I'm in control of my own state of well-being. I know that this approach is taking things to the other extreme and is probably not the healthiest either.

I'm just wondering how people feel about this.

A very thought provoking question. Im glad you asked and am curious to hear what others have to say.

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I actually don't know the difference between trigger and just mad or hurt or frustrated etc.
I actually asked on another forum because they used the term a lot and I could not glean the distinction.

As far as I am aware, when someone says "you are triggering me" it means that I am reminding them of something unpleasant.

I don't believe its healthy to avoid triggers. I think its better to face your triggers and learn how to deal with them. Life will be full of triggers, you cant avoid them forever.

I think in the realm of psychotherapy it has become a bit of a negative term (meaning something caused you to have a negative reaction). I personally think of it as something that can cause a positive feeling, such as someone telling me that they care (triggering a positive feeling).

BTW the dictionary has it defined as: anything, as an act or event, that serves as a stimulus and initiates or precipitates a reaction or series of reactions.

So then anything that causes you to react in any way qualifies as a trigger?
The dog eats my steak and I get cross because my dinner is gone - the eating of my steak is a trigger?
Or the smell of a perfume makes me think of someone I like and I smile - the perfume is a trigger?
These are real questions - I am asking if that is the understanding.

if those things reminds you of a previous unpleasant experience, then I think the answer would be yes.

That is how I understand the word. I think it is more often used in the negative sense in the realm of psychology/psychotherapy.

Sometimes I have things that I use to trigger good feelings or memories, such as a song that reminds me of someone I care about or the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg around the holiday season. I don't think they have to be just bad triggers.

FOR ME...
When I feel triggered my stomach gets butterflies and flip flops. I get nervous and start getting the shaky hands and want to cry and run.
Stupid, right? I honestly cannot help it it's beyond my control.

So when I feel that I'm beginning to be triggered I just turn away from whatever is triggering me.

It is avoidance in a way but sometimes necessary. If I'm feeling good sometimes I will work through it as therapeutic. Other times it's just not worth it and I move on.

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I think triggers are important to work through in a therapeutic setting, but outside of that, I think our reactions to them can sometimes be so strong and unexpected that it wouldn't be fair to people around us to subject ourselves to triggers on a regular basis. For example, at my school when we're discussing some deep stuff in a class or an extracurricular group or something, the instructor/facilitator will usually give a trigger warning and tell us that if we find something overly upsetting, we don't need to subject ourselves to it and we can get up and leave the room and that's okay. This is particularly important when talking about things like sexual violence, where there might be people in the room who have unresolved experiences with that who might have a very strong reaction to graphic depictions.

In my creative writing group, we're supposed to give trigger warnings for sexual violence, child abuse, self harm, and eating disorders, which I think is pretty fair, so people can choose whether they're feeling emotionally ready to hear that stuff or not. Giving the warning can also let people mentally psych themselves up for hearing something that might otherwise upset them.

But I guess in an interpersonal setting it can be more complicated than that. I had a situation a couple weeks ago where an instructor who I consider to be a mentor figure told me something about how her parents had punished her as a child and that was very, very unexpectedly upsetting to me, so upsetting that I couldn't get that image out of my head for weeks and brought it up several times with T. I didn't expect something like that to trigger me, and then I felt really upset at myself for getting triggered, like I should have just been able to deal with it like a normal person; it wasn't actually such a traumatic thing she'd told me, just in my head it was very triggering.

So finally after talking it over with T and thinking about it for awhile I decided to tell her that what she'd said had made me uncomfortable (she was actually the one to use the word "triggering") and asked her not to discuss that sort of childhood stuff with me. And part of me feels bad about asking her to do that, or letting her see that it upset me, but also I don't want to have those kinds of super strong projected emotional responses to stuff she says; it's not good for our relationship. Those things are better left for me to work through with T, rather than me getting very upset in her office because of something she says that's triggering and then her trying to figure out how to respond. Better to just avoid that situation altogether.

