I have had and still do have many triggers.
Big and small, good and bad, societal and personal.
The good ones, I try to find the root and see if I can't make them better or last longer.
The bad ones, I talk them out, think them through, make a decision as to whether I can dispel them or make them ineffective in disrupting my life.
Therapy, many hours of it are based on this, techniques that do work for me become better and stronger all the time.
It takes a certain amount of facing them head on when it is feasible, other times hitting them sideways.
How this works, like so many things for all of us, is pretty much going to be different from person to person.
But as I do this an a consistent basis, I become more adapt at doing it and can almost categorize those ones that are mine.
I see no choice if they are to be beaten, rather than letting them control my life.
Experience has it's own rewards.
This seems to be even more important to me for the societal ones than my very own personal ones that I alone own.
They are the cruelest of them all, not only do I have to fix my personal version of them, I have to put up with all the variations that society manifests them.
The very worse version of these are the ones that cisciety imposes on me that I am somehow wrong, that there is a cure that I need.
*'Really? A cure you say? Can I get that OTC? What do you do for yourself and your bigotry? Is there an OTC product for that as well?'
My very own personal ones I decided to take head on in a way that I found actually works for me, but I don't know if it would be effective for many others.
I simply started out to write a short story for my therapist and it exploded into uncharted memories that had been locked up tight.
The result was a few hundred thousand words, that have been condensed down to eighty thousand something, once the editing and trimming took place.
An unexpected finding of truths I found under the rocks of a past that would have best been left alone if it wasn't for the increasingly disturbing nightmares that made no sense, as they seldom do, at least not in the way we think once awake and aware of our conscious thoughts.
That whole process over several months in finding ever more conflicting thinking was an ordeal in agony that I'm now used to enough to continue forward.
Although the ciscietal triggers that used to bother me are for the most part pretty ineffectual at their best, they do still exist and are annoying at the most.
I suppose I have discussed them enough that they are worn out from just that.
There are however the transcietal ones that still remain, but they aren't so much triggers as simply annoying as hell.
*If you're binary and can't wrap your head around the fact that non-binary is very real and apparent to most people,
stop right here and check your yourself out from the rest of the comment.
I don't want to be the one one responsible for a potential rant of epic proportions about your personal triggers when it comes to this.
And if you do,... I've heard it all before and dumping your triggers all over me won't solve a thing for you.
They used to trigger a response from me that wasn't the best in behavior, but I did eventually learn to get over them.
It took reasoning and realizations.
The reasoning was easy enough, I'm non-binary and it isn't possible to to make me believe it isn't true.
But the militancy of some was a lot harder to get over.
It is for a lot of people who are non-binary.
The insistence vs the questioning can be a little much.
This is a trigger that a lot of non-binaries have to put up with within transciety.
To have their struggles to come to terms with themselves devalued and told they are wrong, that there is only black or white and you are in denial, when getting out of denial is a problem to begin with for quite a few.
It isn't some abstract thinking, a wish to have things our own way, it is real and to have someone come along and tell you your dead wrong just sucks.
I guess I just see it as this,...
The struggles we all have as trans can be enormous, agonizing, horrendous in it's position within the larger framework of cisiety.
To know all your life that your body doesn't match your mind, even the sudden realization that you have been in denial of it is a staggering thing to deal with.
To have to struggle through the barriers and such that society has in place, despite the gains made in recent years especially, is tough enough.
Along comes the non-binaries and that does seem like it would be taking away from your struggles, implying they aren't what they are.
Just when you think you've come so far, along comes these forest creatures skipping through like life is just fine.
I get how it must feel, I have the very same reaction when I'm told I am wrong and that my gender is a figment of imagination, wishful thinking.
I guess I can understand the struggle to keep the fight for who you are centered and balanced, away from that edge that society generally forces you to.
It isn't that much different from my struggles not only with cisciety, but with transciety as well.
What do I know about it as an imaginary unicorn from the imaginary forest?
Those eighty some thousand words of events from my past have a person who was an essential part of me not losing it completely.
There is even an entire chapter about my girlfriend, my best friend, the love of my life,... who happened to be transsexual.
We were both very young, it was a long time ago and we talked a lot about ourselves.
Not the political things although there certainly were a lot to discuss.
We were in love and talked about ourselves and learned from each other.
Found out we had many more things in common than we had as differences.
Her freewheeling, free spirited approach to life allowed me to understand binary on her terms.
It allowed me to explore my non-binary feelings in the same way. On my terms.
Wanna question whether she was a real transsexual?
Wouldn't that just be another trigger for us both?
And that's my point, why is it necessary to turn it into something like a trigger when it shouldn't be?
I accept binary, don't really understand it, how could I, how could you really understand non-binary, so why not just accept it?
The idea that we could be taking something away from each other is childish and undeserving given the struggles we all have with cisciety.
So I don't let it trigger me, at least I do make a huge effort for it not to if it does.
I can work around it well enough for myself.
But it is a huge trigger for those who at this time, consider themselves to be non-binary...
That could change, we discover more about ourselves all the time and come to different conclusions based on our own personal thoughts and events in life.
We do this with most everything at one time or another.
This is no different.
Feel cheated because someone has the realization or even simply wishes to explore this idea of non-binary?
I don't blame you, I would too.
Except I have look at this as a way for people to grow by having as many options on the table as we can.
We are all looking for an easier path in life.
Why limit the options?
Why look at trans as black and white like the very cisciety who told you that gender is between your legs?
I prefer to see transciety as a lot of things, and binary is definitely one of them.
My girlfriend I spoke about wasn't the first or the last.
I don't place limiting values on people, especially on trans people, cisciety has done enough of that already.
Well maybe I do put some limiting values on some cis people, but they seem to be limiting themselves even more...
Yep, it's a trigger, one I see quite a few times even right here in the non-binary section, it happens.
Just thought you might want to know it does happen.
And if it is a trigger, consider how the source of it could be the very same thing that your reaction to it is that same source, the same thing.
Bigotry come in many disguises, having it as a trigger is a hard one to get over.
I think I park mine at the door, what little I really have when it all comes right down to it and I stop to think about it in a logical way.
But I do see it as a trigger too many times and I also see it going both ways.
I'm as guilty as anyone, if I let it bother me and nudge that kind of thing, but I'm defensive about my gender, just like most everyone is whether cis or trans.
Triggers suck when they hurt.
I don't want to hurt anyone, you don't either I assume.
If you do, I don't want you around me.
If I do that to you, I would expect the same.
And I don't fool myself in thinking I don't do that.
I don't think anyone wants to do that, fool themselves into some kind of thinking that is limiting to others and themselves...
Bigotry is a major trigger and most of them have some kind of element of it in them.
But also consider this,...
Cisciety is more accepting of the word transgender than it is transsexual, they have a hang-up about sexual.
Weird, but you know this is true. It's also so bad, some less than clear thinkers, have a hang-up about the very prefix, trans...
Trans-portation has got to get stuck in their mouths every so often... 'Ah, ahh, that cars and highway stuff, yah know what I mean?'
They are also more accepting of those who are perceived as the same yet different as opposed to just different.
'OMG, you're different! My bigotry cloud has just enveloped my thinking, I don't know how to deal with this crisis of humankind!'
Pretty odd way to move through our journeys of life...
But the biggest thing to consider of all, is that we all have more in common than we have as differences.
Ativan
