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Something on my blog’s admin page under ‘Top Searches’ has again especially caught my attention:
how to proactively look for triggers from abuse
My first response was, “What an excellent question?”
That this searcher at least temporarily made some kind of contact with my blog in response to these search words make me wonder if I have anything here that actually answered any part of this question in any way.
Of course I have no idea what part of the ‘abuse’ spectrum this searcher was inquiring about, but the question itself tempts me to believe that because the word ‘triggers’ is included in the search, the abuse was severe. At the same time, this searcher did not use the word ‘trauma’, so the field of inquiry was obviously limited to ABUSE rather than to any other kind of overwhelming and negative event. Yet a concern with ‘triggers’ would be the same whether a person thinks in terms of a specific abuse or in the more general terms of ‘trauma’.
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To me, abuse and difficult traumas share an important underlying condition — that of feeling (and/or BEING) overwhelmed by an event that is harmful to one’s well-being. Therefore the issue of competence to counteract the event as it happened comes into play along with degrees of POWER and POWERLESSNESS.
This searcher’s question alerts me to a very positive relationship with these issues. Our work toward learning how to be proactive involves both an effort to improve our competence and our ability to have as much power over our lives as we can healthfully manage to have. This is resource management.
To be most healthily prepared for our entire lifetime in this world we need to be as flexible (not rigid) and as resilient as we possibly can. TRIGGERS can interfere with both of these well-being aspects because what happens to us inside of our body in response to any trigger most often happens in our body — automatically — and without our conscious effort.
We need to increase our conscious ability to MANAGE all the inner resources including our responses to the world we live in. In order to increase our conscious participation in our life we MOST need one very critical resource — INFORMATION.
When our body is receiving and responding to information without our having the ability to consciously manage its (our) response, our body is having access to information that our BRAIN-mind-self is missing.
I think about above ground and below ground information-getting and information-responding. Above ground information that moves through our conscious awareness by nature requires the involvement of what might be called our ‘higher brain’s involvement’. Below ground information is received and processed by our body automatically WITHOUT these ‘high brain regions’ being a part of the information-gathering or the information-responding loop.
When we introduce abuse and trauma into the topic, it is critical to remember that involvement of our higher brain abilities is SLOWER. Much, much slower, and far, far more efficient as well as most-likely-to-succeed in response to immediate threat to our well-being and our life.
Automatic below ground processing is VERY VERY FAST. Our body has evolved over many generations and throughout many cycles of difficulties as a part of our species to USE this below ground immediately available, rapidly generated and unconscious response-ability to maintain the life of our species.
If our body has in the past been told through abuse and trauma encounters that we are not safe and secure — enough — in the world, the balance of power in our body will automatically — and very naturally shift toward the unconscious immediate response end of our competent-response spectrum.
WHY? Because in the majority of cases, these rapid automatic unconscious responses are far more likely to SAVE us than are the slower, pondering (in comparison) conscious ‘higher brain’ responses.
Plain and simple.
So, if we have experience with overwhelming abuse and trauma under circumstances in which there was nothing at the time we could do to THINK OUR WAY out of the situation or to THINK OUR WAY past the horror as it immediately happened to us, our fast responses kicked into play — and they are far more likely to do so in the future than if we had never experienced severe abuse and trauma in the first place.
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So if we introduce on our own behalf the idea that we wish to take back control over the mutineers of our body who usurped our conscious power — in our own best interests — we have to begin to gain information that BOTH levels of our SELF can work with.
First of all, we must work on the level of having a safe and secure attachment to the world, in our body, and within our own mind. This will NOT happen easily if we had an unsafe and insecure early beginning as an infant-child that built trauma response into our growing and developing body-nervous system-brain.
Early trauma survivors have a much greater task to accomplish if they wish to gain increasing ability to be PROACTIVE — and therefore increasingly CONSCIOUS — about how they are responding to ALL aspects of being alive in a changeable world.