I don't think it possible to totally insulate yourself from triggers, and I even wonder if trying to really creates additional problems.

Somewhere we have to first accept the fact that we become triggered; people don't set out to trigger us (generally, I realize there are some warped people out there and always exceptions). If I become triggered, for instance, by my husband teasing me because that was a favorite ploy of one of my abusers, that is not my husband's fault. He didn't set out to cause me harm. That was my stuff that I need to deal with.

And trying to avoid triggers is pretty much impossible. While I know a few things that trigger me, most of the time when I become triggered I had no idea it was coming.

I think you just have to have some healthy boundaries about certain things. I know when CSA cases make the headlines, I steer clear. They trigger me terribly and staying away from them won't cause issues in my life. But I'm also triggered by an old style of bathroom tile that I come across more regularly than I like. I can't exactly avoid that trigger even though it is huge, so I've had to learn ways to cope with the panic that comes up and keep on moving.

PunkyBrewster, Yearning, Sierra, I think you all make some really good points. Thank you for thinking about it and responding.

I would also just like to add that with interpersonal triggers like with my mentor figure, I will bring them up (ex. when T used a word that upset me a lot because it's something my mother used to say to me) and then that person is aware of that and you can work on that issue without getting sent into an anxiety spiral in the middle of a conversation. But a few months ago, something triggered me that I had no idea would upset me so much.

I was at Les Mis with a friend and there's a part in the newer version of the play where Valjean goes to get Cosette from the Thenardiers and Cosette (who is probably about eight) asks, "Will you be like a papa to me?" and Valjean responds, "Yes, Cosette, it is true. I will be both a mama and papa to you." And that triggered me for some reason, maybe just on that particular day, because usually father/daughter stuff doesn't trigger me anywhere near as much as mother/daughter stuff, but I was literally tearing up and had to focus on my breathing and work very hard to calm myself down. That was completely unexpected, but I dealt with it.

So yeah, you can't avoid all triggers, but it's just prudent to avoid the obvious ones (ex. mentor figure telling me about how her parents used to punish her when she was a kid or T complaining that I'm "badgering" her).

For me triggers lead to flashbacks... I would neve think/say that someone is triggering me when I'm just mad at this person... And I also do not think that avoiding all triggers is a good thing. One thing is that it is simply not possible to avoid all of them... Another thing is that I think that it's better to work on this topic so that less and less things can trigger me or I can control my reaction to them... I do not want to escape from all triggers till the end of my life - I want to be able to confront them... But as I've mentioned - it is my opinion and I am not sure if even my T would agree with it

I agree it makes more sense to learn to deal with triggers than to unduly restrict your life in an attempt to avoid them. I think they can be both positive and negative, but we only care about the negative ones. But not every emotional reaction is a trigger: it's a matter of degree and disruption and predictable repetition of response that seems to push a reaction into the trigger zone.

I do think it helps to reframe the language used when talking about triggers from "X triggered me" to "I was triggered by X." It's a step towards control and mastery, and places the responsibility on the one experiencing the reaction.

I define triggers narrowly, in the sense of Post Traumatic Stress related cues that initiate an extreme physiological reaction, fight/flight, with a lot of unpleasant, long lasting side effects. Working through triggers is important, so being triggered can potentially provide valuable processing opportunities, but I believe it's critical to be moderate, try to deal with this sensitive stuff gently.

Running into them headlong by reading a lot of disturbing material, or attending endless abuse survivor meetings as I did in my adolescence or repeating very specific acts CAN (and did sometimes for me) do more harm than good. Too much intensity can exacerbate symptoms like dissociation, aggression, maladaptive behaviors, nightmares, flashbacks, etc.

So, I do think we can prevent some triggers and it's important to give ourselves that space as we do the very difficult work of processing trauma. Of course, not all triggers are avoidable, and I am GLAD that when I'm triggered these days, I have a qualified, caring therapist and others to turn to, so that I can work it out, but it's just cruel and unusual self-punishment to try exposure therapy by constantly setting myself up for dealing with trauma reminders, and I appreciate trigger warnings and such in sensitive environments like this forum where those things come up a lot more than in normal day to day life.

