Imagine with me for a moment?
You are just relaxing on your sofa or taking a stroll down a city street, and you catch the smell of fresh-baked, chocolate-chip cookies.
What do you feel?
What thoughts are coming to your mind?
If you are like many people, the scent might make you feel all warm and cozy inside. Your memory might go to your beloved grandmother who served you up a batch on a pretty plate each Sunday and topped it off with a cool glass of milk on the side, or you might think of walking down Main Street in Disney World when Nestle’s used to pump out the chocolatey good scent that wafted through the warm air on your summer vacation. Awe, bliss.
Would it be surprising for you to find out that some people experience those very same aromas that you find pleasant as awful, painful sensations in their bodies? To someone else, that cookie smell might bring memories of being physically beaten by a parent for a bad grade and then sent to bed without dessert, or the desolate feeling of being all alone in the world when a caregiver died, and everyone brought over cookies to try to comfort the family. The child beaten and sent to his room may have loved cookies before, but now they may feel rage whenever that scent is around. The child who lost a caregiver may never want to touch a chocolate chip cookie again out of fear that she’ll start crying and never be able to stop.
Things Don’t Cause Pain, But The Meaning We Attach to Them Can
It’s not the event, thing, person, or place itself so much as the meaning that the “trigger” has on our internal representation of what that means. Feelings, thoughts, and memories are made up of chemical reactions flowing through our bodies, but the meaning that we ascribe to those chemical sensations, both those in our awareness and those outside of our consciousness impact us.
Triggers can be anything, can come out of seemingly nowhere, and can rattle you to your emotional core.
Someone might be involved in a police chase and feel exhilarated because it reminds them of a time they “pulled one over” on the cops and now feel the adrenaline rush of wanting to do it again. However, for most of us, being pulled over by the police likely brings the rush of feelings more like a punch in the stomach and a sense of needing to vomit, as we remember that feeling of “getting in trouble” and having to be “punished.”
Our triggers are powerful, and they can feel awful. Often, triggers are indicators that there has been a threat to our safety or even to our survival in the past, and they are trying to warn us that a situation now feels the same way and may pose a threat to us again.
These sensations are trauma triggers. Trauma triggers can be especially prevalent in people suffering from the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The good news is that those triggers are there trying to help us find our way to safety, protection, and healing. The bad news is that they often make us feel lousy, distract our thoughts from what we want to be focusing on, and basically make us feel mentally and/or emotionally out of sorts.
EMDR Can Help
However, there is more good news. Eye Movement Reprocessing and Desensitization (EMDR), a therapeutic treatment protocol, has been proven to help people overcome these awful sensations caused by trauma triggers.
If you find yourself experiencing unpleasant flashbacks, intrusive memories, anxious feelings, or racing thoughts, you might be a good candidate for EMDR, so feel free to reach out to us at (531) 444-1963 or info@omahatraumatherapy.com if you’d like more information about how this might be a possible help to you.
3 Calming Techniques You Can Do At Home
Here are three techniques that you can try at home to calm yourself after experiencing an unpleasant emotional trigger:
1) Focus intensely on something physical in your present environment. Observe it. Notice its color, its shape, its texture. Then, do this for four more objects.
2) Take a deep breath in, and hold it for five seconds. Release it for ten seconds. Repeat three times.
3) Try to identify exactly what it was that triggered you. Was it a word, someone’s action, a place, a smell, a sound? Ask yourself what that trigger reminded you of. Then, ask yourself what meaning you consciously or subconsciously gave to that trigger. Finally, attempt to tell yourself a new, present-day truth. Example: “I smelled chocolate chip cookies, and it reminded me of my dad beating me, but I am an adult now, and I would report my dad to the police if he ever did that to me again. That is in the past, and I am safe now.”