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How do you feel about the subject of triggers and reactions? Are you able to identify and talk (or write) about the t/r in your life? Please share whatever you feel in response. Here is some of my story.
Triggers in the context of psychological and emotional health came to the forefront of my attention when I started an assignment as house parent to six at-risk teen-aged boys. The organization, with its culture of clinical therapists, spoke often of triggers, and the street-wise boys courageously exposed their vulnerable selves in “circle” to talk about their triggers.
My own primary set of triggers has been rooted in a rare neurological sensitivity called misophonia, in which negative emotions (anger, fright, hatred, disgust) are triggered by specific sounds.
Imagine that certain noises cause an involuntary reaction in your nervous system. Instantly you feel revulsion, anguish, distress and non-localized pain — all rolled into one.
The automatic reaction tightens your muscles, constricts and contracts you physically and emotionally. When the noise passes, the tension doesn’t. It stores in muscles and body tissue, layer upon layer.
Now imagine that the triggering sounds are not rare occurrences but common human noises like eating, drinking, sniffing, whistling, spoon clanking, paper rustling, yawning, etc. It is far more than not liking or being disturbed by the noises, it is painful in an undefined way. If you haven’t learned to manage it, the person making such sounds may get a harsh stare from you, building tension in relationships and isolating you further.This has been my central life challenge. I visited more than 30 traditional and alternative health practitioners in search of a resolution. A kinesiologist-chiropractor expressed frustration that when he got one muscle group to relax, another sprang tight. Several body workers were impressed with the sheaths they encountered and said my muscles were tight as iron. I was just as tight and frozen on the inside, and out of touch with my emotions and true self.
I was easily triggered to react to stimuli and my own projected thoughts, even if I muffled the reaction to not display it. My earliest memory of having the selective sound reaction is from age four. Later in life when I asked my father if he knew of any incident at birth which could be connected with the syndrome, he wrote that from birth I screamed angrily. It seems I was just plain mad to be in a human body.
While unconsciously storing triggered reactions to selective sounds in my body, I started closing down due to my reaction to loss and trauma. When I was age 12, my older brother died in a car accident. Nine years later my younger brother, with whom I was close, died when struck by a drunk driver.
My heart energy shrank from the pain. I rebounded into religion and a physical relationship. By the time my mother passed unexpectedly another nine years later in open heart surgery, I was numb inside. After another nine years, my wife went into brain surgery and nine years after that we divorced. Eleven years later, my dad passed. He was a brilliant, intellectual man, a man of science and professor at Colorado State University. We loved each other but had difficulty to connect. I may also have had a touch of autism or Asperger Syndrome, though it was not diagnosed. Certainly some of the symptoms fit. Over the years, I lost all touch with feeling and my inner compass.In addition to the misophania challenge, I fit the profile of a Highly Sensitive Person. According to Elaine Aron, Ph.D., this innate trait is found in 15 to 20% of the population. The brains of highly sensitive persons (HSPs) actually work a little differently than others’. The HSP is more aware than others of subtleties, mainly because their brain processes information and reflects on it more deeply.
Also, my astrological sign, genetic disposition and personal composition give me a strong mental force which, unguided, tend to isolate me and shut down my feelings. For years I ‘put up my shields’ to ward off pain of being around people and lived in my head.
Yet the flame did not die out, and at a turning point I started living my truth. It has been a sixteen year journey to begin to feel again. The shift in me was perceptible when I started self-developed practices which bring my unconsciously stored triggered reactions into conscious awareness, where they naturally dissolve or at least can be observed. Merging with ‘what is’ when I can has made the difference as I balance the tendency towards intellectual arrogance with actions based on the e-qualities and higher human feelings such as humility, openness and integration.
My neurological sensitivities turned from tormenting challenges to being a gift after I began whole human practices. They provide a barometer of my emotional and body/mind climate. When I am easily triggered and feel frustration, annoyance, disappointment, impatience, judgment, anxiety and so on, I know the inner landscape has waned pale. When I am able to get through the sounds that tortured me, with ease and grace, warmth and compassion, I know my inner landscape is richer and more vital. I am appreciative for this tool of self-awareness.
Joyfully, this new way of experiencing the triggers comes at the same time as corresponding realizations for gently thawing the frozen suppressed emotions, shifting from emotions (triggers/reactions) to higher human feelings and enriching and strengthening the inner landscape by embodying the e-qualities — as a way to begin living as a whole human.
Dear Anita,
{{You adopted the following diagnoses/ labels as possibilities or truth about you: Misophania, Autism/ Asperger, and Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). I believe you were not born with any of these conditions. Symptoms included in these diagnoses and the label of HSP developed in your person as a result of a troubling childhood that you experienced by the age of 4 and ongoing, after that age.}}
Where does your information come from, Anita? I am interested to go to that source. The importance of the diagnoses is fading fast, as I am re-creating myself and there is no diagnosis that is ‘in concrete.’ But I would like to know your source.
{{You wrote: “Later in life when I asked my father if he knew of any incident at birth which could be connected with the syndrome, he wrote that from birth I screamed angrily. It seems I was just plain mad to be in a human body.” I challenge your father’s answer to your question. I suggest that as a new born you cried no different than any other baby. It was not your anger that your father detected in your crying, it was his anger that he projected into the baby-Gary. I suggest he was angry watching and hearing you cry.}}
Dad wrote that as he was watching all the new-borns in the hospital ward, I was red-faced and screaming above all the other babies. A priest standing next to him point to me and said, ‘that’s an ornery one, isn’t it?’ Dad said his thought was, ‘That’s my son.’ I know that sharing this personally online may not be wise. I am going to revise the way I write in the future.
{{I am also suggesting that your sensitivity to noises: “noises like eating, drinking, sniffing, whistling, spoon clanking, paper rustling, yawning, etc.” is not a neurological condition you were born with, but a result of trauma by the age of 4 and ongoing. Here is a scenario that I am imagining and letting my creative thinking take me, but as creative as I make it, I think it is more likely true than that you were born with the conditions you listed….Your father is an angry man, a quietly angry man. You can tell he is angry by the way he looks at you. Everyone in the family is afraid of his anger, walking on eggshells. The family is sitting for dinner, but there is no calm in the get together. The dinner is eerily quiet. In that tense, threatening silence, no one is talking, or the few words said, like “Please pass me the salt”, are said in curt, angry tone by your father as the others comply. In that silence the sounds of “eating, drinking… spoon clanking” are magnified in your ears. At other times in the home, you hear loudly any sound, because you are on alert. Your father’s anger is threatening, because when someone is angry, he/ she may attack, so you don’t know when that will happen. }}
Sorry, this does not fit in any way with my experience. Does it come from your own life memories?
{{Alert, every sound is magnified and you are perpetually preparing yourself to protect yourself from the danger of his to-be-actualized anger. Alone in your fear, not adequately connected to a parent, you withdraw.}}
It is a scenario, but one that does not come from my life. My parents were both caring, loving and devoted to the family. Dad and I had difficulty connecting during my turbulent teens when I rebelled against society.
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