I am walking towards the Post Office with humdrum thoughts roiling in my head of things I need to do, wondering if I’ve got everything I need for tea, pondering a response to an email: the flip-flop ordinariness of everyday worries and concerns. Nothing unusual, nothing remarkable. And then. And then. I can’t even tell you what happened next because it’s snap-click-snap, in a moment, in an instant, and I’m not conscious of it happening at all. But my heart wants to burst like ‘Alien’ out of my chest, there is a rage of energy rippling up my legs and I can feel myself falling inwards and losing touch with myself.
Then it is minutes later, maybe even hours – time has no meaning, and my brain is scrunched up inside my skull with weariness and confusion. What just happened? It was a man with a camera, a dog, a child crying … I don’t know what it was. But I was triggered by something and it’s seriously messed up the last few minutes or hours or even days of my life and I feel indignant and huffy with myself for it happening, and in roll the accusations and the razor-like mental barbs … You’re stupid, why did you have to react like that, what’s the matter with you, you’re pathetic, get a grip, this is ridiculous and then, like glaze on the top, the despair … I’m never going to change, I can’t do life like this, this is hopeless. And, possibly just for good measure, a dollop of panic … I’m never going to get my work finished now, everything’s going wrong today, I can’t cope with all of this!!!
One of the hardest things I found in dealing with triggers was the aftermath: the shame, the self-blame, the sense of failure and powerlessness that once again something had happened that I’d had no sense of control over.