11 COMMON (BUT UNCONSCIOUS) CPTSD TRIGGERS | DR. KIM SAGE

have you ever been going along in your day and some little thing seems like a little thing happens and now you're in a bad mood for the rest of the day or you just suddenly feel sad and you don't know why because when you try to maybe make sense of it it seems like not that big of a deal I think that so often when you don't have a complicated childhood you know you don't really see how little things can be really just the beginning of you know a reminiscence inside your brain an automatic trigger for things and wounds that happen to you in childhood so I thought we'd go through 11 of those sort of automatic reflexive unconscious responses we can have and what we can do about it kind of just being aware and understanding and having more compassion and love for ourselves because sometimes it seems like what is wrong with us right why is why am I making this a big deal and so let's talk about why you might do that the first thing is having a health issue anything it could be discovering a mole a small bump it could be having a slightly abnormal test result and of course this is true for lots of people it could be for whether you have anxiety or not but for many of us every little thing means we must assume the worst case scenario and that is how we've gone through life we sort of when things happen we imagine okay I have this this thing on my finger it's going to require surgery not oh it's going to be something I can take medicine for and be done with right or I have this symptom and that means something much more significant I'm not going to be here anymore so health anxiety is really a very common Dynamic and it's something to do with you may have had medical trauma you may have had a lot of health issues you may have health issues now they could be related to your childhood wounding right it's part of your sort of body's response but any kind of situation where something happens it's like you automatically go to okay now I'm going to have cancer okay that was going to be a heart attack I'm going to have a stroke like you really have a hard time and it feels terrifying and significant and so because of our childhood of that sort of worst case scenario planning alongside what may have been trauma around medical issues you have to work on understanding what's happening so breathing slowing down trying to pace yourself honoring to yourself that it's understandable that you're you know it's understandable that you're scared but there are there's a process to go through but to not avoid it this is the big thing also many of us because we have these extreme fears and health anxiety we assume the worst and we can actually avoid getting the information to help us know what is happening is it a big deal and for many health issues the more you neglect them the more significant they can be and we know that for many of us because of our cptsd we are more likely to neglect ourselves our health to sort of abandon that things that we need for ourselves so make sure you're slowing down and honoring not only trying to control the Panic you're feeling and maybe doing some anxiety type work but also taking the steps to help rule that out because in your mind you're truly catastrophizing right you really are in that process of catastrophizing is a survival skill for many of us because if I knew what to do next and the bad thing was happening it saved me but like I'm saying the problem can be that you either either live in that state or you neglect finding out what is going on number two if it's too quiet if you had a home where it was either like crazy loud or or silence sometimes in many homes there's a lot of things that happened when it was quiet and it was scary when it was quiet and so maybe the chaos gave you a certain sense of understanding kind of where things were but when it gets too quiet that can be a trigger for wondering what might happen to you next it could be a trigger for you feeling alone and lonely and feeling yourself in a very kind of quiet way and so when that happens a lot of these are going to go back to trying to have self-compassion checking in with yourself honoring that in your childhood perhaps quiet was actually dangerous and or there's too much time for you to be in your mind and so for you you have to work on finding ways to manage that fear inside and as opposed to just always trying to fill up the quiet almost you know reflexively with noise getting quiet inside can also be a place that reveals a lot of information for us like meditation maybe just sitting in your car while you're driving without music doing you know just maybe music without words so trying to find ways to let the quiet not necessarily be a trigger but let it be a place to sort of serve you and help you self-reflect that you are now in charge of your own safety in your own body number three too much noise so too much noise confusing noise over stimulation can be very triggering now many of us have issues around over stimulation whether it's our brain's way of responding combined with or without our childhood and there's not a lot you can do about that except for try to get through it and or remove yourself or maybe you have a TV on and you're watching a tick tock and your kids are playing and fighting in the background even if it's happy noise even the sound of joy and laughter and loudness when my kids would be playing video games they'd be having a good time but they could get really loud and being an only child and used to a lot of quiet like my nervous system would get really tricky really triggered and so we want to go into looking at how to manage our nervous system here so we're going to do things like breathing polyvagol techniques anxiety reduction it might actually be that maybe if it's loud in your home and it's a good loud nothing bad is happening but maybe you need to go outside in the garden or your backyard or your patio or porch maybe you need to go take a walk and get actually get the cardio going inside to kind of get that angsty energy down maybe it's about doing some of those tapping exercises or the things that we know can help calm and soothe our