Triggers can’t be avoided. However, they can be contained once you make the decision to tackle the hard work.
Triggers are the emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, intellectual, professional, relational, sexual, and social responses that our minds, bodies, souls, and spirits illicit due to an arousal of our five senses.
Triggers can be difficult because they require us to be able to understand what is happening now and possibly may happen in the future versus what has actually happened in the past.
It’s so important to sit with God in stillness and develop clarity and self-awareness in being able to identify and understand the trigger, dissect its value and consistency of its effectiveness in restricting your life, and then setting up grounding techniques and boundaries for containment.
How do you deal with your triggers of the past and present? How have other people you know dealt with triggers? What advice would you give other people struggling with triggers? Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments.
When we think of the sun, we automatically think of its natural ability to provide us with Vitamin D. And boy does it make a difference when it is out as opposed to when it’s not, especially when we are talking about a day like today in the Midwest where it is super windy. Have you ever stopped to think about the sun and its effect on trauma? If not, and you think you are alone, think again. I hadn’t given it that much thought until about eight years ago to be exact.
The Sun And Its Effect on Trauma-Photo by Tomas Hustoles at Burst by Shopify
After having a series of events that led to compounded trauma, I started noticing that the sun has a tremendous effect on how I am feeling once the seasons are nearing a significant change. It is so much so, that it can be disorienting. The sun itself is the main trigger, but surprisingly, what goes along with it is the manner and angle at which it is shining, etc. that makes it a trigger.
Part 2-The Sun and Its Effect on Trauma
For example, two weeks of last month was a challenge for me when the sun came out. Thankfully, I had my toolbox available and ready. As I sat at the table taking notes for my class, I observed how beautifully the sun was shining through the kitchen window. I also noticed that my body was having a reaction to it. The birds were singing their tune, and it sounded so pretty, yet something seemed off.
I knew that being still long enough would give me the answer. While listening to the teacher, I reminded myself, “This is a trauma trigger. The source of the sun causing havoc will soon be revealed.” And in no time it did. My mind went back to something that happened literally twenty-four years ago, on my birthday, when I had to rush and leave work because I thought I was having a heart attack, only to find out a few months later. Along with this revelation came the feelings along with it, as I sat there at the table.
Part 3-The Sun and Its Effect on Trauma
I allowed myself to feel the loneliness that I felt back then, allowing myself to remember it, and the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual toll that it took on my health; but then also reminding myself that it happened in the past. I could lean in, discover the origin, feel it, and then process, and move on with my day.
In the comments down below, would love to know if you have noticed how the sun and its presence triggers your trauma. If so, how were you able to get yourself back to a point of resiliency?
At Valley of Grace, we believe in thriving. In order to thrive, we have to begin grounding ourselves in our identity. The first step in making this happen, is dealing with the effects of our childhood wounds. Click here to get started in Online Therapy today.****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.
Are you saying to yourself, “I’m sick and tired of being in this state of languishing!” , but you are confused about how to get out? You need someone to walk you through the process, step by step. That’s what the course Broken Pieces is all about. This course walks you through with personalized videos, getting you to the heart of the matter. ****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.
Have you ever been tired? And not just tired, but more like exhausted? And on every level? Did you know that emotional exhaustion can lead to burnout?
Burnout isn’t something that comes out of the blue. It is a slow process that has been happening over time. Catching it and being proactive about dealing with the symptoms helps to build up resiliency, giving you a collection of tools that you can used in case the problem resurfaces. We are not God where we know what can tip us over the edge. However, we can get to know ourselves better so that we can know our limitations, and prevent the entire process itself from unraveling. For the podcast on the Gift of Limitations, you can check that out here. If you missed the last podcast interview with podcast host and ministry of music Christen Clark, you can catch up on that here.
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
At Valley of Grace, we believe in thriving. In order to thrive, we have to begin grounding ourselves in our identity. The first step in making this happen, is dealing with the effects of our childhood wounds. Click here to get started in Online Therapy today.****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.
Are you saying to yourself, “I’m sick and tired of being in this state of languishing!” , but you are confused about how to get out? You need someone to walk you through the process, step by step. That’s what the course Broken Pieces is all about. This course walks you through with personalized videos, getting you to the heart of the matter. ****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.