The more conscious INFORMATION we can gain about who we are, how we are formed, how our body operates, about the nature of the abuse and traumas we experienced, and about how our body thinks it is BEST PREPARED to respond to threat and danger — the more power we will have to apply to our efforts to be proactive in response to possible abuse and trauma triggers that we may encounter in ‘the future’.
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One of the key and central consequences to trauma reactions as they build themselves into our body is — as I mentioned recently — an altered sense of time in the body. Once we have experienced trauma that forced us to experience ‘a peritraumatic altered sense of time’, on some level our body has learned a critically important piece of information: Trauma can happen ANY TIME, ANYWHERE!
If we are working toward being prepared to live a proactive life, we MUST understand that our body has only two ends to its sense-of-time continuum: Being alive or Being dead.
In between these two ends of the time spectrum the body has come to understand that there is only one very long (hopefully – because being DEAD greatly shortens this line!) ongoing experience — BE CONSTANTLY PREPARED BECAUSE THE THREAT IS CONSTANTLY PRESENT.
The more severe the traumas we have experienced (including the younger we were when they started) the harder it will be to convince our body that our ‘higher brain’ part of who we are is capable of protecting us.
The automatic trauma responses that our body is continually preparing itself to carry out happen in a very FAST world where trauma can happen again out of nowhere INSTANTANEOUSLY. The body is not going to let go of its competence in being emergency-prepared. The body lives on this very FAST time track, and to gain increasingly conscious powers to determine the ACTUAL course of our life we have to learn how to be a TIME bandit.
The body has usurped the power to experience time and all possible responses within the span of the time of our lifetime.
If our higher conscious brain wants some of this power over time for its own needs and purposes, it has to negotiate with the body (in my opinion) over this most central issue — TIME, which is our lifetime.
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In essence, this negotiation has to happen in a cooperative environment — between our RIGHT brain which is the spokesperson for our body and all that it knows, and our LEFT brain which is the spokesperson for our higher (slower) thought and reaction processes.
The ONLY way this negotiation process is going to move toward positive ends is IF a person has the lowest possible level of overall stress and reactivity in the environment of their life.
Nobody can ever control for all the possible unforeseen traumas that might pop up out of nowhere at any time. BUT being proactive is to recognize this fact at the same time life can slow down and be ENJOYED, not only endured and survived.
In order for this negotiation between the time bandit of the body with its automatic and unconscious immediate response, and the time bandit of our slower conscious brain abilities to steal back some ‘control’ over how the time of our lifetime is actually spent, is for a PERSON on all levels to be living in an inner state where they can access peace and calm — both consciously felt and physiologically experienced.
That happens when safety and security that fosters a safe and secure attachment to and in the world, is present. Safety and security along with access to states of peace and calm are the antidotes to trauma and abuse.
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Our most ancient body responses happen to keep our body alive so that we can procreate and/or take care of our offspring. Our most ancient body memory doesn’t care a HOOT if we are peaceful, calm or happy — just that we survive.
If we want ‘control’, or the ability to consciously manage our reactions to our environment, we have to understand with the deepest possible admiration and gratitude that our very fast automatic body-based responses are our most powerful asset. Our body is not our enemy.
Cooperation and negotiation happens where and when mutual respect and appreciation exist. This is where peace and calm lie. And when we think about what our right brain knows and does, and what our left brain knows and WANTS us to do, I find it helpful to think about these two brains we have as if they are each a great and powerful nation — neither one to be taken for granted or tampered with.
We talk about our two brains in terms of the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. I find it useful to add into my consideration about what each of these two hemispheres evolved to best accomplish in keeping us alive thoughts about the two distinct and different CULTURES that each hemisphere lives with.
If we wish to become more proactive in our life on every level, and especially if we wish to become more proactive regarding our response both to trauma and to its triggers, it is ALWAYS helpful to investigate these two cultures. The more information the entire brain, our entire self has about our two brain hemispheres the better!