nervous systems but that can be a very big trigger for our own anxiety and our own trauma and maybe in your home loud mint danger and it can make you more likely to overreact so going back to the video game example you know what what I didn't want to do was yell at them they were having a good time right but maybe they were being too loud it's okay to be like hey guys you know can you lower your voices a bit but the bottom line is the trigger is really about you and you're getting activated and it feels like that and it's really bad like I'm saying either way when they're having a good time but then if you yell at them and you lose it which we all do but if you keep doing that not only do you not soothe your nervous system but you often reinforce that sense of shame because now you responded like your parents or you parented in a way that you didn't want to or you yelled at your spouse or whatever it is and now you don't feel good about yourself and that can be another trigger we know that that feeling of worthlessness is a huge part of often cptsd number four overreading I call it like um transition or closing sounds so as I've said in a lot of videos the sound of the tires pulling onto the gravel in the driveway the sound of cabinets slamming the sound of the dishwasher maybe if there's glasses clinking too loud the doors slamming a lot of us spent childhood overreading the sounds that our parents were making that's part of hyper vigilance that we needed and those sounds meant something so that if you were let's say Dad came home and slammed the garage door that was going to be a very different night than the night he came in the house and opened the door and popped a beer or whatever he did and sat on the sofa right it's just the way that we make meaning out of sounds especially when things are closing it could also be of course like I said in a lot of also videos the sound of someone sighing you know just oh what like that in and of itself could mean could mean a whole thing of self-protection for the evening but if this is happening to you and once again nothing is wrong your kids are just being kids and slamming the back door the patio door slams or they're not being more mindful you know you can talk to them about hey let's talk about some ways to shut the doors more quietly you don't want to become also the opposite like obsessive about that sort of one's afraid of you and afraid to make sound but understanding that in your body that can be very triggering kind of going back to the last one in your nervous system so you're going to want to do things that help calm and soothe because it's really about you and like I'm saying if there's a place to help others like hey would you mind trying to not slam the garage door whether it's your partner or whatever the next one is being in small spaces like suddenly being in small spaces every now and then there's been a few times when my kids my daughter or somebody would like like jokingly shut the closet door and it is something that happened to me in childhood that was really traumatizing and so I still like it's kind of a joke now they're like oh my God mom's gonna have a panic attack but if I'm suddenly put in a small space in the dark like as a joke that is very triggering in my body and that goes straight back to my childhood I'm straight back to trauma and even though I know in that moment I'm perfectly fine and safe if I'm not aware of that it can make me angry and yell it can make me feel a little scared and triggered and if I were maybe a lot less further along in my process it could trigger a flashback for many people or your flashback so understanding that small spaces outside of things like having claustrophobia for many of us that's a real issue but that those those same things that these are things that are really happening in your nervous system so you want to let your kids know hey please don't do that maybe you don't want to tell them about your trauma when they're like eight but as they get older right it's okay to say hey that was that kind of stresses me out can you please not do that and to try to find ways to manage that now claustrophobia is a whole different story but it can it can be related obviously often to travel trauma okay the next one is not getting enough positive reinforcement so it's kind of like low-key criticism or low-key negative feedback so as I've given the example I would make these beautiful Barefoot Contessa meals and it was a big place I was getting meaning for myself as a stay-at-home mom there wasn't a lot of things you know you're by yourself no one is saying hey you nailed that you could have yelled at the kids or you got that right and I always as I've shared didn't my mom didn't cook I grew up on a lot of frozen food and and I taught myself how to cook and I felt like it was a sense of Pride and I was making these beautiful delicious meals and my partner at the time would be like this is good this is good you know it's a little too uh Saucy or I mean and like feedback is one thing but it was just always it's this but it's that butt and it would like it was like you know it was so devastating in the moment because in that space in my life I didn't have a good sense of self now I still am a little sensitive to it I'm not gonna lie but my kids can be like this is my kids are great like they are so supportive but you know if it's something that I know I didn't do as good of a job on they'll be like yeah it's good mom you know I'm I'm much harder on myself but I can hold the space for like yeah I kind of messed that one up um and it doesn't devastate me now if I do it on like a Thanksgiving turkey which for some reason I'm a really great cook but I have not had the best luck with turkeys please feel free to post down below how you make your Thanksgiving Turkey um I'm always like oh man I screw that up but if you had a childhood where there's a lot of criticism and oftentimes parents can be overly controlling or critical you're doing this wrong that's not how you do that you're tying your shoes wrong this is not how we shut the dishwasher oh don't get me started on on Partners who have to load the dishwasher a certain way