Memory/Triggers

You don't need to sift through and identify every little piece of vomit to know it's vomit.

This chart has three sections: PARTS means all the stimuli you experience and have to assimilate into a complete memory. They are also labels/tags/identifiers that refer you to a certain memory, commonly called "Triggers". COMPONENTS means these are what the memories are made up of. Think of the PARTS as the name and the COMPONENTS as the definition, like in a Dictionary. APPLICATION means how these separate components of a memory are applied in a real-life example. Using the Dictionary example again, these are sentences that puts it all together in a practical application. PARTS typically are knitted together with other PARTS, so experiencing one PART may make you feel another PART.

EXAMPLE: You smell a candle at a store, and your mind right away brings up pictures of Thanksgiving dinners, family gathered around smiling and talking excitedly, kids running around, beautiful wreaths of fall foliage and harvest decorations, and you feel happy and a little excited. You smelled (SENSORY) a hunk of wax that has a Pumpkin Pie scent (COMPONENTS), but the smell itself is a sensory tag/trigger to a set of memories (APPLICATION). The smell (SENSORY) also made you feel happy and a little excited (EMOTIONS).

MEMORY CHART

PARTS	COMPONENTS	APPLICATION
SENSORY	sight, touch, smell, sound, taste	smelling abuser cologne; seeing a traumatic location; feeling a familiar sensation while making love that is negative; hearing a baby cry or a dog yelp
EMOTIONS	fear, revulsion, love, betrayal, excitement, hate	fearful of a person; repulsed by a disturbing action; feeling betrayed by the one you trusted to keep you safe; feeling the excitement cause by an adrenaline rush; love for the family member that is abusing the victim; hatred for abuser or abusers actions
BACKGROUND	how the participant(s) was involved in your life, what led up to the event, what happened during the event, what happened after the event	being lured to a secluded place by a family friend; laying awake at nights fearful of impending attack; the trauma of a violent act and how everyone involved behaved; abusers acting like nothing happened the next day
INTELLECT	trust, coping skills, participant(s) roles, distortion of paradigm (preconceived views on life), disorientation, ability to comprehend event, ability to adapt to event	trust is destroyed by an abuser; not knowing if trust is good or bad; a trusted brother is now a dangerous rapist; life and people are not as you thought they were; your mental "rules" or "boundaries" and expectations are shattered; dissociation due to unreality and almost dreamlike nightmare event; all abusers act like nothing happened which invalidates a victim's memories; a baby is not able to comprehend the feelings of pain or sexual violation and is pre-verbal; victim cannot run from the dangers in his/her life, is in fact punished for thinking or verbalizing that trauma even occurred; victim must go on with life exactly as if nothing has happened, pretending their world has not been destroyed and nothing is the same
UNUSUAL (or visceral) SENSORY	sensations that are unusual, sensations noted only due to the event, sensations caused by the event	nausea caused by chemicals, foreign substances, or emotional upset; racing heart; being thrown or beaten; feeling the sensations of being sexually forced; soreness or tenderness in certain areas; feelings of bowels or stomach being full or releasing their contents; being bound; being suffocated; hunger

Back to the Beginning:

You don't need to sift through and scrutinize every little piece of vomit to know it's vomit.

When it comes to memories of abuse, the principal is the same. A leading and dangerous trend lately is to go through and identify and relive every single incident of your abuse to the minute detail for adult survivors to relive and record every detail about every incident of abuse. This is gone over and over again in therapy until every last bit is recalled, and usually during analysis, the patient becomes desensitized to every detail. "Healing" is achieved only when the patient can talk or think about the incident without obvious and immediate decompensation. AVOID THIS. It is totally unnecessary. It is fine and helpful to know what you've gone through, but there is absolutely no reason to relive it all over again. If it was bad the first time around, why would it be any better the second? In this process you will be psychologically and emotionally crippled, you will get worse IF and before you get healed, the process takes a very long time, and there's no guarantee you will be healed in the end. There are many different types of therapy. Look and shop around. Don't get lost or absorbed in the past.

Triggers are supposed to be knitted together to form a whole memory. This is normal and has nothing to do with abuse. That's why people buy apple and pumpkin pie candles (for example), so they can trigger up good, happy feelings- without having to actually eat the pie. There's a big market for triggers. 1980's toys recently came back into style because the Gen -X and -Y generations are living in confusing and uncertain times, where nothing is simple and everything is questionable. Take for example, WMDs- we were promised they existed and this was an honorable war, but we were lied to and are now stuck in a never-ending holy war. This is an unstable and uncertain era, without much security. So, Gen -X and -Y are having kids, and want their kids to feel as safe and comfortable as they used to. So they break out the My Little Ponies and Transformers. Not really interested in the newer stuff, these parents are encouraging their kids to enjoy stuff that triggers up good memories for the parents. Talk about transference! The trigger of sight is associated with the trigger of emotion, in this case to build good memories.