I am not triggered by anything here on the forums, but I believe I do have them.
For me, I see triggers as not just reminders, but cues that set off an internal reactions that make it feel like I'm re-experiencing a past trauma. I've never been held hostage yet hostage movies remind me of some of some of the physical discomfort associated with neglect as a child in a poorly run daycare facility.

Exposure is a positive exercise but best done with a pro.

There are so many things that count as triggers--it is so personal to each individual it is nearly impossible to avoid triggering someone here at PC. We can only try to be considerate to each other.

Thanks to everyone for the answers and sharing your thoughts on what the word means to you.

I guess I'm just a bit different in that I see the word as it was used in my time in research where an emotional or physical response can be positive, negative or sometimes both.

I know that in the context of this forum the word trigger is exclusively used in terms of evoking only negative emotional/physical responses.

I don't only care about the negative triggers. I love to put on a song from my college days (the most content time for me) and allow it to bring about or trigger some really positive emotions and memories.

For most of my life I allowed myself to feel no emotions. Then when I got into therapy as an adult it seems that I only felt negative emotions-- deep sadness, anger and such.

Now I'm slowly learning to feel positive things and I find more often that I try to evoke those feelings a lot too-- along with allowing myself to feel the bad.

For me there is a difference between reaction / strong reaction and trigger. The first two do not overwhelm me, but I see a trigger as something that does overwhelm to the point that I cannot deal with my reaction in a rational way. I agree entirely however, that triggers are useful to identify and work through rather than avoid and my T and I am building up my tolerance for them, along with practising coping strategies.

Those are just experiences to me. Nice ones, but not triggers. Two different things. Triggers evoke an intense reaction, mostly in the form of sudden anxiety, a fear fight or flight response. They pull up old feelings and memories.

I think of triggers in the PTSD sense-as anything that provokes flashbacks that go with PTSD.

The word trigger seems to be overused here or anywhere and is often ascribed to emotional reactivity, which is more of a personality trait than a PTSD symptom. I've seen people use the word when they are jealous, angry, entitled, or to represent other negative emotions.

I don't think being angry or jealous or other feelings represent negativity; I actually think it's positive to be able to feel or express anger. If it isn't dealt with, it gets distorted or builds up inside and transforms to something much worse. My hope is that people don't substitute the word trigger with feeling angry. Or any other emotion, really.

Sometimes I feel that overuse of the word dumbs down what those of us who have/had PTSD experience. That it bothers me is solely my stuff. And it bothers me because it provokes (not triggers) feelings of invalidation I've experienced while struggling in adverse situations.

It comes from my stuff because it reminds me of people calling themselves a single parent, when their children actually have a good father who pays child support, participates in the children's activities, sees his children regularly, etc. My child suffered greatly from being raised by a single parent with no family support and an absent father. It really hurts because we could have really used some help, but rarely were offered a helping hand. But even this is mostly related to being totally abandoned by my parents.

I know I might be looking into this beyond the scope of the question, but I am in analysis after all....

Anyway, I rarely, if ever, get triggered here. Interesting concept about positive triggering.

I'm in recovery for Anorexia. I would define a trigger, for me, as anything that brings back the old compulsive feelings and triggers off a desire to starve, lose weight, and/or ritualise around food. When I was in the early stages of recovery I exposed myself to triggers gradually within the safe confines of a support group. These days I still get triggered from time to time, but I know how to deal with it. So yes, I think in the right environment learning to confront and deal with triggers can be a positive thing.

Just thought I would share a nice article about positive and negative triggers. I think this is pretty good at explaining how and why a trigger can be either positive or negative.

Uncover and Manipulate Your Triggers to Optimize Your Work and Life

Very interesting article - but it's worth noting that they specify that they do not use the term "trigger" in the sense it's used to refer to PTSD triggers. Neither usage is more or less valid than the other one, but they are different.