that is why a lot of couples fight it's not that your method is is better than the other persons but there's a lot that happens in that feedback that feels often like criticism and it can be a control issue you know if your partner is willing to help you do the dishes and they get clean for example then back out of how the dishes are done I know many of you are going to argue with me in the comments about this but there is a right way to do it but think about what it feels like to be told you're doing it wrong again and again and again even if you stayed in the nicest way or the assumption is you didn't do it right or even worse you go back and redo the whole thing and run it again because it wasn't done to your standards that's a you issue I'm sorry but it is as long as things are getting done and handled it's that can be very triggering though and so if you get a lot of criticism from your partners your kids your friends your boss and you had that in childhood you can really collapse into that unworthy shame-filled sense of self and so often here you want to deal with your partners or your kids or the actual person that's treating you that way set some boundaries hey you know what it's not okay that you're always asking for my help and then I do the dishes and you redo them in a way that because you don't think I'm doing it right it hurts me it's not okay you work through that you work through what the trigger is for yourself that even if they aren't happy about it that those are their feelings they are they don't belong to you and that's separation when we've had this kind of childhood where it's all enmeshed can be really difficult to do so self-compassion about resetting things like that the next one is people who are fake and very surface level I've discussed this in other videos too where it's like you can tell too when I think you've been exposed to narcissists you get pretty good at detecting your detector for those who are full of it in the room but maybe it's the the room mom in your child's classroom or it's your boss or whatever so there there are places where you can escape being around fake surfacy like overly Charming dramatic attention-seeking people but if you had a parent like that or a primary caregiver it can bring up a lot in you and that might not serve you maybe it is your boss and there's not a lot you can do about it and so but it can be a trigger and it's not just the fact that you think oh they're fake and not real it triggers your sense of feeling not not seen in childhood and not being able to do anything about it right you can't call out the parent who is the communal narcissist for example who runs the PTA but who's terrible at home um because everyone thinks they're so great you're disconnected from your body from what you feel like this parent doesn't actually have this sense of community for me but everyone else thinks they're great but you can't express that there's no safety in that and so those experiences while they just see monoculars like oh I went to a networking event or a party and these people were so full of themselves or whatever could be deeply triggering it can also trigger jealousy and fear maybe that parent was Charming outside but dangerous at home so you want to do work there again on separating in your mind looking at what things you can and can't do maybe it's time to look for another job for example things like that the next one is food issues so oftentimes for many of us food whether it was not enough food forced eating everything on your plate not having enough groceries in the refrigerator I will say one of my triggers is that my daughter says I'm we're an ingredient household I don't I didn't know what that meant before but the thing about it is is that my mom did not often shop and as I've talked about we didn't have a lot of great options for food and so in one way it taught me how to cook like I'd have friends from college come home when they've opened the door and be like oh my God there's nothing to eat here and be like just a minute and I could pretty much make anything I just find things to put together so it is a skill I learned but when my daughter for example like the refrigerator is is pretty decent there are things to make nothing is potentially leftover or like on a plate for her and she'll be like there's nothing to eat and that trigger can make me I mean if I'm not mindful it's like what are you talking about there's nothing to eat there's nothing you want to make to eat but there's a ton of food there's so much food in my tiny little house we can't fit it in the pantry but it's barely even a pantry basically so it could be like I'm saying the portions of food not enough food but it may really be about you and so in those moments if I'm not mindful I can make that about me and not be like what do you mean there's no food it's like okay well there are things to eat let's let me see if I can help you find something or I'll make something if I'm in the mood to help her discover something or maybe it's a teaching moment hey did you know you could like take a tortilla and put cheese here and grab some beans from the pantry and smash that avocado and the next thing you know you've got like a whole meal so but if you often have issues around this topic it can obviously be a huge trigger so you want to work on that depending upon like what the issue is trying to own the parts that belong to you and I guess the ingredient thing means I don't buy a lot of like pre-packaged processed food I do buy um like Trader Joe's frozen foods and chicken fingers and all of that stuff so I'm not an almond mom I'll my mom although my daughter calls me an almond mom when I eat all a joke I guess or walnuts but the point is I guess there are this like gen Z as this whole hierarchy of food items and when my kids were little I did have more snacky foods now that it's just down to a few of us you know it's also more it's less kid stuff than it used to be but the point is that can be a trigger and it can really it can set you off in all kinds of ways related to your body to the to your childhood and if you're not aware it can become a much bigger issue the next one is