http://goo.gl/aS8Zli
In the first part of this article, I looked at how triggers are an everyday occurrence for many trauma survivors and what an impact they can have on us. But as well as being unwelcome intrusions, triggers are also clues to our dissociated trauma, little ‘pop-up’ reminders of things from the past that our brains have interpreted as danger. They can therefore point us towards what we still need to process. So whilst being difficult to deal with, they can also become useful guides on our therapeutic journey of recovery. Rather than being ashamed of triggers, we can start to see that they are our brain’s best attempt to keep us safe by giving us maximum warning time to respond to potential threats. The problem lies in the fact that our amygdala, which functions as a kind of ‘smoke alarm’ in the brain, responds so quickly and so automatically to potential threats (within 7 milliseconds and outside of conscious thought), that if we were in a lot of ‘fires’ as a child, we react without even thinking to the merest ‘whiff of smoke.’