January 12, 2020
I’m sharing this because maybe you get it.
I am sharing this because maybe you want to “get it” for your wife, your husband, your sister, your friend, or your daughter who experiences something similar to me.
I’m talking about triggering. Real, I’ve-experienced-trauma triggering.
We need to talk about it more if 70 percent of people in the United States have experienced a traumatic event, if 20 percent of those people will develop PTSD, and if one-third women and one-fifth of men have experienced some form of sexual assault.
We need to talk about it more if the goal of our lives is to glorify God and make disciples—together. We need to be aware of how many of us can get derailed from this mission, and how we can care for one another so we can stay on mission.
My little sister recently asked, “With all of the changes in your life right now—ministry, website, new employees—do you feel like you are lost in a snowstorm?”
After a minute, I said, “No, not a snowstorm. I feel quite focused and clear on where I am going in ministry. I know my calling.” I paused, thinking. What is life like right now?
“It feels more like I am in an earthquake,” I said. “Everything is shaking. All of my of old ways of doing ministry and life are shifting into different places.” Honestly? I feel like I am out of control.
These changes—this lack of control—feels like how trauma feels. The ground shook and I couldn’t change it. I was out of control and my voice disappeared.
But, Laurie, you might think. Haven’t you been working on processing trauma for the last several years? Haven’t you experienced healing? Aren’t you done yet?
Yes, I have experienced some healing. Some. A lot, maybe . . . But am I done? No.
The healing journey is less of a one-and-done surgical procedure and more like erosion from waves.
The first big wave of healing God allows in our lives may knock us over, strip away some coping mechanisms, help us to experience some of God’s presence in the midst of the wave’s crash, and encourage us to build some muscles for the next one.
The next wave comes from a different angle, challenges more muscles, different ways we cope, and teaches us a new level of Emmanuel’s with-ness in it.
The next? Oh, it’s a refresher course—a deepening— of the first wave’s intense crash. The next? Something totally new.
But sanctification, healing, and becoming like Christ is a process. A journey.
One I’m still on.
But here I am today, feeling not only the usual sanctification waves, but also as if the sand beneath my feet is cracking apart due to a lots-of-changes earthquake.
I consciously recognize the literal earth is not shaking; I recognize I am not a child going though trauma, but at the same time, I still feel out of control because I am going through change. As the leader of this ministry, I can impact it, but can I really control it? (Can we really control anything?) No. I need to walk out the awkwardness of transition while holding God’s hand.
But, it’s hard. Unpredictable, and echoes past pain.
Therefore, I can still get triggered. Triggering isn’t a sin. It just is.
And here’s how it feels for me:
Last week, one of my daughters came up behind me and grabbed my shoulders. She wanted to hug me. To be close to me. She loves me so much and expresses that most frequently through touch.
But a surprise hug for someone who has experienced trauma? A surprise touch from someone who has gone through years of counseling, deep inner healing, and walks with others who have experienced trauma but is in a season of foundation shaking change?
I lost it.
“Don’t touch me!” I yelled. She cowered, her face laced in pain, and ran away from me to cuddle my husband, Matt. He looked at me in grieved shock.
I know I know I know. I am not a yeller. If I am frustrated by something, I get really quiet and try to work it out internally before I bring it to the person with whom I am offended.
But when I’m triggered? It can be hard to control my reactions. This isn’t because trauma destroys people and turns them into out-of-control crazies. Trauma—big and small—simply affects people.
A counselor helped me to recognize one effect: I have an inner child inside who was hurt at the age traumatic event happened. If I don’t work through the wounding this little Laurie endured, that little girl will remain stuck in pain at the age it happened. When she is poked by something that reminds her of her trauma (triggers her) she wakes up and yells sentences she didn’t say when she was traumatized.
“Don’t touch me!” I needed to scream at my perpetrators years ago.
Instead, the little girl yelled it at my daughter last week.
But why?
When my daughter grabbed my shoulders and I yelled—in those microseconds between the grabbing and yelling—do you know what I felt?
I felt like someone punched me in the head as hard as they could while the ground opened up and swallowed me in a never-ending abyss.