Podcast Transcription
Part 1A
Speaker 0 00:00:11 Speaker 1 00:00:55 This is the Healing Our Brokenness podcast where we dissect problems and solutions that exist among broken people, living in a broken world. And we also believe here at healing our brokenness podcast, that we are going from broken relationships to resilience and flourishing.
Have you ever been tired? Not just tired, but more like exhausted and on every level, did you know that emotional exhaustion can actually lead to burnout and burnout Isn’t something that just comes up out of the blue? It’s a slow process. That’s been happening over time, catching it and being proactive about dealing with the symptoms helps to build up the resiliency.
And it gives us a collection of tools in our toolbox that we can use in case the problem resurfaces. Again, we’re not God, and we cannot know every single time what’s going to tip us over the edge. However, we can get to know ourselves better so that we can know our limitations and we can prevent the entire process from unraveling like a domino effect.
Part1B
Speaker 1 00:02:22 For further explanation on limitations, the podcast called the gift of limitations, would be a great resource. And that one goes into more detail on being able to understand our limitations and to respect them.
It was about four years ago, I guess I would say really five. When I think about it from the period of 2016 to 2018, I had maybe four episodes of being emotionally exhausted. And, these episodes occurred because of a combination of compounded trauma, my own trauma, my kids’ trauma, supporting them, the trials I was going through at the time, etc. A lot of it being financial.
And what happened was, there were several nights in a row where I had not slept well, and when I say not sleeping well, two to three hours of sleep, four nights in a row. And I knew by night number three, I had basically maxed out.
I looked like I was depressed. And when my daughter saw me, she said, are you okay mom? And I said, yeah, why not? You ask? She said, Oh, you just look like you lost your best friend. And so I went and looked in the mirror and I was like, Oh wow, I look a hot mess. Even when my son came in the door, he said, man, you look jacked up.
” Oh, thank you.” And I laughed it off, but I really was not in a good state at all. Yes, grief had gotten backed up. And so between the grief and the insomnia together, it was just a bad mix. It was straight from the pit of hell, literally. And so we all know that when we don’t get enough sleep, it ripples down to other things, it can lead us to be more emotional.
Part two
Speaker 1 00:04:30 And then on the other hand, when we’re more emotional and we have all of this stuff built up in our system, particularly grief that can also lead to sleepless nights because once we max out, our bodies are going, “we’re done”. We’re not going any further until I get enough of it out and then you can rest. And so that’s exactly what was happening too. I mean, just emotional exhaustion.
It did not lead to burnout, but yeah, could have had I not paid attention to my body and kept going due to all of those issues that I was dealing with at that time. And a lot, the people that I’ve heard speak on burnout, particularly ministers have mentioned about the spirit of cynicism coming in when burnout is approaching. A friend of theirs noticed and mentioned something to them about them getting depressed about some of the things that they would normally do.
Part Three
Speaker 1 00:05:30 They were not satisfied with anything. They found themselves feeling unfulfilled and just being cynical about everything being the beginning of it, along with the emotional exhaustion and the inability to rest. What I did when I felt the extreme emotional exhaustion coming on is this: I followed through the script, the one that Elijah did, basically, just to be honest with you.
Because of all of that in my soul and the despair and fear set in, I rested, poured into scripture, Bible studies, podcasts, sermon messages, music nonstop all day long for several days in a row to help me get back up. And even though I eat healthy, I made sure I ate extra healthy, and doubled and tripled up on teas those days. I was able to get back up within a few days and I was just like myself again. And with Elijah, he had been in battle.
Part Four
Speaker 1 00:06:37 He had gone through miracles. He performed all these miracles, killed all of these false prophets and had just run and run and run and run. So he ran himself out. So he finally sat down. It was like, ah, and he finally realized that, I guess I would say, realized the state that he was in. And then that’s when his soul expressed the despair, “Oh,, God I’m ready to die!”
And that’s how I knew I was not myself because inside I was like, “Oh, this is horrible! I can’t take it any more!” And it’s like, it’s one thing to be angry or bitter or resentful about something. Those are different emotions/feelings. So I knew something was off. And with Elijah, God told him to eat, eat, and then sleep and rest and then eat and then sleep again because he was going to need to be rested up for his journey.
