Out of Left Field
With the advent of social media, the word ‘trigger’ has come to mean many things to many people. The first time I became aware of the idea that someone could be ‘triggered’ was watching First Blood with Sylvester Stallone. In the movie, he played John Rambo, a Vietnam Veteran who is harassed and arrested by the local police in a small US town. Whilst being restrained by officers in one of the holding cells, he is reminded of being tortured by the Viet Cong. As you can imagine, all hell breaks loose and Rambo escapes.
The film was made in the early eighties, and I was on the cusp of becoming a teenager. What I had witnessed, but could not then describe, was someone suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) being triggered and reacting disproportionately to the stimulus. We (the broader public) did not have the language for this 40 years ago. The fact that I can remember it to this day does show it must have influenced my young mind.
Triggered
Now that we're all plugged into social media and sharing more ideas than previously, most of us will understand the word ‘trigger’ when used in an appropriate context. As I discussed in the previous article Concept Creep the meaning of words evolve the more they are utilised. The idea of suffering PTSD and being triggered has moved well beyond the boundaries of individuals traumatised in a war zone.
Whether or not the meaning of these words has been diluted is worth dedicating an entire article to its discussion. That said, at its core, a ‘trigger’ is something seemingly ordinary in the here-and-now. This can be a particular noise, a certain smell, or even just a specific phrase someone uses that has the potential to act like an unexpected switch. This switch doesn't just bring up a bad memory; it throws a person right back into the intense feelings of a past event, often something deeply distressing or traumatic they went through. You might see someone react in a way that seems completely over the top for a particular scenario. Often it can cause humour or bemusement in those witnessing a person seemingly becoming undone by nothing. In fact, you are witnessing an internal switch being flipped, unleashing a wave of genuine fear, panic, or pain tied to that experience. It’s incredibly personal – what flips that switch for one person might be totally meaningless to another.
Initially, it comes from every direction
In the initial stages of grief, triggers can come from absolutely every direction. The people we love, particularly our children, are central to our lives. Once they are removed, the void and everything associated with it can elicit an emotional response. As time progresses, this does abate. Tagging on social media puts a label on a post or photo to link it to a person ('@') or a topic ('#'). It helps show who's in the picture or what the post is about, and lets others find it more easily. This tagging process is a useful analogy for how our brains behave after a traumatic event such as the death of a child. The brain will create many hashtags for obvious subjects. This could be pictures of the person, their favourite song, or clothes they used to wear. Unfortunately, it will also begin recruiting hashtags from events occurring after the death for an extensive period. Examples of this could be the area near the funeral venue or seemingly trivial things like the initial movies watched after the loss.
Obvious Connections
Anyone who has experienced a significant level of trauma in their lives will probably not be surprised by what I have written. Eventually, over time, we start to recognise these triggers and start to utilise strategies to deal with these scenarios. We can learn to brace ourselves for an event, to focus on the job at hand. A paramedic may come across a horrifically injured individual, but they will still perform their job by focusing on what needs to be done for the person under their care.
This is made a little easier for the paramedic because once they have put on the uniform and started work, they have prepared themselves mentally for the possibility of seeing some disturbing things. They also have a clearly defined role and will not feel helpless in these scenarios.
Over time, an anniversary of a death, a birthday, or a significant date can be managed. We know what to expect, and we can anticipate the possibility of being ‘triggered’. This is the grieving process becoming easier. You are not thrown back into the maelstrom of the traumatic event. This is not to say that these days are easy, but like bad weather, we have a plan for how to deal with it.
Back to Rambo
In the movie First Blood, the police officers’ cruelty was similar to how Rambo had been tortured, and to us, the viewers, it became clear why he reacted the way he did. It is often not like this. It would make for confusing viewing if he was triggered by the smell of the holding cell.
As humans, we make associations in our subconscious minds that we may not be aware of until after we have been triggered by an event. The stimulus has quietly been tagged and filed away in the recesses of our psyche. These are the events that can cause the most upset later in the grieving process. You can lull yourself into the mindset that you have catalogued all the triggering events and thus will know how to deal with them when they appear. This is when we can be at our most vulnerable and can be caught out.
Out of Left Field
On many occasions, I have found myself reacting completely disproportionately to an unknown stimulus. Often after these events, I can understand what caused my reaction but would never really have been able to predict it. I had to go through the experience and quickly identify that I was losing my way.
Some triggers are so deeply hidden and come out of left field, that I cannot make the associations in real time and must suffer the embarrassment of an angry outburst and/or tears. If this happens in public, then it can be humiliating for me and the people with me. If I am lucky, my anger may be directed at a person who may deserve it. I have not always been that lucky, and it can be hard to apologise if you do not know why you are behaving in a particular manner.
I am hesitant to give examples because, on one level, it is hard to explain, and it just feels too personal to share. That said, I do have one example that may help explain the strange nature of the connections that can form in our minds and the disproportionate reactions.
Déjà vu
After my son died, I had to close my self-defence business. I ran several classes in two locations. It was a relatively small operation. I had to do some administration and refund a small amount of money to each of my students. There was no formal last class, and friends dealt with the students face-to-face. Via email, I was able to settle affairs with everyone.This does not sound so traumatic, and at the time, with everything else going on, I did not think it was.
A few years later, I bumped into one of the students at an event. We exchanged pleasantries and briefly spoke about the classes. Afterwards, as I drove home, I started to reflect, possibly for the first time, on closing the business down. This is where it gets very difficult to explain; for the next few hours, I had what I can only describe as a very deep and prolonged déjà vu experience. I had only experienced something similar once before that had probably been a concussion... but this wasn’t. When I reported what had occurred to my doctor, I was sent to a specialist to test for possible epilepsy. Thankfully, it wasn’t, but something had triggered a very strange response. Upon reflection, I believe it was the first time in the first few years that I had thought about closing my self-defence business down. I had never processed that this had occurred directly because of my son’s death. It is obvious looking back at it after the triggering event that this connection was there. What surprised me was the extremely strange nature of my reaction.
It will happen again
Things like this have happened before and will happen again. The traumatic nature of certain types of grief can manifest as strange and upsetting symptoms triggered by seemingly unconnected or harmless events. We cannot predict them, but we must try and identify them as soon as we can. Hopefully, it will be a single event that our mind has decided to process in an unusual manner. Initially, they can be very upsetting and confusing, as we do not really know why they are occurring. If you can calm yourself, you can generally get an insight into what is causing this. Accepting that these events will occur over time does get easier. Like aftershocks after an earthquake, they still have enough power to shake you up a little bit, but they are to be expected.