Techniques for dealing with triggers

[Arch]

I rarely had problems with triggers before I came out for the final time and started therapy. I guess once you start being honest with yourself about who you are, it's hard to avoid closely examining other aspects of your life.

I run into different kinds of triggers and am trying to learn how to prevent them from derailing me. What techniques do you use?

[Sweet Blue Girl]

I think it depends from feelings, emotions, rationality and of course the trigger! For example if someone speaks of me with male pronouns sometimes I get a bit sad, sometimes a bit angry, sometimes I don't notice it at all, it depends also by the sensibility of the moment... Maybe I misunderstood the word trigger?

[xxUltraModLadyxx]

are you talking about triggers of gender dysphoria. i'm noticing i have it as well, but for me it was more so before living fulltime, so i guess it could be different for everyone.

i try to think of myself as just another form of female. when you allow yourself to be included, it helps. what others think just means that is their area of ignorance. i used to feel poorly about myself for being tall and large framed, but i noticed lots of female models are just like that even though much skinnier. there's a place for everyone if you look for it and learn to embrace your unique qualities. i also have big feet. i still wear men's sneaker's around, but my mom does to. you don't get everything. i used to think i was ugly before transition, but i can relate my look more toward female fashion models and their more quirky looks. they are considered very beautiful that many cisgender girls admire. so, i try to change my perceptions and realize that my unique qualities are something i really like.

lately, i've also been feeling haunted by the fact my name is not officially legal. i live fulltime, but it's just recently that i notice how patronizing i feel that it is with some of those things. the glass will never be completely full, so the sooner you can become happy with what you have at the moment and realizing that at one point it was the thing you really wanted, life becomes better and more fullfilling.

[Arch]

I didn't want to be too specific because that could be a trigger right now. I'm not in the best frame of mind because I just started watching a movie that had some triggers. I stopped it immediately and came here.

Example: I like Law and Order: SVU, but it sometimes reminds me of being raped or molested. That can cause me to shut down for hours or a day. So I don't watch it during the week anymore. I save it for Friday night or weekends. That way, if I do get triggered, at least I don't go off to work with all of these horrible feelings welling up. Or, worse, acting like a zombie as a reaction to feeling bad. But all I'm doing is delaying; I still get the trigger when it happens.

Certain books, movies, and TV shows tend to trigger other issues in addition to rape: parent stuff (particularly father issues), suicide, grief over someone's death, feeling like an extreme outsider, being a kid again and helpless to understand what I was. It's usually not specifically trans-related; it's all my other junk rising to the surface.

I tend to get into the characters and identify with them or relate strongly to them, and their circumstances take me back to unpleasant situations in my own past. Sometimes it's almost like a flashback, but not quite. I'm not quite reliving it...it's more like I start replaying the event or the situation. Over and over. And I react to it emotionally. And it hurts. Dealing with the emotional fallout is unpleasant. I can't really do anything else while all of this is going on. When I do finally start getting things under control, I'm too washed out to do much. It's a terrific waste of time, and it's painful and humiliating. I guess this is my penalty for shutting stuff out for so long.

I told my therapist I need to talk about this next week because I'm not getting anywhere on my own. But if I get some help from you guys, maybe I won't have to talk about it in session. It won't be pleasant.

[xxUltraModLadyxx]

I didn't want to be too specific because that could be a trigger right now. I'm not in the best frame of mind because I just started watching a movie that had some triggers. I stopped it immediately and came here.

Example: I like Law and Order: SVU, but it sometimes reminds me of being raped or molested. That can cause me to shut down for hours or a day. So I don't watch it during the week anymore. I save it for Friday night or weekends. That way, if I do get triggered, at least I don't go off to work with all of these horrible feelings welling up. Or, worse, acting like a zombie as a reaction to feeling bad. But all I'm doing is delaying; I still get the trigger when it happens.

Certain books, movies, and TV shows tend to trigger other issues in addition to rape: parent stuff (particularly father issues), suicide, grief over someone's death, feeling like an extreme outsider, being a kid again and helpless to understand what I was. It's usually not specifically trans-related; it's all my other junk rising to the surface.

