Trigger

Late last night I received a call from a dear friend of mine... a friend who knows the pain of betrayal all too well... a friend who has been on this journey with me for quite some time now....

This friend was in tears last night. She had triggered.

I listened to her try to explain why she felt the way she did and I began to cry, as well, because I knew exactly what she was desperately trying to make sense of and convey. Through the sobs, I could relate whole heartedly to the jumbled words of confusion, heartache, and disappointment in herself.

Feeling literally out of control with your own emotions and your reactions to certain happenings is not pleasant. Feeling your very heart plunge into the pit of your stomach, causing you to feel queasy, like you could spew, isn't either. Your entire body tingling and numb, unable to move your fingers, paralyzes you as your very worst fear of being lied to, led on, or that you will, yet again, be abandoned holds you captive; again.

Why does this keep happening?

What used to be a foreign feeling in my being, has now become strangely familiar; I abhor it.

I was never this way before. I was never one to be paranoid or jealous or needy or suspicious. None of these words or their meanings ever crossed my mind in my previous, simple, uncomplicated life. Now however, dramatic changes have taken place and I find myself triggering over what may seem to others like miniscule and trivial of things, but to my wounded soul, are things of colossal magnitude. And even though my brain is somewhat aware of their plain insignificance, my body and my heart persuade me otherwise. It is then that I unwillingly enter this new world of doubt, fear, and insecurity; it is then that I regress.

As I talked to my girlfriend tonight, before being cut off due to crummy service, I reminded her that this is regrettably something that she (we) will perhaps deal with for the entire duration of our lives. No easy task at hand, but it's something that I believe with enough time, patience and experience, can be eventually managed, if not overcome. We no longer have to be subject to the wicked tailspins of our triggers.

If you can learn to identify what spurred it on, why you reacted the way you did, why it affected you so and then come up with a better alternative of how to handle it the next time it happens, you will be more prepared and these massive hurdles will eventually become smaller in scale. You won't be affected as greatly. Suddenly, everything in your past, everything that once defined you or controlled you will become just an "interesting memory". Even when it seems impossible now, there will come a time when you will look back, shrug your shoulders and say "hmmm.. well that was rather interesting!" and that's it.

At least that's what my shrink keeps telling me... I sure hope he's right! :)

In the meantime, I'm learning to manage my fragile heart. I'm also learning to manage who I let anywhere near my fragile heart so that if and when I do have an unwelcome trigger, I hope that those whom I've opened my heart to will be patient and loving and willing to stand by my side, holding my hand through the difficult time. I say it all the time but I'm going to say it again today: life is a process and it is through these unfortunate and challenging of times that we are able to rise up becoming better, stronger, more beautiful and even more capable versions of our already-pretty- darn- awesome-selves!


*** What makes you trigger? What do you when you trigger? Take a run, sit in a hot bath, curl up in a ball and cry? What do you do to help ease the temporary but extreme pain of your triggers?

p.s. I might be about 2 months away from delivering Little Dude in that picture. I wasn't crowned with the nickname "ACE" for no good reason ;)