I generally start each day pretty much normal, at least my normal. I wake up, drink coffee, check twitter, check and mock facebook, and go about the matters of my day. This is the routine even when I may be teetering on the edge of depression or mania (or those fun times when it is a little of both, but i digress). Generally speaking I am a friendly, level headed, mildly chatty gal. However, in the midst of these normal days there will be something that will lurk out of the shadows and and steal my joy.

Triggers. Some triggers are obvious, like me seeing a rape headline, because I am a sexual assault survivor or like today seeing a headline of a young black girl committing suicide, because I have been suicidal and tried to go through with it twice. Though huge, these are the type of triggers I can cope and deal with usually pretty well. I talk about these big topics with my therapist/psychiatrist/doctor and have worked on them with great intensity.



But the little triggers, those are the doozies. They always knock the wind out of me with a sucker punch to the gut. They surprise you and circumvent all the coping mechanisms you’ve been working on. Some of these things catch me off guard:

… smelling something that transports me to a painful memory

… hearing a seemingly innocuous song that starts an avalanche of feelings

… social media starts talking about something very loosely related to a past trauma

… hearing someone argue or raise their voice really causes great anxiety and can totally affect my whole day

What are some of the triggers you deal with? How do you cope?