I tend to get into the characters and identify with them or relate strongly to them, and their circumstances take me back to unpleasant situations in my own past. Sometimes it's almost like a flashback, but not quite. I'm not quite reliving it...it's more like I start replaying the event or the situation. Over and over. And I react to it emotionally. And it hurts. Dealing with the emotional fallout is unpleasant. I can't really do anything else while all of this is going on. When I do finally start getting things under control, I'm too washed out to do much. It's a terrific waste of time, and it's painful and humiliating. I guess this is my penalty for shutting stuff out for so long.

I told my therapist I need to talk about this next week because I'm not getting anywhere on my own. But if I get some help from you guys, maybe I won't have to talk about it in session. It won't be pleasant.

you aren't alone in lots of that. i have purely obsessional obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms which makes it hard for me to tune out fear. i get the "feeling like an extreme outsider" and "being a kid helpless to understand what i was" alot. i think about things like how when i was a kid people treated me so wrong on so many levels, and no one did anything for me. i had a doctor tell me to take testosterone shots in the past, but i refused. i get haunted by things like that, and fear losing my transition in some odd set of scenarios. or that people really have an agenda to manipulate me. so many things that burn up my energy and take a toll on my mind and body.

it's not an easy life, and anyone who says their life is perfect is lying. i can relate alot to what you're saying. i get it as well. i'm actually more comforted in myself that someone else has the same struggles i do.

pm if you like.

[Sweet Blue Girl]

You're not alone. An hug!
These toughts can come in a rush, maybe activated by little triggers.
It's important to do therapy.
I try to understand why I have so much fears, for me they all are just shadows cast by a unique fear, acceptance, and self-acceptance.
It takes time and patience.
When I had those moments i tried to breath, don't do anything, wait the worst moments pass away then try to rationalize, I wrote down the toughts in a diary. I did this, and reading back my words made me understand something about me.
Of course my pills have a role in attenuating the bad effects of these toughts.
Anyway I like to think it's just a temporary phase of my life in wich I am dismantling an old house to build a new one shaped well around me, and the pills just ease me the big work.
Hugs again

[Arch]

Wow, this is rather disheartening--not much advice here. Are we all just slaves to our triggers? Or would we rather not talk about it, like me?

I guess I'll be doing this in therapy tomorrow. Cripes.

[Emily Ray]

In Addiction Therapy we learned some strategies for dealing with triggers. Avoidance is a big one. I don't think I would watch Law and Order any day of the week if it had a chance of making me feel bad. Another strategy was to surf the wave, but I'm not sure that works as well for some of the things you mentioned. You might want to practice Mantram Repetion it takes practice but I think it could be helpful for you.

Huggs

Emily

[Just Kate]

Wow, this is rather disheartening--not much advice here. Are we all just slaves to our triggers? Or would we rather not talk about it, like me?

I guess I'll be doing this in therapy tomorrow. Cripes.

If I didn't just discover this thread I would have replied to it earlier. On my phone now and hard to type. Simple answer fir trigger management is to treat them as if treating a phobia with cognitive conditioning. If you look it up there are details but I will explain more tomorrow. I have excellent control over most of my triggers and want to share how.

[Felix]

I have some specific issues that are bad and not trans-related. It's 4 in the morning where I'm at, and I'm up because my head's a mess. I can't talk about it either, right now.

I do have a lot of good coping mechanisms. They aren't doing me a lot of good tonight, though.

Lol I don't know why I'm even posting. I'm failing at helping here.

(subbed in for the carl sagan brain is full of billions and billions of **** pic)

[Arch]

Hey, I appreciate hearing from people, even if they have no specific advice. I guess I was partly hoping to escape talking about it in therapy today. I wanted a miracle.

He talked about one technique I can use, but he had to tread carefully and open with some caveats and all of that because, let's face it, I resist anything that I think smacks of woo woo or touchy-feely-ness. Which this did. But I guess I'll give it a try. I have nothing to lose, really, and much to gain. I won't be able to avoid the triggers, but this technique can help me with the fallout. I guess that's really what I was asking for help with: the fallout.