Further Application

So, let's say you were recently triggered in a bad way. You saw something that brought back parts of an old memory that are upsetting and scary. Your goal in therapy should be firstly to cope with these triggers and listen to them in a healthy, safe way. I'm going to use an example of a repeated rape over time, a.k.a child sexual abuse. So let's say you smelled the cologne your rapist wore, and felt those old sensations, though not all of them at once. Rarely do they all come out at once, your mind wouldn't be able to handle it like that all the time. If it does come out all at once, the only term available at this time is a flashback. Having little peices come one or two at a time is also called a flashback, but let's call the big one "sudden total recall". So you get a flashback; your first objective is to realize and emphasize that it is not actually happening now. Then you have to identify what is new about this incomplete memory. Is it a new smell? A new feeling of touch, or of unusual sensations? (We are assuming that this is not your first discovery of abuse.) Since it came about naturally and wasn't forced like in forced recollection/total recall therapy, your mind wants you to realize that you "secretly" had hidden reservations or emotions attached to this component, and is conveniently letting you know, through associating them with already known parts of memory, that this is why.

Now to Heal

This will take some time to assimilate. When you have accepted the validity of this new component of your memory and accepted the association, you can now disassociate it from this particular memory. After all that, does that feel like you're going backwards? Rest assured, you are not. You're speeding forward to healing. You are going to come across that cologne again in your life, wouldn't it be nice to think of it as just another cologne, and not the cologne that your rapist wore at a bad time for you? If you met a very nice man that you wanted to get to know better, wouldn't it be socially crippling if you couldn't move forward and do so simply because of his choice of cologne? He would be confused and feel awkward and bad, feeling he did something wrong, and you would to, adding regret and guilt into the picture. So how to disassociate it from something bad? First, realize that the cologne does not turn men into rapists, nor do men of only one personality type like that cologne. It's not a personality label, just something that makes some men feel good and smell good. Not all men like the same cologne, and colognes and perfumes change how they smell slightly when applied to the skin according to each person's pH balance. You can go to the department store and buy some nice things for yourself that you really look forward to wearing, then go and smell that cologne in the perfume section. Look around you as you do so and associate it with that feeling of a public place that is very nice and well-lit, the great buys you got that you are happy and excited about, and anything else positive you can think about. Get the idea? There's different types of dissociation, and each kind can have a good application.

This is what you should be focused on in your therapy. This is real healing in a natural, healthy way. [If you want this but can't describe it to your therapist, go ahead and print out a copy of this page and have him or her read it. Make sure (s)he gets his/her own copy from this website so (s)he knows where it's from and doesn't distribute it!] What you should avoid is a therapist that wants you to recall every sensation without any logical, healthy purpose. If you had a flashback about the cologne, you don't want to go to your next appointment and spend your time going over that a lot and forcibly trying to connect it with other components such as taste, pain, tearing, sounds of heavy breathing, and so on. Listen to your triggers and figure out why they have come up, what your subconscious is telling your consciousness to organize understand and come to terms about.

Don't mistake Good for Bad!

Don't mistake this for the normal part of therapy, identifying your feelings, which is good. Survivors of traumatic events typically are out-of-sync with their emotions. They may not be able to recognize some of them, or mistake anxiety, which we all face in our daily lives, with life-and-death situations. Some emotions may be very underdeveloped, while others are extreme and uncontrollable; such as not being able to cry, but being able to lash out violently in fast fits of rage. When a new component of a memory or even a totally new memory comes up, it's important to identify and face your emotions that result from that, and be able to feel, express, and get in touch with those emotions. It is also to learn to recognize the feelings you had during the events and be able to get in touch with those emotions, thus healing and giving honor to yourself looking back during those traumatic events. So when you talk about those new components, go ahead and answer the question, "And how does that make you feel?"

Give yourself a couple weeks to assimilate all your new information, and getting to know how you feel about it. Don't rush it, but don't wait too long or the flashback will fade and you'll have to start it all over again to get the benefits from it. Your feelings about the event may change in the future, and that's fine, that's all part of getting to understand how all the pieces of your past, bad or good, have helped to shape who you are today and who you want to become.

Stages of Healing

The stages of healing are actually a lot like the stages of grief.

Shock, denial
Pain, hurt
Anger
Depression, reflection (lots of people get stuck here)
Reconstruction, working through, changing yourself inwardly
Acceptance, hope

A note about your opinions, viewpoints, and feelings changing over time. There are stages of healing, and as you grow and gain more experience, your understanding of events will grow as well.