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Our two brain hemispheres each have TIME terms within them that are vastly different from one another. The left brain has regions devoted especially to sequencing actions. That is the area of our entire brain that had to be highly developed BEFORE we could begin to make good use of the FOXP2 gene that we carried for a long time before it could be activated for our verbal language abilities to appear about 140,000 years ago.
That sequencing part of our left brain is what we rely on to make good of our intentions to be proactive about anything. Being proactive means that we are taking control over TIME along with TIMING. It allows for things to be put into the perspective of past-then, NOW, and future-then. Proactive is about accessing information from the past as it applies not only to our present but also as it helps us to proactively prepare for the future.
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NOT SO within the culture of the right brain hemisphere. EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS PRESENT in that world. The right brain is friends with chaos because it was designed by nature to hold within it ALL POTENTIAL FOR ALL POSSIBILITIES. And because life can be so unpredictable, the right brain is also friends with trauma (trauma being such a close relative to chaos).
That might seem to be a strange concept, but without having an ability to ‘stay friends with the fact of trauma’ we could not have evolved. While nobody has ever LIKED trauma, everyone knows it continues to exist just like we do.
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I am going to pause here and throw in something my right brain hemisphere wants to mention. Yesterday morning I had a friend over to visit who works at our local thrift store. The store is connected to a very well-established local effort that supports low-cost housing.
I have a collection of indoor aloe vera plants that cannot survive outside in the winter’s cold. They have spent the entire summer multiplying in pots under the shade of my plum tree. Yesterday’s plan was to have my friend help me divide all these babies so we could plant each one in a little paper cup. They will be taken into the thrift store and sold.
All fine and good. We were out there with our chairs under the shade of the plum tree’s leafy umbrella, armed with our spades, cups, and big dish of moist sandy soil. I pulled out one full tray of confused plants. We divided and potted away until suddenly the potential for trauma appeared.
Key word: suddenly the potential for trauma appeared
This blog’s readers know I spend as much time as possible outside. I dig and work and landscape. In the back of my mind I HAVE to have known that such a potential for trauma MIGHT appear. But after yesterday’s event, believe me I am going to have caution much more up-front in my body and brain.
I pulled out the fourth big tray of plants from under the tree, and suddenly there on the moist dark ground coming right for my friend’s feet was the largest scorpion I have ever seen. I have lived here in this high desert going on eleven years and never have I seen such a large scary critter with legs.
In the four years I have been in this house, I haven’t seen even ONE scorpion. But there it was!
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One of the most important steps we can take in our efforts to increase our ability to be proactive regarding trauma and its triggers it to pay very close attention to HOW we react. I can scrutinize my response yesterday, while at the same time being aware of the ‘shoulds’ and the ‘should nots’ that are naturally a part of the scrutinizing process.
The scrutinizing process is SLOW! ALWAYS it is slow! And when it comes to baseline survival reactions, SLOW is DANGEROUS — and we need to let our body know this. We need to ALWAYS give our body permission to step in FAST with its lifesaving abilities when that is our best course.
AND, as the body knows, when in doubt — let the right brain with its deep roots into our body have the ball.
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So, what did I do? The scorpion stopped its movement about two feet from my friend and I. As soon as I saw the critter (about 2 1/2 inches long in its body with its nasty toxic tail swung in a high arch over its back), I FROZE.
TIME again. Think TIME.
Dissociation, one of the major consequences of long-term, early trauma exposure, is NOT necessarily EVER our conscious choice. It scares me that my own dissociation is NOT predictably and dependably my strongest asset when it comes to reacting in the moment to a threat. (This is what a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment style-pattern-disorder can do to sabotage effective survival strategies.)
My brain hemispheres took the time to think about how I was going to respond. Here was this dangerous predator, small as it was compared to us humans, way too close for comfort. Yes, it had a right to live. Yes, on some level it was a ‘bad thing’ for me to kill it.
Where was the wisdom in this situation?
