[UglyDucky]

I have triggers. From what I've read here, most people have triggers to one degree or another. Two of my triggers are big. For two years, T accommodated the triggers I made known. In our last appt., T said, "I don't have clients who are triggered when I don't always look at them or walk them to the door. I guess maybe I need to do that for you." Walking me to the door at the end of the appt. and looking at me when T talks to me stem from a bad countertransference situation last year that left some pretty deep scars for me.

I'm curious how Ts deal with others' triggers...? Does your T accommodate you and try not to set off your triggers? I did ask T how I was suppose to deal with these triggers so I didn't feel so traumatized? T said, "in the cognitive style of therapy (we're not doing CBT, we're in psychodynamic psychotherapy), I should think about how other appts. have gone, history w/the T, and whether or not how the T has demonstrated a trusting and caring relationship in the past."

I can't see me able to tolerate these triggers by analyzing past history, but I'm not very objective right now. Is there a particular way most Ts deal successfully w/triggers so the client can get past them? How does your T deal w/your triggers?

[Out There]

I can get triggered in therapy but I use breathing techniques to bring them down as well as being aware on a cognitive level.

[zoiecat]

From my understanding triggers are a result of trauma I don't know much about psychodynamic techniques but I don't think they're the best for dealing with trauma. You may want to consider either switching therapist or adding a second therapist to deal with your trauma issues if you want to get over your triggers.

I have many triggers all a result of over 20 years of trauma I am working through some of them with EMDR and my therapist uses CBT for others talk therapy for others DBT skills are also used. My therapist specializes in trauma so he uses many techniques to help me get through the the triggering.

[stopdog]

I don't think the woman would have known a trigger if it stepped out in front of her and called her by name.

[Spangle]

I have a fair few triggers & one of them was him wearing a back belt with a buckle. (I’ve dealt with that one with EMDR almost 2 years ago) My t would wear a jumper to cover it & wore his shirts outside his trousers in the summer. He gets me to do breathing with him when I do get triggered. It doesn’t happen very much now as he’s very aware of my triggers.

[healinginprogress]

I usually do some grounding techniques to remind myself that I'm in the here and now. And usually verbalizing that I'm being triggered, my T starts her own process of helping me to figure out what I'm being triggered by, what's going on, and what happened in the past. I'm still learning my triggers and what happens emotionally when it happens, so there's no "go-to" response right now.

My T doesn't deliberately try and trigger me, and I'm not sure how we would handle it if there was something about her that was triggering, but we talk about it and deal with it with my coping skills if it does happen accidentally.

I've never had a therapist use the word "trigger" with me. What we talked about was those times I react to things out of proportion for whatever is going on which I suppose is being triggered, but I appreciate that he didn't use the term but rather really talked to me about the process and interrelation of emotions and thoughts. One thing he always expressed was that it is my work to recognize and make decisions in those moments about how I will handle those emotions and reactions. There honestly is no reliable way for anyone else to protect me from my inner dialogues and reactions based on my history and my trauma. I can't even reliably predict when something will strike me strongly; how on earth can anyone else, even a therapist?

So we did A LOT of work with recognizing those reactions and techniques for figuring out my own thought process that brought me to that reaction, etc. It took practice and practice and practice over years before I had truly internalized that process so that I now do it pretty automatically. My therapist helped me walk through that process time and again, very patiently, until I reached that point.

[feileacan]

I know that I've been triggered sometimes. I can't exactly say what the trigger has been. I'm not sure it has happened in session, in therapy sessions I have been very regressed but has it happened because of something triggering I have no idea.

What I do know that while being triggered/regressed I would absolutely hate if someone tried to help me become cognitively aware of it or maybe later want me to talk about it to "help" me make sense of it. I don't need such help from anyone. I'm perfectly capable of thinking about it later myself and making as much sense of it myself as possible. I find it patronising if someone thinks that they can help me make sense of things - like I wouldn't be able to think by myself or someone else's thoughts about me could be more accurate than my own judgement of things. I guess I would be a nightmare client for most therapists because I just don't respect their authority whatsoever.

Anyway, what will help me in those situations is if the therapist is able to come along and be with me in those states so that I can understand from his reactions that he really understands what is happening with me and he is not trying to find an easy way out for himself and is willing to bear and suffer with me. I wouldn't want him necessarily to avoid the triggers because I realise that I have to work through this stuff anyway and what's the difference if I feel bad now or some time later.

It's good, Feileacan, that YOU have that ability to make sense of it on your own. I do now, but I absolutely haven't always had that ability and it was incredibly helpful, not patronizing, to have a therapist who was able to help me learn how to do this for myself. It isn't about "someone else's thoughts about me;" it is about me being able to even figure out my own thoughts about myself. It also isn't about "authority." It is simply about having a therapist who was able to show me how to do these things for myself so I can do do them without any need for a therapist at all.

[feralkittymom]

I tend to dislike the word "trigger" and find it terribly overused. To me, a "trigger" is an unconscious reaction, out of proportion in the present situation, to a stimulus and if experienced frequently, or in a specific pattern, is part of a PTSD diagnosis. Anything less specific than that I simply see as a reaction.

I never had PTSD from abuse. I did react to certain situations with varying degrees of dissociation, and my T would engage in different ways to bring me back to full consciousness so that we could talk about what I'd experienced. I found that helpful, as well as some CBT techniques that enabled me to bring myself back or short circuit the dissociation. My T never used the word, "trigger."

The only time I experienced what I would consider a trigger moment was once when my T happened to wear the same aftershave as an abuser. I think of that as a classic trigger moment because my reaction was so instantaneous that I was overwhelmed before I could consciously recognize what was happening. Once I could deconstruct it cognitively, while it might evoke a memory fragment or mental image, it would no longer overwhelm me.

[retro_chic]

My T has never used the term "trigger" but earlier on in therapy with her I mentioned that it bothered me how she sometimes said "take care" at the end of sessions but other times did not. I knew it was irrational but I felt like she didn't care about me if she didn't say it. Anyway since then T almost always says take care (she's not as consistent now but I'm not upset about it anymore).

[feileacan]

Originally Posted by lolagrace

It's good, Feileacan, that YOU have that ability to make sense of it on your own. I do now, but I absolutely haven't always had that ability and it was incredibly helpful, not patronizing, to have a therapist who was able to help me learn how to do this for myself. It isn't about "someone else's thoughts about me;" it is about me being able to even figure out my own thoughts about myself. It also isn't about "authority." It is simply about having a therapist who was able to show me how to do these things for myself so I can do do them without any need for a therapist at all.

I wasn't criticising you. I was just trying to explain how I would like or dislike my T to respond. I'm aware that there are people out there who need the help of other people to make sense of themselves and that's perfectly ok by me. It has been a learning curve for my T to learn that I'm not one of those people and that he can't be helpful to me by just sitting back, letting me talk and then "helping" me make sense of my stuff.

[annielovesbacon]

My therapist and I have never discussed triggers. But as weird as it sounds, I think a part of therapy (for me) is being triggered. My biggest triggers for me are related to my ED or to drinking/drug use. So it doesn't come up casually very often. But if they do then I want to explore that with my T, maybe learn how to address them so I don't feel triggered by it anymore. I don't want my T to avoid those things with me.
Just to be clear that's my own personal preference. I don't have trauma related triggers and I know that's a whole different thing. I'm not suggesting that therapists should ignore people's triggers at all, if thats what the client wants.