As I fell, I sensed someone popping in front of my face, demanding, “Make a good decision. Now.”
It was two seconds, but when I am triggered—especially in this earthquake season—I can go from laughing sweetly with my family to losing it.
Again, I have gone through incredible waves of healing. I have learned that this doesn’t have to be the end of the triggered moment. I don’t have to hate myself, run away, and try to duct-tape myself back together in another room. I can stay present. I just need help.
I looked into Matt’s eyes as he held our daughter close.
“Help me,” I said quietly. I needed someone to help me remember I am not falling down a never-ending void. I was not punched. I do not have to be perfect. The ground is not shaking. I am not going through trauma.
It may feel that way, but the black hole isn’t eternal. It’s a three-feet deep cellar, and there are exit stairs. When I first went to counseling for trauma, the Holy Spirit, my therapist, and I built them.
“Just help me to find the stairs?” I asked Matt as we processed the scene later.
“But what can I say?” he asked. “I need to be there for our daughter.”
“You do need to care for her,” I said, honestly. “But when you see I am about to lose it, can you care for me (and her), too, by helping me to remember who I am? Call me into the present by looking me in the eye and saying, ‘I see you. You are safe.’?”
This helps me feel seen. You’re not alone. It helps me remember. You’re an adult not a traumatized child. It helps me to stop the falling and walk out.*
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I can do that.”
“Thank you.”
I apologized to my daughter. “I’m so sorry, dear girl. I was wrong to yell.” Triggering is not sin, but hurting people in the midst of it is, and I did. “Will you forgive me?”
She did. I hugged her, feeling this safe touch pour healing water into the wound I created in her that day and into the one in me from my past.
The scene took about 45 minutes, but it has been years in the making. The return on investments for trauma for the kingdom of darkness is high.
But the enemy of our soul’s payday can end.
Those of us who have experienced trauma for any reason don’t have to keep paying dividends to the darkness.
But we need you, friends, who haven’t walked through the same things we have to help us find the stairs when we are falling.
We need you, therapists, to walk us through healing and help us to build the exit stairs.
We need you, pastors, to teach us inner healing and theological rootedness.
We need you, authors and teachers, to share your wisdom and getting-it-ness.
And we all need each other—in process, on the journey, waves of sanctification crashing over us—to advance the kingdom of God together.
Will we?
*Matt isn’t always with me when I encounter a trigger spiral. Do you know who is? The Holy Spirit. This week, when I was triggered again, Matt wasn’t present, but the Holy Spirit quietly said the words I needed to hear. “Stop, Laurie. I see you. You are safe.” Yes, let’s do the soul work, get the therapy, but if we have no tangible people to pause us, God will.
Do the Next Thing:
- Are you in relationship to someone who experiences trauma triggering sometimes? Have you ever asked them how it feels?
- If you have gone through any type of trauma, is this how trauma triggering feels to you?
- What other ways pull you out of a triggered state? Here are some of the ways I fought it this week:
- Planning Matt and my ridiculous birthday party
- Listening to Elvis music for the first time with the girls
- Calling a friend and talking about nothing
- Calling a friend and talking exactly about the trauma feeling
- Practicing gratitude
- Serving others
- Just getting stuff done in an orderly way
- Letting my small group pray over my mind and memories
- Going for a run with Jesus (Check out Ann Voskamp’s incredible blog post on this…)
- Practicing quiet and listening prayer with Jesus (That PauseApp, though)
- Plopping my leather Bible on my lap and meditating on Psalm 46: 1-2: “God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea.”
- Stopping everything when I feel myself start to fall into a panicked, “I’m out of control” earthquake feeling. I stop and breathe-pray, “If, you, Jesus walked while doing your ministry, so can I. I don’t have to run. I don’t have to panic. I am okay. I am safe with you.”
- What do you do?
Laurie,
wow. that is all I can say for now.
