Amongst survivors of abuse there has always been a lot of discussion about triggers.   It is my belief that survivors teach each other to live in fear of triggers.  So much attention is placed upon triggers and most survivor lists go to great lengths to avoid or diminish triggers.  This in itself is a good thing.  I do not want to live my life lurching from one trigger to the next.  However I do believe the way this is done within the online survivor communities rather than diminishing, adds to the power of the trigger.

When I first go online, I was taught, like all other survivors to splat words.  For the uninitiated a splat is when you replace the vowels in a triggering word with a *, so sex would become s*x.  The longer I stayed with online support groups the longer the list of splatted words grew.  Not only swear words, and words involved with the abuse, but anything to do with family, religion, therapy and nearly every situation involved in living.  I finally got totally fed up with the whole thing when I was told off for writing that I had to go cut up some chicken for dinner.  Being told, even in that context it should of been c*t was the last straw for us.  However my annoyance of that lead me to find my own strength about triggers.  It began our thinking, so maybe, as stupid as it was, it was a good thing.

For me, the process of adding * to a word does not take away the triggering effect.  If you are going to be triggered by the word sex you will be no matter how it is spelt.  The brain will translate s*x into sex when it reads it in context anyway.  When adding a * into a word you are given it more power than it deserves, and therefore adding to the trigger.  It is like saying, I am weak, I can not look after myself.  these letters on the page(or screen) are stronger than I am.  You are allowing a word to control you, allowing the past to rule your life.  And by splatting the word it will only make it more obvious, make it stand out more.  In a page of words it will be like highlighting it, pulling your attention to it and therefore become more powerful, more triggering.

I have found that the reality of the world of a survivor is one full of triggers.  There is no escaping them.  You don't even have to participate in the world.  They can be in the food we eat, what we watch on television.  For us going to sleep is triggering, but no matter how hard you try, eventually you have to face it.  Triggers from the past run through life.  They can be as obvious as discussions on sex, or benign innocent ones that no one, even the person triggered realises are there.  For us, the word yellow, either spoken or written down triggers us into feeling of nausea.  For a long time we had no idea what was causing it, but out of nowhere we would be engulfed by the feeling we were going to be sick. the word yellow holds some cue, some meaning that we have yet to fully understand.  But we can not escape it, nor can we predict and therefore avoid being triggered by it.  We refuse to live our life hiding out from triggers.  If that was to happen we would become immobilised, unable to function even in the slightest of ways.

There are a number of things we know trigger us, and amounts people that are dealing with similar issues there will be standard triggering discussion topics.  On some email groups I am on, there are rules that subject lines should have trigger warnings, if these topics are going to be going to be discussed.  I find these warnings, or content information, as I prefer to call them, both valid and helpful.  It is not taking away my power to self determine.  But rather it is giving me information to make a decision on what is best for me.  If I am in a particularly fragile state I can choose not to read, or protect those that will be disturbed from reading.  But it is still our decision.  The same thing happens in real life with those people that know of our abuse history.  Recently a party was organised for the group I am involved in.  My friend, when he told me about it, informed us it would be on the Winter Solstice.  Knowing we were ritually abused he wanted us to be prepared and know that information before deciding whether to attend.  He wasn't saying not to go, it wasn't because he viewed us as weak and needing protecting.  It was an acknowledgment of our issues and aiding our choices.  that is what trigger warnings should be about.  giving someone enough information to aid them in making the most healthiest decision for themselves.

With being triggered on a regular basis we have two choices.  We can let them control us, give into the past and have a life that is ruled by what happened to us.  We believed for years that the way to deal with the past was to forget it, to move on with the future.  Any thinking of the past, trying to deal with the issues of it was wrong, it showed we were bad and weak and showed we were victims.  We thought therefore that triggers need to be ignored, that the best way was to pretend it wasn't happened.  That was strong and healthy.  Or so we thought.  But we have found the bravest thing, the strongest, the way to be a warrior fighting for a life is to confront the things we wish to hide from.  It is through dealing with them that we find our own strength and the life we wish.  There is nothing wrong or weak about standing up to your fears, about thinking of your past, looking the abuse square in the face.  So what do we do when we are triggered, should we hide from them?

The first and for us the most important thing about being triggered is getting through them.  When they hit there is nothing else more important.  You have to make it to the other side in one piece before anything else can happen.  There are ways that work for us.  Breathing exercises to calm the body, self talk spread through the community to keep us as grounded and safe as possible.  The whole focus changes into pure survival mode.  It's just the way of triggers, you don't know when they will hit, and you can't stop them once they have taken hold.  You just have to survive.  But it is from that point onwards that we have changed how we deal with them.  Turning a horrible experience into something helpful, something to build our awareness and wellness.

Once a trigger happens we have chosen to learn from it, to find a way that we can grow.  We look at triggers now as opportunities.  We can choose which way we deal with them.  We choose now to find out what happens when we are triggered.  We move through it, finding what has triggered us, associating it with the past and rephrasing the messages, or understanding them as abusive and not something we wish in our lives.  Now it is in no way as easy as it sounds.  But recovery isn't easy.  It hurts to look at the past to understand why it is triggering us.  It takes a long time to re-educate those that are triggered.  It's scary to confront the past.  If it wasn't we wouldn't have to work at it, it would just happen.  But the decision needs to be made.  Are we going to live our life in fear, or take a risk and challenge the past.  We have chosen the latter.  We want more.  So we struggle our way through the trigger and hopefully come out the other side as a better person, someone we like more than the person we were before we started.

When we first joined the email groups, years ago, there was a habit amongst a lot of writers to use the phrase, "you are in my prayers" or "I will pray for you".   Instantly intense anger would hit, we would hear someone threatening violence.  It was horrible, I didn't really understand it.  So I would avoid all the letters from people likely to say that.  About a year ago I decided that I had had enough of hiding from those words.  We made a brave decision.  After a lot of preplanning, making sure as many were safe as needed, we purposely read a letter we knew that phrase would be in.  We triggered ourselves.  Once the reaction happened we were able to locate the person that was the most effected by it.  We allowed her to vent to us, knowing we were alone so nothing violent would happen to anyone if we allowed her to get angry.  Then when she had gotten most of it out of her system and had calmed down enough to talk to us, we asked her why it made her so mad.  We found out that day that it had nothing to do with religion (our first assumption) that it had to do with the lost of power, of someone putting their beliefs whatever they are onto us.  The person involved had rebelled against the family's belief that we had to behave like everyone else, that we had to hold the same views and opinions of our family.  She had learnt to see that in the slightest attempt, trying to prevent it from taking hold, so would react this way even when it wasn't necessary.  We spend the next 6 months working with her on that, until now it only causes a brief minor irritation, rather than the intense rage we would originally feel.

That's the thing about triggers, we can learn a lot about ourselves.  Under the triggers are issues that are important to us, either of things we wish to remove from our lives, or important parts of us that need acknowledged and strengthen.  With work and growth, triggers will diminish on their own, they will no longer hold the power that our abusers placed in them.  But if we remain afraid, hide from triggers, act like victims that need protected, the past will always control us, and we will forever live in its shadow.