In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.
There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.
I realized what happened after about two seconds.
The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.
For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.
I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.
This can be reblogged, if anyone was wondering. I wrote up this post with the intention that hopefully people who read it and didn’t really get triggers would understand a bit.
So, a thing that’s particularly important here: The trigger here is not the bad experience itself.
after my super funtime medical adventure, i had to change all my bath products, because my brain had associated the scent of them with being terrified and in extreme pain.
these were products i had chosen myself because i liked the smell. and they got connected to the medical phobia because i was using them to wash off the hospital reek and the fear sweat and so forth. i don’t know why they became a trigger. maybe because washing off the hospital smell didn’t make me not in pain. maybe because their ‘fresh pine ocean breeze bluegreen spicy stuff’ smell didn’t really replace the hospital stench, just mingled with it.
but for whatever reason, smelling these objectively nice soaps made me do flashbacks and get all hopeless and wobbly. so they had to go.
triggers are random. they’re often something that was simply present during a trauma, and you can’t guess what they’ll be. no one who hasn’t heard me explain this would ever associate suave naturals ocean breeze body wash with unbearable abdominal pain. so i guess the takeaways here are twofold:
– if you have triggers, remember other people can’t predict them, and don’t expect to be protected from them all the time. that’s up to you.
– if you don’t have triggers, don’t assume you can judge what a ‘real’ trigger is, and if someone asks you to accomodate them, don’t be a dick about it. even if you don’t want to make that accomodation, decline politely and apologize, don’t disparage their request.
Triggers are a case of classical conditioning, where association between a stimulus (In these cases, forms of trauma) and a neutral stimuli (such as the garage door or scent of bath products) becomes so interlinked that you associate them as one. This happens a lot to those going through chemotherapy, where the nausea they feel from chemo medication becomes linked with everything they interact with while feeling nauseous (it doesn’t help that this sort of conditioning is super strong when linked with nausea) so even after all chemo treatment is done, they can’t stand to eat what they ate at the time, can’t look at the doctor, or a white room, or smell cleaning products without feeling extreme nausea.
Triggers are subconscious, and we haven’t really got control of them. Even if you go through therapy for them, because they’ve now become learnt, they will still be there and mess with people. Don’t make assumptions about triggers, and try to be accommodating.
For those who are interested, EMDR has been shown to be able to lessen the effects of triggers.
If the hero kicks dust into the villain’s face during a fight, it’s considered clever and strategic. But if the villain kicks dust into the hero’s face, it’s considered cheating. (source)
Adult things arent NEARLY as complex as I thought they were growing up I just walked into bank of america and said im here to open a checking account and they said ok and opened me a checking account
If you have anxiety about being an adult, it may help to think of adult things as basically just doing a lot of quests.
Me: [googles “where do i get a passport”] Me: [goes to that building] Me: [asks first person I encounter] Where do I get a passport? Them: Third floor, room twelve. Me: [goes to that room] Me: [asks first person I encounter] Where do I get a passport? Them: That desk over there. Me: [goes to that desk] Me: Where do I get a passport? Them: Fill out this form. Me: [thinking] Silver key opens the garden gate, in the garden is the red key, which opens the red door, there’s a boy in the red house who tells you his dog is trapped in the old abandoned barn and can I please rescue him…
being an adult is a serious of fetch quests and waiting in lines
In all seriousness though, one of the most liberating things about being an adult is it’s perfectly acceptable to walk up to another adult and say, “I don’t know how to do this thing, can you help me?” and they will.
I’ve used this for everything from renewing my tags at the DMV to buying a house to cooking a steak. Adults are way more chill with ignorance than I thought they would be, but if you’re up front and just say, “Hey this is new to me, can you walk me through the process?” they just. Will?
Sure there are some assholes out there but mostly just…people are cool helping you figure out how to do things.
i spent christmas alone while my family got together and fought, and honestly i feel so good about this
i bought myself presents, cooked a big meal, drank wine and watched Home Alone 3 w/ my dog. I don’t feel sorry for myself at all.
meanwhile my sister threatened to disown my dad so he threatened to disown her, while my mom enabled and my other sister downed a bottle of wine to deal.
on the other side of the country, i was busy discovering, to my delight, that the that the 3rd installment of the Home Alone franchise not only stood up to the test of time, but contains some of the best oneliners and comedic timing I have ever seen.
honestly, keep toxic people out of your life. family isn’t everything, and bad family is often worse than no family. don’t be afraid to put in some distance, especially during high stress times like the holidays. you don’t actually owe them anything.
being alone for the holidays is so much better than being with people who make you unhappy.
Bringing this back for Thanksgiving!
Also reblogging because
Home Alone 3 isn’t a bad movie, you guys are just mean.
Daily reminder that “Missing Person” posts are a common and often effective method that abusers use to find their victims that have run away from them. Also used to find people in the witness protection program.