I have been LIVING in this almost CONSTANT state of trauma triggering. It is exhausting! More trauma has come to me in my adult life. It’s fresh AND connected to the trauma of my youth. I am sobbing reading your words, comforted to know I am not alone in the triggering experience, because I FEEL very alone. What I HATE is what it does to my mind and my body, sometimes making me snap at others in anger, other times draining me to the point of going to bed to sleep it off. It is amazing to me, scientifically, how something outside of me, can have the potential to overpower me physically; like the way the sun is in the sky, or something beautiful I smell in a summer breeze, a song playing in a doctor’s office overhead that I cannot move away from, or a picture on a magazine in the check out line in the grocery store…all triggers. The battle is on for my mind and body. God, thank You for Your Word, and YES, the Holy Spirit for comforting, …for catching us as we feel are beginning the free fall into the abyss pain!
Thank you for writing, “Stop, Laurie. I see you. You are safe.”. Those are powerful, comforting words to me. Thank you for Psalm 46:1-2
Thank you for sharing this! Man, to see each other in our messes…what a gift. I see you. God sees you. Thank you for seeing me.
Hi Laurie, I’m sorry for the pain you’re going through with triggers. Being triggered sucks I know.
There’s something I feel the need to say, and that’s that I felt very scared when you mentioned snapping at your daughter because of being triggered. That is very psychologically dangerous for your child. Children aren’t capable of processing that kind of emotion from a trusted adult. From my own experience of my mom who was molested when she was a little girl, she pushed me away when I was nine and tried to lean my head on her shoulder which left me feeling like I had done something very immoral and that I was disgusting. Whatever emotions my mom felt in the moment she was triggered with me were conveyed directly to me and I’ve struggled for years because of that moment.
Adults are responsible for the feelings generated in themselves because of the world around them and have a duty to be emotionally/physically/psychologically safe for children at all times. Adult spouses can understand triggers, but children cannot, especially ones own children. I believe Matt’s response is correct in that he needs to look out for your daughter. That ought to be priority for every parent to protect their child from harm- even if and especially if it’s from the other parent. I’m the situation you described, my first instinct would be to grab your daughter and protect her- regardless of what the other adult in the room was experiencing. It’s true that you need care for when you’re triggered. It’s true that you should look for care and compassion with regard to those triggers. It’s true that children need emotional safety and are owed that by their parents who have brought them into the world.
I don’t know where you will find the help for dealing with triggers surrounding your child, but from my own experience I know that if a parent can see their child as a threat- even safely at home with no intruders and locked doors, then being able to protect your child will be very hindered. And from all your posts I know you are a loving person who tries very hard, so that’s why I feel the need to say these things even if they’re hard to hear because your child’s safety comes first. And if it can’t come first, and I were in that position, then all other seemingly important things would be off my table until I could keep my children safe- from other adults, from my spouse- if they exhibited destructive behaviors, and from myself- from whatever destructive behaviors I need to work on. My own parents could never make my safety a priority. Their feelings and triggers and sadness, and eventual abuse of me always took priority to my safety.
I would not say everything I did unless I felt your daughter was at risk of emotional harm. I don’t want to judge you. I am letting you know I’m scared for your daughter after reading your article and seeing you ask Matt to care for you when his priority is always to protect his child first. Parents come second to their children. Children cannot protect themselves like adults can. I’ll be praying for you that you find the safety you need to be there for your daughter. If you read this till the end, thank you for reading. I’m sorry you’ve been hurt, just please don’t hurt your child.
Thanks so much for this kind insight and for sharing your story. So appreciate it! I am definitely aware of the pain getting triggered around your kids can cause them…which is one reason why I continually so hard on healing. I am not and will not be perfect at it, but I will work. Blessings, sister!
Thank you for this! I find so little real-life trauma discussions in the Christian world like what you’ve provided here. You succinctly described very similar situations to what my family goes through with my husband’s trauma (and ptsd). As you well know, words are not sufficient to describe the pain, ache, and beautiful life-change given by the Lord as we heal from trauma. I am thankful to find others willing and ready to write about their experience with being triggered and dealing with their trauma. My heart finds comfort just seeing other people working through the same or similar journey, clinging to the Gospel. I feel less alone. Thank you.