For example, during my own abuse I had most feelings bottled up and sectioned off into insiders (unknowingly, of course) very well, and thought that I was invincible because my family could not say anything that could hurt me. However, when I got older, I got married and was thinking about starting a family. One day while I was working, wonton thought came to me, the words of my mother as she told me she wished I was never born. This had happened many times before and I had always felt nothing. But at this stage of my life, I understood what importance a child was, how special and precious your own child is supposed to be. Your child is a blessing, and the duties of a mother instill awe and trepidation. There's nothing more important to a mother than guiding her children in love and righteousness. Understanding more what the roles of a mother and child were, suddenly I was shocked at her words! How could a mother say that to her child?!? How awful that was for her to even think such a thing. The only thing different that time from the hundreds of times I had heard her words echo in my mind, was that I had grown in understanding. Later on, I learned to be angry that was done to me. As hard as it is to be in the angry stage, if I never got angry about the bad events in my past, I would never learn that it was truly bad! Anger is disapproval. If I never disapproved of those actions, I would probably do them to others. Through the example I gave, you can see how my thoughts and opinions on one topic have evolved through the first three stages of healing.

Helpful As They May Be...

...triggers are not fun. First, you're going to need to calm down to understand the message the trigger brings. You may not understand it the first, second, or even tenth time it comes around, but you will want to feel better.

Common physical sensations are: nausea, pain, headache, tight stomach, rapid heart beat, chest pain, adrenaline rush, sweat, chills, cold, genital pain, flushed, euphoric, inappropriate sexual excitement, spontaneous orgasm, sleepy, faint, or physical numbness.

Common intrusive thoughts include: abusive sexual fantasies, thinking partner is an offender, thinking the past is the present, thinking you are a child, thinking you are bad, thinking you are inadequate, thinking you are unworthy of being loved for yourself, wishing you were someplace else.

Some automatic reactions last for seconds, some for hours. Automatic reactions usually occur in a series, linked up so that one triggers another. A chain of automatic reactions can trigger compulsive sexual behavior.

Your triggers may be known to you, dormant for years or difficult to identify. Identifying and analyzing your triggers gives you power. The triggers lose their secrecy and mysteriousness once you understand them.

Reducing the number of triggers in your life may make it easier to deal with your automatic reactions. Also, eliminating stimulants may help. Counseling and support groups are essential.

Suggestions for Mastering Intrusive Symptoms

Questions to ask yourself in discovering your triggers:

a) Where were you at the time of the abuse?

b) What were you like at the time?

c) What was the offender like?

d) What was your relationship to the offender like?

e) What touch and sexual experiences did you have during the abuse?

f) What was happening inside your body?

g) What were your emotional experiences?

h) Other sensations, feelings or thoughts you experienced at the time of the abuse.

The key to handling automatic reactions is to bring them into your awareness, understand them, and find ways to cope.

The following steps provide a format for you to analyze and master your intrusive symptoms:

A) Stop and become aware: Acknowledge what's happening. Say to yourself, "I'm having an automatic reaction." Assume you have hit a trigger.

B) Calm yourself: Tune into your body. What are you feeling? Tell yourself something reassuring. "I'm safe, no one can hurt me." Take slow, deep breaths. Relax your muscles. Go to your "safe place".

C) Identify past situation: When have you felt this way before? What situation were you in the last time you felt this way? Try to identify the trigger.

D) Identify similarities: In what ways are this current situation and your past situation similar? For example, is the setting, time of year, or the sights, sounds, sensations in anyway similar to the past situation when you felt this way? If there is a person involved, how is she or he similar to a person from the past who elicited similar feelings?

E) Affirm your current reality: How is your current situation different from the situation in the past in which you felt similar feelings? What is different about you, your sensory experience, you current life circumstances and personal resources? What is different about the setting? If another person or persons is involved, how are they different from the person(s) in the past situation? Affirm your rights: "The abuse was then. This is now."

F) Choose a new response: What action, if any, do you want to take to feel better in the present? For example, a flashback may indicate that a person is once again in a situation that is in some way unsafe. If this is the case, self-protective actions should be taken to alter the current situation. On the other hand, a flashback may simply mean that an old memory has been triggered by an inconsequential resemblance to the past such as a certain color or smell. In such cases, corrective messages of reassurance and comfort need to be given to the self to counteract the old traumatic memories.

Adapted from "Resolving Traumatic Memories" (p. 107) by Y.M. Dolan, 1991, New York: W.W. Norton and from Wendy Maltz's "The Sexual Healing Journey", Harper Collins Publishers, 1991, Chapter 5.

Write down your process through this experience, or draw about it.
Remind yourself of the date and time.
Remind yourself of where you are, how old your body is, and that you have lots of capabilities and knowledge.
Feet are very sensitive: put an ice pack under your feet, stamp them, or rub them on the carpet a few times.
Rub your arms and legs.
Name five things that you see in the room around you, then do it again until you know where you are. Flex your muscles all over your body.
Treat yourself without overindulging. Have some herbal tea, take a hot bubble bath, read a relaxing book.
Burn incense, scented candles, oils, or potpourri to awaken your sense of smell.
Play calming music.

Welcome!

...to the Oasis.