What do you do if you find you’ve triggered someone? You’ve done something you probably thought was harmless, or no big deal, and the response is huge, perhaps distressing and impossible to make sense of. Maybe they shut down, or broke down into tears, had a massive panic attack or exhibited other PTSD symptoms. In my experience, this does not reliably go well so I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far.
You may feel what’s happened is unfair. You did nothing seriously wrong. They are reacting based on something historical that isn’t your fault so why should you have to change your behaviour? With the reaction seeming disproportionate, you may feel they are being ridiculous. This all serves to protect you from having to consider your own behaviour or take responsibility for making changes.
A traumatised person who has been triggered into a response is not well placed to explain to you what just happened. Explainnig requires trust, and you’ve just put them in a very bad place – however innocently. It is worth bearing in mind that these kinds of responses are like people traumatised in war being put back in the trenches by the sounds of fireworks. To have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder you have to have been traumatised.
One of the worst things you can make a trauma survivor do is go over what happened to them. You don’t need to understand what happened to them. You need to care about them and respect them enough to listen to what they need you to do differently. If you care about a person, you’ll do that. If you don’t – then don’t expect them to let you get very close to them.
One of the hardest things in this can be looking at behaviour that is a little bit off. Did you shout at them? Did you touch them without consent? Did you say something that opened the door to a very dark place? Did you make a rape joke, or minimise something that was serious for them? I’ve had several rounds of guys who unexpectedly kissed me and who were not willing to not do that for the sake of my wellbeing. I don’t do well with touch, or with being surprised, and I’ve been panicked by this.
It can be really uncomfortable to consider that behaviour you thought was ok is triggering for someone you thought you cared about. It can be hard undertaking to change how you think and what you do. It can be painful seeing something you thought was innocent related to rape culture, domestic abuse and coercive control. It was just a little thing you did, right? It was just small. You want it to be ok. You want to tell them why they should be ok with what you did… if you want your feelings to matter and their distress to be irrelevant, you are going to keep pushing those trauma buttons. If that seems fair enough to you, and like something a trauma survivor should be ok with… consider that you are not the hero of this story.
Druid Life 
February 8th, 2020 at 10:45 am
Reblogged this on Where Kizzia Lives and commented:
An excellent post:
February 8th, 2020 at 12:59 pm
Reblogged this on Brighid's Hope and commented:
Well worth reading, whether as someone living with PTSD/Complex PTSD, or in seeking understanding of people living with any form of PTSD
February 10th, 2020 at 7:51 am
Thank you!
February 8th, 2020 at 7:12 pm
I had former friends who reacted ‘over the top’ and directed all their hate towards me over a small matter that could have been rectified. Later one of their male friends had gone to court through possessing indecent images of children, but they overlooked this deceit and supported them. As you say life can be so unfair, but as we know its not a out us personally its more about them. xx
February 10th, 2020 at 7:51 am
People… people make no sense at all sometimes. Sorry you had to go through that.
February 9th, 2020 at 5:58 pm
it is not always that simple and sometimes all parties including those who were triggered have to take their share of resolution. Last week I was at a funeral, a group of us were sat together at the wake after and the discussion turned to cancer, one of the ladies at the table had just been diagnosed, a few of us were talking about personal experiences with friends and family trying to reassure her that once the ball is moving the NHS so deal with this illness swiftly when one of the women broke down in tears, it turned out that she lost a family member to the illness, but her tears then made the original speaker (the lady who had just been diagnosed) feel like she could not discuss her own health. Just as the person speaking should not feel guilty about inadvertently triggering someone whose circumstances she did not know, the person being triggered needs to accept that others may also be dealing with their own issues and respect they have the right to talk about their own experiences.
February 10th, 2020 at 7:50 am
Issues are always bigger than I can do justice to in a single post so, thank you for broadening this.