The trigger was a film that I knew would have some dangerous stuff in it. That's why I was drawn to it. Today, he asked me if I could look at that choice as an attempt to heal myself. I tend to look at my choice more as a stubborn masochistic tendency, of the "Why do I always do this when it always hurts?" variety--because I can watch films like this one over and over, and they never seem to do me any good. Hell, they mostly seem to hurt. I guess the whole idea is that I hope a film like that will do something for me, so I go back again and again. This film was particularly unsatisfying because it lacked the resolution I was looking for. Maybe other movies, those with more satisfactory resolutions, actually do help. But even those hurt like the dickens and trigger me.

I dunno.

I wish I had my men back. While they were around, I didn't often need films like this one. I could just crawl into my head and get what I needed there. Those worlds seemed real enough...and I could make them last for days at a time instead of only one hundred minutes.

[cisdad]

Hey, I appreciate hearing from people, even if they have no specific advice. I guess I was partly hoping to escape talking about it in therapy today. I wanted a miracle.
(trimmage)

If you have a decent therapist, which is not something I guess I could assume, then I hope you'd be using this to add to your arsenal of coping mechanisms, rather than things to do instead of talking to your therapist.  Or of making use of ideas from here to have something to discuss with the therapist.

Anyhow, one thing I know of for dealing with 'triggers' (maybe not the same kind of trigger as you're talking about -- one of the benefits of a decent therapist is that they know what you mean, or can ask more readily) is 'counters'.

For instance, suppose you have some negative thought.  I'll intentionally take something trivial here as I don't want the example to trigger for people.  Let's say the thought is "I'm not a gifted runner."  The kind of response I find useless myself is "Of course I am", "God made me as wonderful as everybody else", "all men are created equal", and so forth.  I know darn well that I'm not a gifted runner, and those answers are crap and feeble against this thought that is triggering a flood of emotions and distress for me.

What is more useful for me is a serious counter to the bad thought.  Something like "Fine, I'm not as gifted as those other runners.  But I'll train harder!"  This is actually a real example, even if not mine.  It was from a guy who runs a 2:11 marathon (namely, seriously gifted and international caliber) -- as he faces preparing to do his training to race guys who run a 2:07 marathon or faster (if you're not a runner, you cannot imagine how gargantuan those 4 minutes are).

What is good about this one is that it converts that negative thought to a plan for action.  Don't dwell on the negative thought, dwell on the action you can take.  I'll attest first hand that this can be very effective over time.  Not a magic bullet.  But as you get consistent with it, the negative thought has less and less hold on you.  A challenge to the technique is that the counter has to be something you believe.  Not something that someone else tells you is the case, but something you feel to be true in your heart.

The same kind of thing can be applied to more existential things.  For instance, "I'm a bad husband" (one that I did have problems with).  A counter that worked for me was "I do good things in the marriage".  Getting more concrete (I could list some of those things) seemed to be a plus for me.


A related concept that worked for me* was 'reframing'.  For instance, the above "I'm a bad husband".  Actually, that was my (then) wife's comment.  So I reframed it to "My wife says I'm a bad husband."  That's got two parts for me to look at.  One part about who I am.  But another being the fact that it is my wife saying it.  Maybe she's not a very good witness?  Maybe she's unhappy and blaming me for it?  Maybe ... a number of things.  The reframed statement is entirely true.  It wouldn't do me any emotional good if it weren't.  But the reframing in to something (else) that's true, actually _more_ true, helped take away from some of the traumatic strength of that negative statement.


Not that either is trivially applicable to your specific situation with past rape and abuse.  But maybe there's something there for you to draw on and translate to your use.  Certainly I'll be checking in to see if you have more questions or comments.  The past rape and abuse is also a point of great concern for me as a dad.  My son was recently raped, and I'm trying to do what I can to help him deal with it.  Unfortunately, he is more averse to talking about his feelings than you are.  Still, I think these are a couple of good tactics. 

I know for myself, for now, I have to go with avoidance.  I don't think the police are pursuing my son's case very well, and this is making me and my wife quite upset -- certainly more so than my son (admits to?).  So I can't watch police shows of any description for now.  They all show police working hard to solve the case and being kind to the victim, neither of which I feel is true in this case.  If a while of avoidance doesn't do the trick (and my case, as a parent rather than victim, is far less serious than yours), I'll probably reach for some reframing.

Good luck!

[cisdad]

*
Sorry, forgot to add that footnote. 

