#self triggering

Idk is that one of those odd things that are "actually super normal for traumatized people"?

Hi anon,

What you described reminds me of self-triggering, and yes this is common for trauma survivors. Self triggering is essentially when a trauma survivor "seeks reminders of their traumatic events" and can feel compulsory or tempting. There are many reasons why someone may experience this, and everyone may have different reasons, or they may have multiple reasons. As someone who experiences this, I wanted to share a bit I wrote about exploring possible reasons why I personally self-trigger:

Part of it was to just try and make sense of it all, analyze it down to the finest detail, try to find a motive in the fabric of his shirt or the greed in his eyes. Trying to find myself. Trying to regress. Trying to give her justice by never forgetting what he did to her. Trying to mourn myself in a perpetual funeral. Trying to just hurt myself. Trying to overcome my triggers by constantly confronting them in hopes that one day I’ll just be numb, as if it’s a victory to be numb. Trying to prove to my inner gaslighter that it really was that bad, only to destroy my mental health in the process. It feels like running back into a burning building trying to find any valuables or anyone that may still be alive, even though there’s nothing.

Experiencing self-triggering can be extremely damaging to your mental health - I have had several mental breakdowns from doing this consistently, as it's mentally and emotionally exhausting to repeatedly expose yourself to things you know are at least somewhat upsetting to you. If you can access or afford it, I strongly recommend working on this with a mental health professional such as a therapist. They can not only help you develop some healthy coping mechanisms that you can use to substitute the urges to engage with your triggers, but they can also help you process your trauma as well.

I wish you the best of luck in your healing journey, and I hope I could help. Please let us know if you need anything.

how do i know if i'm okay? i can't recognize if i'm struggling or just actively triggering myself, and even when i do feel bad it's always with a thick layer of numbness/lack of actual care. i don't know how to feel the full scope of my emotions. bad stuff happened to me and i know to some extent that they're bad but it's hard to not take them lightly. and my memory regarding my feelings is pretty much non existent. if i feel overwhelmed at some point, i can't tell 5 minutes later what it was like.

i feel like i'm always in this middle ground of being fine but a little bit affected in some way. but when i feel good for a few days it makes me feel guilty, like i created all my problems for no reason and now i have to trigger myself again, i have to feel worse because it's unfair to act like things are bad and then be okay the next day.

i think i felt really bad yesterday, i must have despite the emotional detachment because i remember feeling overwhelmed. but now i'm normal. how comes i'm so normal?

thank you for your time bun. i hope your day's okay!

Hey etoilause, it's good to hear from you.

I'm sorry to hear about what's been going on. I think it can be hard to get a sense of whether or not you're okay - it can be hard to concentrate on certain signs, especially when you're unsure what to look for.

I would say that, first of all, perhaps this "thick layer of numbness/lack of actual care" is dissociation. If you're going through a hard time emotionally or psychologically, dissociation can make you feel removed from all of that, whether that's feeling foggy, distant, numb, etc. When you're going through this, especially if this is emotional amnesia, it may not actually be possible for you to fully feel your emotions during this time. That's the point - to distance yourself from your emotions, especially if they are emotions being emitted from a traumatic memory.

I also totally relate to your next to last paragraph. I feel like that can just be the stage that you're at in terms of your healing. As for the self-triggering (this is something I'm actively trying to deal with) there's a more formal and scientific PDF explaining what self triggering looks like here, or there's a forum talking about it here.

I can understand how you feel like it's unfair to act like things are bad and then be okay the next day. But it may help to remember that healing isn't linear - sometimes you will have good days and sometimes you will have bad days, and neither really say anything about what you went through. Just because you have a good day doesn't necessarily mean that your trauma wasn't severe, in fact you deserve good things in spite of what you've been through.

But this can be hard to internalize when you're dealing with other things like emotional amnesia, self-triggering, or even internalized gaslighting (does that term resonate with you? internalized gaslighting often goes hand-in-hand with self-triggering).

Like i know some ppl use especially traumacore to hurt themselves. I personally do not, it is just genuinely comforting. Probably because yume nikki and seriel experiments lain are nostalgic for me

me: wouldn't that be funny :)

Brain: Hey so you haven’t been in deep emotional distress for like a month

Me: I know it’s pretty g--

Brain: You should trigger yourself

Me: What.

Brain: Come on let’s watch Cat Scratch Fever--

Me: No! What the fuck--

Brain: You know you want to~

Me: NO, I DO NOT. WE’RE NOT GOING TO DO THAT.

Brain:

Brain: Fine.

Me: Thank you.

Brain: Moon of the Wolf instead.

Me: NO.

Brain: Doomsday?