Dealing with trauma triggers - part 1

Looking back on my life, my growing up to the person I am today feels like an entanglement of traumatic episodes, kept alive by attaching myself to similarly toxic persons as the one who started the primary narcissistic abuse. Those episodes, in addition, are not seldomly triggered by seemingly innocent events or confrontations, pushing me into the corner of defense and self-destructive talk, leading me time and again into a vicious cycle of hamster-wheel running. And I get tired of it, literally and figuratively speaking.

So, where to start in the attempt to get out of this trance, as Tara Brach calls these moments of being caught up in the emotional backlash, the limbic response to life?

For me, change subtly took off when I got divorced. Seemingly amiable in nature, this divorce was in fact mean and slick. It was a matter of conceding on my part, and loads of resistance on his. We had made a list of things we each liked to keep, equal in worth. It turned out, as I realised years later, that I had willingly given up a lot of stuff that was in my right to keep. He never mentioned that of course. He even got upset when I insisted on keeping the good steaming iron as my - weird - parents had given that to me as it is an easier and much lighter one than the old iron. There was a minor quarrel over books to keep; minor, because I soon gave in. I was reluctant to start bickering over that - books were stuff, not things I absolutely wanted to take with me. As far as I was concerned, I just wanted out, to be safe. And I wanted my child out too, for his safety. My ex was a very unpredictable force of darkness back then, and he was frightening me.bulging under frustration.

✸ I would talk myself right into my own pit of darkness, deep enough to be unable to see any flicker of light.

His darkness since then crept back under his skin, seeping through in carefully timed flashes, mingled in with neutral or even kind conversations, flipping the scales straight back into the turmoil of the marriage. Now that I am physically away, it feels easier to take those moments on, but only slightly so. At first, I fell into every single trap - he would say something he knew triggered me, and I was on it, head on, bulging under frustration, anger, self-resentment, blame and guilt. I would talk myself right into my own pit of darkness, deep enough to be unable to see any flicker of light. Two years after the divorce, things got so bad I realised I needed help. Right away. That decision saved my life.

This is the fourth year after fleeing the marriage, and I have been working on dealing with my childhood trauma which got enhanced by both the marriage and the toxic friends I mingled with. It is a strange thing, the way we look to attach to what we know to be normal. Not too long after my initial EMDR therapy sessions I recognised how I desperately try bonding to people who are similarly toxic as my mother and my ex are. It still is mind-blowingly baffling to me. I have put myself in emotionally destructive situations, just because they were familiar. As a result my responses were inevitably trauma triggered: I'd lose myself into blaming them, blaming me, shaming myself, resent myself and wanting to disappear because I was as useless as a pig's backside (as my mother used to snap at me; another favourite was that I was too stupid to dance for the devil). I'd shut down completely and attack the friends triggering me, posing myself as a miserable piece of shit that they maltreated consciously. no wonder I lost so many people back then. No wonder I started to think nobody loved me because see, they were always leaving me, sometimes after yet another trauma tantrum, or after they had used me for whatever healing they needed me and then lost interest. Both happened on a regular basis, I just kept blaming them and blaming me, and failed to see what was underneath it all. I call them the Fears and the Darkness.