The thing is, I have a fair idea what works for me.  Some of that is by way of some constructive therapists, some by reading, some from friends and family, and some I even figured out on my own.

But the fact that something worked for me doesn't mean it'll do you good.  To the extent that we're all people, there's a chance.  To the extent that you're not me, maybe not. 

So even if I write sometimes as if I know what 'the answer' is, I really don't know, and don't think I do.  All I'm doing is offering up an idea for you to think about.  I'll write it up positively, so that it at least acts like it's worth thinking about.  But that's all it is.  An idea to consider.  If it does work for you, great.  If it doesn't, or you don't think it's worth trying, ok.  I have tons of ideas.  That you, maybe, don't think this one is worth pursuing is no problem for me.

[Felix]

I want this thread to go on.

With some of my more powerful triggers, I compartmentalize hard. I pretend the trigger (and whatever reminds me of it) doesn't exist, or that it doesn't bother me but I just don't want to think about it. I get hyperanalytical, and approach it like a logic problem. Someone else's problem.

Sometimes I go straight to "I hate my life," and then I can focus on that, which is vague and easy to get out of. Of course I don't hate my life. Reminding myself that I don't is difficult, though, and takes all focus off of the original trigger.

Sometimes I think about what advice I would give my kid if she were having a similar problem.

Sometimes I curl up in a ball and hold my head and wish and wish and wish.

[Jayr]

To be very honest, whenever I feel less of a guy for whatever trigger.
I first tell my girlfriend, and second think about very rough sex with her.
I don't know, being dominant in bed makes me feel good and forget all my insecurities concerning my masculinity.
Works for me.

Ps. Can't wait for her to get here this summer! <3

Hope she doesn't mind this post o.o
I love you baby!! xD

[Felix]

To be very honest, whenever I feel less of a guy for whatever trigger.
I first tell my girlfriend, and second think about very rough sex with her.
I don't know, being dominant in bed makes me feel good and forget all my insecurities concerning my masculinity.
Works for me.

This is a great tactic.

[Padma]

I keep a version of myself in me who's in the forest, where it's safe (all my life I've had an inner forest I could retreat to, for which I'm immensely grateful). When something triggers me, it can't touch her, and she's there to help me get my perspective back. and she sometimes sardonically reminds me that she's not a victim who needs protecting, she's bloody strong, and so am I - at the end of the day, we've made it to the end of the day .

I've also recently found myself spontaneously sitting telling myself "I love you..." when I've got triggered (I'm living with fairly full-on PTSD at the moment), and been astounded by the impact that has. Triggers = someone in us is scared, and deserves to be met, and cared for.

[Felix]

Padma I don't "meet and care for" the part of me that's scared. I don't know how, and I'm not sure that it would feel right for me to go about it that way. I recognize the part of me that's scared and I make it own that forest. It's a hungry ghost and it has sharp teeth.

[Padma]

We've all got our different ways of experiencing things.

For me, it's been a breakthrough to realise that whatever I'm feeling is a part of me (though never the whole of me), and why would I want to get rid of myself? I've spent decades either being overwhelmed by or running away from feelings, and that's not been working. So instead, I've been trying to come at it with compassion, love. And now I'm continuing to do this because it makes a positive difference (at last) to my irrational fear and anxiety. I've got no idea what might work for anyone else, but you asked what we do, so I'm just telling you what I do when all hell breaks loose .

[Felix]

We've all got our different ways of experiencing things.

For me, it's been a breakthrough to realise that whatever I'm feeling is a part of me (though never the whole of me), and why would I want to get rid of myself? I've spent decades either being overwhelmed by or running away from feelings, and that's not been working. So instead, I've been trying to come at it with compassion, love. And now I'm continuing to do this because it makes a positive difference (at last) to my irrational fear and anxiety. I've got no idea what might work for anyone else, but you asked what we do, so I'm just telling you what I do when all hell breaks loose .

Yep yep yep. I didn't mean to come across like I was arguing with you. The whole thread is a call for techniques and yours are as good as anyone's. Per my own experience, lol I'm willing to bet that sharp-toothed and hungry inner people in forests isn't the way most people are painting any part of themselves.

All of our experiences are mineable for people trying to build a better repertoire of tactics.