Speaker 1 00:07:37 And sometimes we want to just do a quick fix and go on. And sometimes it is a quick fix, but sometimes it’s not. And, we have to give ourselves grace those types of situations. The way the Holy spirit works is really something else. Because after I dealt with this, might’ve been no time after emotional exhaustion occurrence number two, I saw someone else. And as soon as I looked at their face, I knew what that particular person was going through. And like I had the screaming voice inside, their outer voice said,” Oh, this is happening again!”
Part Five
They were filled with despair. And I responded, “you know what? Rest for about two weeks. And then we’ll talk. ” I had to set that boundary. I knew how I was in that condition. It would not do me any good to try to reason with someone who’s in that state, the state I had already been through and knowing what the end result was of being in that state. And I did empathize. I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way. I hope you feel better, but this is when we can talk.
And so, when we’re not sitting still long enough, outside of having emotional exhaustion, giving ourselves margin, we don’t have the capacity to tell something is off, to know our limits, to question what is going on inside our souls. We just keep pushing till we can’t push anymore. Then Burnout!
Speaker 0 00:09:14 Sometimes we need someone else to notice like I did with my friend. Just saying, “You know what? You don’t look so well. And so in that case,
Part Six
Speaker 1 00:09:28 Listen to what they say. That’s when we know we have to set up boundaries and we have to take preventative measures for the sake of our own wellbeing. Resiliency happens when we are resting on a regular basis as part of our rhythms. If we are not giving ourselves margin, saying yes to everything that everybody asks us to do, not saturating ourselves in God’s word we will max out. Computer networks only have a certain bandwidth. So do we. In different seasons, different trials, and different ages and stages.
Speaker 1 00:10:08 Our abilities and goals and responsibilities can change off and on. They can change from one day to the next. We just never know. what could be the tipping point, but we want to be able to bounce back with resiliency, and that way, each time emotional exhaustion hits, it will be less intense.
Speaker 1 00:10:20 Your brain and body will thank you and say, “I know what to do. Been there. Done that.” After healing, If we get stuck in, “Man. I can’t believe that happened. Oh my goodness. I can not believe that happened”, we could just sit in that forever. Kind of like when I would wake up late for work. And I’m just like 20 minutes in the bed because I am stuck in “I can’t believe that this happened. “
Finally, I snap myself out of it by saying, “Ok Tina, you overslept. Now what?” Then, I get up and get moving. Speaker 1 00:11:16 With our souls will be joyous and glad that we did that. And so, God gave Elijah his next steps when Elijah came out of his near burnout, it was like, “okay, what do I do now?” And God was like, “you appoint this person. You appoint that person. You appoint this person.” Basically Elijah was not going to be doing all those things on his own anymore.
Part Seven
And a lot of times we get to the point that we get to because we’re trying to do too much and try to do too much on our own. So we can either take three days of rest or two weeks of rest to bounce back and become resilient, or we can take the whole year off. And the end of the day, it is up to us how we want to take care of ourselves and how we want to continue to flourish in our relationships. I am so preaching to myself right now. I promise you.
Speaker 1 00:12:09 Whether it’s at home, church, work, in ministry, wherever it is that we’re doing, we want to be able to continue to flourish. We want to be able to continue being resilient with self-care, yielding, and resting in God is part of that resiliency, those are parts of the formula. And we cannot leave that out. So I hope something said resonated with you. And I just want to thank you so much for listening in to every episode. I’m at one hundred episodes.
This is number 100 episode and I praise and thank God. I’m kind of in shock. You know, I know that it’s been a road getting here, but still the fact that it’s the 100th episode. I praise and thank God! And I also want to give a shout out to Timothy Horton for bringing the intro and outro music to us every week.
Speaker 1 00:13:03 And that song is entitled Valley of Grace. And it can be found wherever music is sold. Healing Our Brokenness podcast is on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, and on Amazon music, etc. So if this is blessing your life in any kind of shape, form or fashion, if you could please give a shout out to your friends, your neighbors, your family members, and ask them to follow us.
Have you ever considered the answer to the question, “What is your identity in?” I have heard it many of times over the years; these times were in church, small groups, sermons, and podcasts on the radio. If we were all thinking about the answer to this question, it would probably entail more than one thing. Listen up as we talk about this very concept on today’s podcast. If you missed “An Interview with Erin Thompson Part 1 or Part 2, you still have time to catch up. Have a blessed rest of your Wednesday.