How much TIME — and therefore increase risk of harm — did my LEFT brain need to decide how I was going to respond?
Yes, this is a small illustration of the topic of trauma and trauma response, of preparedness and the power of being proactive, but I did respond. I told my friend to lift her feet off the ground and onto her chair as I slowly — not to startle the critter into movement — walked between the scorpion and my friend’s chair to grasp my long handled shovel.
I then returned with shovel poised in the air — and experienced my instant of self doubt knowing that I cannot trust my aim to ever be entirely accurate because of the interference of my own self-doubts — as I brought the end of the shovel (hopefully) straight down on the body of the scorpion.
I caught its head under that edge, but so fast I could hardly detect what it was doing the scorpion used its front legs to dig down into the soil, under the shovel edge, so that it could lower its head into the dirt and escape.
My next response WAS as fast as it was instinctive and automatic. Up down up down up down I raised the end of my shovel and slammed it into the soil as the scorpion turned and ran backwards. Yes, I chopped it into little tiny pieces and killed it.
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My newly reawakened proactive lesson from this? No more being care-less stupid in sticking my ungloved hands in amongst my plants to move them, to pull weeds, to try to define root structures so I can try to pull the Bermuda grass out of them. The experience also brought into my clear conscious awareness the fact that diamond back rattlesnakes are giving live birth to their pencil-sized offspring this month. It is a dangerous time, and because we have been blessed with amazing amounts of rainfall much of the soil is moist, damp and cool. Critters in this region — along with their potential for harm — can be hiding anywhere.
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In other words, considering that the name we have given to our own species means ‘The Wise Ones’, the more we can learn about not only potential traumas, and about their triggers, but also about how we are patterned both as a species and as individuals to both prevent where possible and to survive traumas, the better off we will be.
There is a TIME and a purpose to all of the abilities we possess. What so often happens through exposure to abuse and trauma is that our BALANCE between the wise use of our resources for self-protection has been upset.
That, again, is where the healing balm of peace and calm has its OWN power to help us. Peace and calm, the state that was SUPPOSED to be built into the center of our body-nervous system-brain-mind-self is the state in which we can examine our self, our reactions, and think about the environment we live in.
The state of peace and calm is the middle ground between our fast and our slow reaction abilities. It is the state where negotiations between the cultural hemispheres of our left and right brain can come together and converse.
The state of peace and calm corresponds to the STOP arm rather than the GO arm of our autonomic nervous system (ANS), and is the place where true REST occurs. In this state TIME is not acting to put pressure on any part of who we are.
This state of peace and calm is vital to our ability to repair ruptures and to restore our self from the demands of continuing to move forward in our life. It is a place where risk, direct action, threat, active harm and consequence only come into play as we pay attention to anything we think or feel that is connected NOT to the present moment where our state of peace and calm resides, but EITHER to the past or to the future.
And when push really comes to shove, it is during the time of rest while we are asleep and dreaming that the two cultures of the two hemispheres of our brain have the TIME to process information they each have accumulated while we are awake. To also learn how to let our two brain hemispheres work together while we are awake is a very good thing.
To live a life of increased well-being we can begin to more consciously understand the balance we need between the SLOWER and the FASTER reaction potential that lies within us. This is how our highest brain functions can help us live an increasingly proactive (offensive) — rather than reactive (defensive) — life.
NOTE: Now that it has been written I realize this post is about our reaction to trauma and its triggers, not about “how to proactively look for trauma triggers.” I need to think about that separately.
(It is important to realize that over the time span of our specie’s evolution nature dictated that our growing and evolving brain NOT duplicate the ability to accomplish tasks because it was efficient and vital that our brain not get too BIG! Our two brains didn’t each get their own separate house. They reside together in a duplex!
Between these two living areas is a common space, called the Corpus Collosum, where under the best circumstances information is freely transmitted between our two hemispheres to be processed and understood equally by both regions of our brain – and thus our whole self.)
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Stop the Storm 
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