Maybe the difference between being angry about something in particular - rather than falling into patterns of behaviour, thoughts and feelings that don't reflect the current situation or do, but are more extreme than the situation merits?

Hard to tell at times. Taking space and time to get a sense of equilibrium and maybe stepping out of the argument can be useful I guess.

SB

Thanks. It is not a term either of the therapists I see use, and I have not fully gleaned the difference from context in which I read it.

I'm thinking that one way to think of a 'trigger' is more like an emotional flashback, rather than just an emotion?

Make sense?

SB

((STOPPERS)))

Oftentimes I find that when I am triggered, underneath that is anger that my boundaries have been violated that I am afraid to feel because it was, in the past, a threat to the relationship. It comes with a sense of powerlessness that what happened in the past will happen again and I can't control it. In my experience, being triggered, then, encompasses anger but also a whole host of other stuff too. My nervous system starts freaking and it's very difficult to stop it.

That's just my experience. Anger to the extent that it becomes rage can also trigger those feelings of powerlessness.

I don't really use the word trigger that much for myself so I'm not best placed to explain what it means to others.

I think I see it similarly to SB. For me, getting triggered is like getting pulled into an enactment, where I respond to events in the here and now based on my past experiences.

To a certain extent you can say that we all respond through a lens based on our past experiences but I suppose you might use the term "triggered" to describe the situation when that response takes a person to a place where they feel unsafe and threatened and it becomes difficult to distinguish between a perceived threat and a real one.

"triggered" to me can be any emotion, not just anger which makes me feel so unsettled that I feel unsafe or threatened. It is getting pulled into an enactment for me where the here and now is being impacted by my past.

Hmmm…interesting question, stoppers. To me, being triggered is very much about me feeling and acting as if I am in the past. So, for example, sometimes I’m angry with my T for something he has said or done, and that’s just regular anger, not me being triggered. But, if he smiles at me when I am angry, that triggers me (because my abuser would smile as he hurt me), and my reactions stop being about the current situation. And like others have said, being triggered can be about any emotion, not just anger. I feel panicked when I hear any constant tapping sound. I feel like throwing up and feel disgusting in my body when I see any mention of CSA.

What’s crazy is that I had no idea that I had any triggers at all before I started therapy. I got triggered, of course, but wasn’t able to tell that my reactions weren’t coming from the present situation. I used to get angry at someone walking near me in high heels, because the tapping sound would trigger my panic, and it was totally their fault But now, even if I can’t control my reaction to the trigger yet, I can at least realize where my feelings are coming from and know that my feelings are my responsibility, not the other person’s.

Stoppers,
I agree that triggering can cause any range of emotions. How I would define it is that I find myself in a set of circumstances that bear enough resemblance to a situation in the past that my unconscious registers danger and goes in to overdrive based more on my experience rather than what is actually going on here and now.

***TW Sexual abusem & gyn details (yes, I see the irony. )

A few years back I went through a solid month of vaginal bleeding and had to have a uterine biopsy. I have a really great gyn, who is very gentle, knows my history and is careful to talk to me and keep me informed of what is going on. But uterine biopsy's at a minimum sting and at times cause some pretty painful cramping. My doctor warned me, and I was ready, but it did hurt (not unmanagable but painful). I got through the whole exam, in fact my doctor told me I was a model patient, but when I got out to my car I got hysterical and broke down shaking an weeping for several minutes. As I later told my T "gee, laying naked on my back and have someone shove a metal object in my vagina and hurt me? Why would I possibly find that upsetting?"

The truth is that cognitively and consciously I knew my doctor was safe and trustworthy and the pain was incidental to his doing something to help me. But my body, my limbic system, experienced being in a place and circumstances where I had been hurt and traumatized and the fear and upset and loathing came flooding back. So I was reacting like something very different than what was actually occuring was going on. That's being triggered to me.

I think it gets very complex with Ts because we do have just here and now feelings that are about here and now and at other times our reactions get tangled up in old stuff that often lends an intensity that seems out of place to what is going on.

Thanks to everyone who answered, it made for interesting reading.

AG