At Valley of Grace, we believe in thriving. In order to thrive, we have to begin grounding ourselves in our identity. The first step in making this happen, is dealing with the effects of our childhood wounds. Click here to get started in Online Therapy today.****This is an amazon affiliate link where a commission is paid to offsite the cost of providing this information to you.
The year 2020 has had a lot of ups and downs. And to be honest, there seems to have been more downs than ups. In this podcast episode, I will go over some of the things that we have dealt with collectively, as well as individually. I will also dissect what we have as an anchor for the new year. In case you missed the last episode, you can click here to catch up.
Substance Abuse plagues every family. No one is exempt. Although it is something that plagues every family, it is not something that we want to talk about. It causes shame, exhaustion, anger, and fear. Addictions leave the same effect, with innocent parties sitting back on edge, waiting to see what happens next. Click here to listen to Substance Abuse & Addictions Counselor Julianna Sliger with her take on Brokenness, Substance Abuse, and Her Journey in General.
Julianna Sliger, Substance Abuse and Addictions Counselor
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself.
PTSD/trauma is real. And for those of us who live with it on a daily basis, it can be challenging for some, and debilitating for others. Everyday, we have conversations with people, and those conversations may involve sights, sounds, smells, etc. that trigger some form of trauma that we have experienced in our lifetime. The question that I have for you today is, “What happens when one traumatic event triggers another traumatic event?”
For instance, we are living in a pandemic. This pandemic is trauma-inducing. It brings with it fear, anxiety, uncertainty, unpredictability, isolation, etc. Just going over these elements themselves, it is important to take note that they rank high on the list as contributing factors to PTSD.
In the month of June, we had the death of George Floyd as the deaths of Breanna Taylor and Armaud Arbery were still fresh in our minds. His death led to a series of protests, looting, and upheaval all across the nation, and then all across the world. Some areas even got so bad that the nation guards were brought in, For some people like my mom, this series of events took them straight back to the 1960s when the Civil Rights movement was in full swing. Dr. King had come to Memphis, Tennessee to march peacefully in hopes of helping the sanitation workers get fair pay and treatment.
What he didn’t plan on happening, is that his arrival in Memphis would sadly be the beginning of the end of his life. The national guards would come in to take control. People like my uncle and cousin would be beaten with billy clubs. Looting would take over the city, as well as other places in the United States.
The hardest part about navigating a traumatic event like murder in broad daylight is hoping that you’re not alone. Someone understands and empathizes with your pain. In the sixties, there wasn’t social media. Today, there is. After these deaths, people flocked to social media for expressing their feelings, whether it was outrage, disbelief, shock, or empathy, as others lied in wait to attack them.
The surprise attacks caused these expressers to be retraumatized over and over again. People who you thought felt the same way that you do were showing their true feelings, causing you to feel like a knife was being inserted in your chest. Life became even trickier to navigate. Friendships among races became trickier to navigate. Nothing felt certain. So in a time like this, what do we do in order to navigate this trauma, the trauma of these lives that have been taken.
First of all, we pray, and then pray again, humbling ourselves.
if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Remind ourselves that this is now 2020, and that our minds want us to think that we’re back in the 1960s.
Ground ourselves in the spaces that you we in, with smells, sights, sounds, and pictures reflecting the current time.
Remind ourselves that God is soverign and in control, while we pray and hope that justice will be served, knowing that God is the ultimate judge.
Talk to our pastor, or another trusted leader for support.
Find like-minded friends and family members that you know will offer support.
Sign yourself up for therapy if needed.
Limit your time on social media.
Give yourself grace, compassion, and empathy.
And most importantly, grieve, lament, and grieve again. There is no time constraint on grief, and seeing the loss of life is hard for any and all witnesses.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Child Development Teacher and Woman of God, Joyce Mosely. What made this interview extra special is the fact that Joyce is my mother. I hope that you guys enjoy listening to Joyce, being herself, and teaching us about her life and how it relates to brokenness.
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
We all want acceptance. We want to be accepted. Rejection is way too painful. What about when the tables are turned, and we are expected to accept someone or something, and the end result is out of our control. Like death. The pandemic. Our financial stability. Tune in to Episode 67 as we dissect acceptance.
The word “triggered” has become so overly used in this day and age. For those of us who live with trauma/PTSD, triggers are real. And when they occur, gaining solid grounding is what’s needed in order to get past the episode. This poem, entitled, “Triggered” paints a vivid picture of what it’s like.