If you see a “missing person” post with a number that is not just 911 on it, be very wary. And if you do see someone who is supposedly missing, call the police, NOT the number provided on the post. I trust the police as little as anyone but they’ll at least be able to tell you if that person is actually missing and it has less of a chance of giving information to a possible abuser.
A couple of red flags I’ve noticed:
Abusers claiming their victims are mentally ill or schizophrenic, to explain why they might not want to come back
Abusers giving any excuse to explain why their victims may not come back really
Abusers telling you not to approach their victims if you see them, or limit your communication with them
Abusers telling you not to mention them to their victims at all
Abusers claiming that their victims aren’t safe with their family or friends
Abusers claiming their victims are being threatened away from them
(Feel free to add on)
Add-ons to the list of red flags from my mother, a psychologist who has worked with victims of domestic abuse:
Abusers claiming their victim has a history of self-harm that leaves bruises is always a red flag (except in the case of autistic children, but even then, call 911, not the abuser)
Abusers claiming their (POC) victim doesn’t understand English and so you shouldn’t try to communicate with them/trust anything they say is not uncommon for human traffickers
Abusers claiming their victim has a history of making things up for attention or to get their way, tacitly implying you shouldn’t listen to them when they express fear or disclose their abusive situation to you
Posters lacking a last name are inherently not to be trusted. The lack of a surname is there to keep you from looking the person up in other databases and finding out they’ve been listed as missing by their family/the police.
Posters that put any character smears – mental illness, drug use, etc. – out about the victim are trying to make you predisposed to not communicating with or trusting the victim so you won’t believe anything they say. Treat this as a flashing neon red flag and call the police.
My mother would also like to note that taking a picture of the poster or tearing it down and turning it in to police can be very useful to them when they’re trying to build cases against abusers so if that’s at all possible for you, by all means do it.
As someone who’s always had foster brothers and sisters, this is not only true for adults, but absolutely true for children as well. Sometimes kids are put into ‘secret placement’ in foster care to protect the child and the foster family they’re placed with. We’ve legit had parents find out where we live and turn up on our doorstep with guns. We’ve also had parents simply turn up at school, pick up their kids and flee the country.
If you work in the education system, or some other system that deals with information, be very aware of who you give information to. Are you on the phone? Don’t give out any information unless you can prove with 100% certainty that this person is who they say they are. Even if they are the parent, make sure they’re also the legal guardian. Even if they have a sad story about how they’re never allowed to see the kids through no fault of their own, even if it’s true, don’t give out information. Those rules are there for a reason and that reason is to protect kids from their abusers. This seems ridiculous and tedious and bureaucratic and in most cases it is, but for the sake of that 1 in 10.000th case that it’s true, please be careful.
Red flags:
– Parents who don’t know their child’s address or phone number
– Parents who make degrading remarks about their child’s primary care giver
– Parents who make degrading remarks about their child
– Parents who are looking for more than one of their kids
– Parents who are demanding access to their kid’s email account
– The child is in foster care or lives in a halfway house or similar institution
– The parent paints themselves as a victim.
Yes, not all foster care placement is handled correctly and sometimes mistakes are made, but that decision is not up to you. You don’t know all the facts. Many abusers, parents or otherwise, are clever, charismatic, manipulative assholes that get off on power trips but can come off as completely normal and trustworthy. Far more so than their victims.
Her name was Dolly Wilde. She was the daughter of Oscar Wilde’s older brother, and was born about 3 months after he died. She worked as an ambulance driver during WW1 and spent most of her free time banging rich ladies. And guys. GUYS.
SHE
LOOKS
JUST LIKE
HER UNCLE
They both have That Face.
I’m so, so happy I know this now.
I would like everyone to know that she went around telling everyone that she was her uncle reincarnated. OK have a good day.
A M A Z I N G
Oh my God, Oscar Wilde and family had Resting Bitch Face.
😀
Resting Wilde Face
That “I’m a gay, Irish socialist in the Victorian era” face.
“Fuck everything about this world”
Side note: it wasn’t just the face. People who knew both Dolly and Oscar Wilde said that they sounded very similar and carried themselves in the same manor.
Both were pretty avid smokers. They both appreciated decadence. They both had very similar lovers.
Also, because history is insane, Dolly Wilde once hit on Zelda Fitzgerald, writer and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Dolly once said of herself, “I am more like Oscar than Oscar.” And honestly yea, I get why.
Oscar Wilde wasn’t done gaying up the place and came back as Dolly to gay up the ladies as well.
Victorian people: Oscar you must like ladies instead of men
Oscar: *Dies and comes back as Dolly flirting with all the ladies*
The man. The legend. A beautiful constant in a universe where everything was unpredictable, we had him. From dust to dust and into shadows. We will miss you. I find it fitting I came across this terrible horrible news in a class where we were discussing goodness and hero’s and legends. Thank you, Stan, for creating incredible hero’s, for giving me a universe to fall in love with, for bringing so much joy to my life through you hero’s. You are a hero Stan. We stan Stan Lee. Much love and prayers to the family.
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