Trauma Triggers
How to deal with reminders of a difficult and painful past?
Dear mental health advocate,
One of the biggest ‘buzzwords’ in psychology is trauma. People use it quite lightly in some cases, while in some situations it is more warranted. I am not here to invalidate, but I do want to highlight that trauma is a serious concept and should not be applied to all situations. This is one of the reasons why I always try to educate with my online infographics on Instagram and also with these articles. In today’s free edition of The Present Psychologist Paper I am zooming in specifically on what happens when a person has experienced trauma in their past and how certain stimuli can trigger issues. These reminders can be overwhelming and impact your mental health.
What Triggers Our Traumas?
Going through a very negative experience in your life can result in suffering from psychological trauma. Some develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because they struggle to heal from what they went through. These traumatic moments can look very different. That’s why trauma is such a big topic in psychology and the mental health field. People go through accidents, natural disasters, abuse, complicated grief, attacks, war, medical issues and the list goes on and on. What further adds to the complexity is that if two individuals undergo a similar adverse encounter, they might not react the same. One could walk away with a trauma, while the other is left unscathed.
Psychologists have their hands full with researching trauma because of this. Such divergent situations and a large variety of factors influence how and if trauma occurs. It is vital to examine all of these factors correctly as they can give us insights how to heal from psychological trauma. In today’s article I want to explain and look at a part of trauma each person with PTSD and similar struggles is confronted with: triggers. Understanding them and realizing how they affect your daily life is an important step to overcome your suffering. We cannot always control what happens in the world around us and how other people behave, but we can work on how we react to outside stressors.
What is a trauma trigger?
When we go through a traumatic event, there is a lot of sensory input that affects us in that particular moment. This could be the case when there is one single moment in time that traumatizes us, but also when we experience recurring trauma like chronic child abuse. The exact point in time when we undergo trauma, we are confronted with stressors (stimuli/factors that lead to stress). A person deals with shock and adrenaline during such moments, which makes our senses heightened leading to them registering a lot of input. Such stimuli can be a number of things, all related to our senses. Think about a certain smell, a sound, something visual. After the trauma we can relive it if we are presented with the same stressors we experienced during the trauma.
In the mental health field we consider these stressors triggers when they have a strong negative effect on us, affecting our emotions and make us relive a trauma. They can easily overwhelm us, stressing us out and trigger difficult feelings. See it as some sort of sensory input that overwhelms us and brings us back to that moment. It is a flashback leading to a stress reaction, transporting you back to the past and stands in the way of living in the present moment. The list of potential triggers is quite large and I am going to help you understand which ones exist, how to distinguish them, what their effect can be and how to best deal with them.
Which triggers exist?
As long as someone is negatively affected by a certain stimulus impacting their emotional state, making them relive the trauma through flashbacks or feels overwhelmed as a result, it can be considered a type of trigger. For the sake of better understanding them, I distinguish these triggers in two groups: internal triggers and external triggers.
Internal Triggers
Memories. Thinking back to the moment you have experienced the trauma, or simply having thoughts about the people associated with it.
Heart rate. When your heart is racing and you feel it pounding hard inside your chest it can remind you of the adrenaline felt back then.
Tension. If you are stressed, your muscles tighten. This can be in a similar way when you felt the fight-flight-freeze response.
Emotions. Certain emotions you felt can bring back memories. For example, the fear or helplessness you went through.
Loneliness. When you are feeling lonely it is possible that you lack a support system to overcome the trauma and it triggers flashbacks.
Pain. During the trauma, it is possible physical or emotional pain was felt. If the same kind of pain comes up after, it can be a reminder of the trauma.
External Triggers
Sounds. Sometimes there are specific sounds or music that can trigger the trauma again. These can be songs, but also noises.
A person. It is possible that a trauma is associated with a person. This can be a perpetrator, but also someone who was present at the trauma or related (like a victim).
Movies. Certain movies can portray or show a situation that is similar to the trauma a person went through. It can seem realistic and trigger memories.
Smells. During the trauma it is possible that there were smells or scents in the vicinity. If these are smelled again at a later point in time, it can trigger you.
Arguments. When people fight or have a heated discussion, there can be tension and an ‘explosive’ situation triggering an unsafe feeling.
A day/time. There could be a specific moment in time like an anniversary when the trauma happened that can trigger.
Effects of triggers and what to do
When a person is confronted with a particular trigger it evokes a stress response in their body and brain. This can be divided in three categories, as these are different kinds of flashbacks and result in different kinds of reactions. These are:
Visual flashbacks: images and triggers that bring back visual memories which cause you to relive the trauma and gives an overwhelming feeling.
Somatic flashbacks: bodily sensations and triggers which are felt throughout the entire body, like pain or discomfort resulting from the trauma.
Emotional flashbacks: feelings and triggers that are a direct consequence of the trauma experience, like explosive outbursts, feelings of abandonment or loneliness.
The best way to deal with trauma and triggers is therapy. A very effective type is EMDR. This stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. This therapy was first designed by Francine Shapiro, an American psychologist. It does not require a lot of conversation but is more considered a practical form. The therapist will ask you to relive the trauma with imagining the situation, smells, sounds and other triggers.
After, you will start processing the trauma again, but then while reimagining it the therapist will provide a distracting stimulus. Sometimes this happens with a headset and sounds alternating in left and right ear, or the hand of the therapist going back and forth in front of you. This therapy will help with making the memory less intense, as you are conditioned (desensitized) with a distracting stimulus. Reach out to a professional near you about EMDR to help with your trauma.
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This is the first I’ve heard of EMDR. I understand the concept. I think back to when I developed agoraphobia and needed to take one step at a time out my door each day until my muscles convinced my mind it was okay to go out. A book I read called “Mental Health Through Will Training” by Doctor Abraham Low from the 1950s advocated “moving your muscles” because if your mind saw your muscles move, it would be convinced all was okay. Make sense ? It’s another way of rewiring the brain I suppose. I’ve also read books that say meditation rewires the brain. (Rewiring is my term)