KUNG FU FIGHTING- TRIGGER LESSONS FROM THERAPY

Disclaimer-I am not a therapist and am sharing my own experience in this post.  While this may be interesting, it's always best to seek advice from someone trained if you need help working through trauma or getting more insight.

As a kid, I loved the Saturday afternoon Kung Fu TV matinees.
Those movies paint such potential for the underdog.
Given the right Master, proper motivation, and 6 weeks of intense training

the underfed, uncoordinated apprentice is able to 
become someone brand new and super human.
He trains himself to block out pain, 
fights throngs of opponents with his arm dislocated

and defeats the evil overlord who killed his entire family.

Not only can the apprentice achieve forceful physical acrobatics,
he does it with a face radiating serene focus.
Who doesn't want to be that kind of bad-ass?

The attitude of this apprentice is what I thought
trauma processing and recovery was supposed to look like.
I thought the objective of therapy was  

to eradicate trauma, make myself impervious to it, or
eliminate the impact of that experience.

I thought that I would spend some time training 
to achieve the calm focus of a zen master who is never triggered

by her surroundings or circumstances.
I couldn't imagine any other goal that would convince
me to spend that much money or time.

Egh....right.

I'd like to pause for a second and make sure I'm clear on 
what I mean by the word 'triggered'.
I'm not talking about the way the kids describe
any uncomfortable, dramatic or inappropriate reaction.

I'm talking about the deep seated instinct that happens in a blink
 when your primal self is reminded of trauma.

The fight or flight, the flashback, the intensity of experience that

pushes you to react 
irrationally (to others), with force or fright.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, this is the 
definition of a psychological trigger:

something that causes someone to feel upset and frightened because they are made to remember something bad that has happened in the past.

Triggers are unique to each of us and everyone who has been through

 traumatic situations has them.
Triggers can be smells, situations, sounds, events.
They can also be more complicated things like phrases,
words or labels, physical touch or even weather patterns.
Triggers are not always understood-even by the person who
is walking around with them.
They are unintentionally acquired and you 
 are often unaware you have them until 
they appear out of no where like a lightning bolt.
Also...when you are reacting to a trigger,
you generally feel as if that is the ONLY POSSIBLE reaction.
It is justified one thousand percent by you in that moment.
You can be the most non-violent person on the planet
but might do violent things in response to a trigger.
You might be safely walking down the street
and suddenly have a racing heart and an urge to hide in response
to the smell of a stranger's aftershave.
Triggers have force behind them that is different than 
an opinion or a perspective.

I have learned some pretty amazing things in therapy-
but the plan to prevent myself from being triggered was a big fail.

It took a while for my therapist to realize that this was actually my plan.
It felt so obvious to me that I didn't think to say it out loud.
Once she realized it though, she did a very non-therapist thing.
She shared something so direct and useful that 
I can only assume it should be shared as a universal truth.
News flash-therapists ARE a lot like zen masters in that they
almost never ever tell you that you're training to do or what 
part that task plays in finding the path to healing. 
They usually just nod and ask a few, pointed questions-
then give you a new, slightly confusing homework assignment.
They do NOT give you bite size, useful catch phrases.
Usually.

Here's the gem of wisdom:

You cannot control that you are triggered.

You can only control how you react to the trigger.

This was revolutionary information to me.

I had been laboring under the impression that my job

was to overcome the things that triggered me

by getting to the point where I was impervious to them.

I was trying so hard to become a rock who could not be affected

by any of the terrible things that had happened.

Whenever I was exposed to something that triggered me,

I was so disappointed in myself.
I wanted with all of my being to not have an 

increased heart rate, acid filled stomach,

constricted throat and especially...
ALL of those damn feelings that weren't about the present moment.
I wanted to have sounds and smells no longer
put me back in that place where I had met something terrifying.
I wanted to be able to listen to other people's
confabulations of my experience without a reaction, 
without needing to defend myself, or correct the other person's explantation.
I wanted to be able to pass the selfish person who 
took apart my life at the seams
and immediately think loving thoughts.
I wanted to be the apprentice-
stoic to the end, in control and 
WINNING damn it.

Knowing that I will always be triggered infuriated me.
Like, river of rage kind of fury.

What do you mean I will never be free of these triggers?

It felt like every person who has ever used or abused 
me was getting the last laugh, 
like all my work towards health and self-love was a farce.

If I had to keep the trigger that was installed in me during 
that traumatic incident, then I would never be able to move past it.

Right?

After a week of rage....I settled down enough to hear the other

 half of that statement.

I can not control the fact that I am triggered 
but I can choose my reaction.
I have the power to choose.
That felt new to me.

I mean, I understood on some superficial level that I 
was choosing my actions but I had been

trained with my whole life to react to my environment.
My personal handbook as a kid was 
a limited, survivalist mentality that allowed me to navigate
the sea of chaos and danger I grew up inhabiting.

In war time, you react as quickly as possible
using the action that has the best chance of keeping you safe.
Triggers can be useful in that world because you don't
even have to register what is happening before you react.
I was stuck thinking my only choice was to either react
in the moment, exactly as the trigger directed me to react
or become immune to the trigger.
I didn't realize that there was another possible choice
so I hadn't attempted to choose a different one.

What do you do when the war is over?
What do you do when you are safe?
I hadn't contemplated this specifically-
how to live with the old handbook but develop new pages in the book.

The next few posts will be about choosing your reaction and 
some tools I used to navigate this area.

If you didn't know this was possible before,
feel free to have your rage week.

Feeling all the feelings is a step you can't really skip.
And rage can often clear the field to allow other things to grow.

You cannot uninstall the trigger-

no matter how much you try to escape it.

The trauma actually happened and will be there when you reach your end.

There is a way through that can be learned.
It is not impossible-but it does require something from you.
You have to work at it to be able to use it.

It will not make you into a zen master and you will not be able to defeat ninjas.

Necessarily.....