not having enough help so like you know if you feel like you're always the one doing the dishes or the laundry or you feel overwhelmed and maybe your kids are little they can't really help you right just that helplessness that what it triggers is that I'm all in this alone and no one is coming to save me and no one is coming to help me and that can make us get angry and resentful feel exhausted and fatigued and overwhelmed the amount of triggers around feeling trapped or helpless or alone are massive for cptsd but it may just be that you dump the laundry out on your bed and no one helped fold it and just they just left it there which is a big trigger for me it's like why aren't you folding the towels and it can be triggering and also like of course as I talked about setting boundaries with your kids and asking for help is something I struggled with and probably still do so in some ways I'm recreating my trauma by not demanding and asking for more but that goes into like I've said in other videos not wanting to yell and I'm asking and not getting help so then if you yell you feel bad about yourself and you think you're that parent so the point is you really want to try to take each of these like this one and try to look at and isolate wait a minute what is this really about what is really going on what am I feeling what's my body feeling and what can I do about it the next two are these dropping things so I'm a huge dropper and in terms of I think things like ADHD where you have bruises and you don't know where they came from when you walk into tables and you leave cabinets open and drop things and I break glasses and that can be a huge shame trigger it's some it's like I did something wrong I made a mistake I'm bad and when it happens a lot you can say things to yourself like I'm so stupid why did I do that what's wrong with me you know which a lot of that can reinforce that negative belief system about yourself so trying to be mindful of not just how you respond but how you respond to your kids for example it's really difficult when you're stressed and busy and they drop and break something but for me one of my childhood trauma triggers was dropping a gallon of milk I think I was like four but I started making my own breakfast at like three or four like when I could walk to the refrigerator in the morning and make cereal my whole life my mom never made me breakfast like ever which is whatever I'm fine it's just that um the milk dropping I remember I mean I have this like memory of her screaming at me about it and I'm sure that and when I did drop things she had a you know a difficult temper with things and so that one can really be a shame spiral that and then when you break something you really love you know yourself on accident I mean if there's a lot of places you can go with this so you want to look at yourself with the lens of self-compassion if it's if it's happening in your body once again going back to managing your nervous system and things like that and the last one is this just happened to me watching Queen Victoria which I know is not perfect but I actually really loved really loved this last one um from the Bridgerton series from the Bridgerton series so much more than the last two which I enjoyed but it was just so good the actors were so amazing the cast was so incredible the younger actors were often I think they were relatively new in terms of like big opportunities they were fabulous and of course the existing cast I can't talk today I don't really feel good today um and I have it so if I sound a little off maybe that's why um anyway and so it was incredible but I am a big believer in using movies and music for uh therapeutic content and you know how you can like listen to a song and just start sobbing or you can be watching a movie and it seems to have no relationship to your life like Queen Victoria when you get about an episode I think four or so as they start to really dive into the the issues with her husband because of my own personal story I had to stop watching it several times it was so triggering and this was so long ago but it brought up memories I was having literal memories of experiences of the trauma of what happened and the way things played out and so sometimes these things can be great for therapy if you want to you can't cry and you watch a certain movie and then you talk to your therapist about it or you you know you watch a film and you and it really brings up things and you to me that's a great thing to bring up in therapy but oftentimes these things that we that we may have no relationship to it seems like can bring up so many feelings that's why so many people that say they don't cry but only cry during movies because a I think it's an unconscious trigger that that they go into and they're less guarded about what the triggers are and it kind of promotes that that often sadness that is really already in there but if you're not aware of it you can feel like why am I crying about this it can also be a really important place to say you know what this thing triggered me and maybe there's some work I want to do there in my therapy or in searching out books or podcasts or whatever so those are I think 11 I know there are more but of their very kind of common often day-to-day triggers that we can have very automatically and reflexively that seem kind of random or odd or like what's what's the big deal with that often there's a very big deal underneath that so all of these really go back to shame work the nervous system if you're in therapy maybe trauma related therapies learning how to do identity work learning how to really deal with what happens when you get in that fight or flight or that Frozen or even more no down collapse State because there are things we often need to do to work through that like for example a polyvagal theory like the latter or the ladder you know the dorsal vagal sympathetic and ventral vagal so you might need to do things to kind of get yourself out of the drop into mobilization into sympathetic and the interconnection maybe you watched something that was upsetting and you shut down and collapsed you had a you know emotional flashback and then you decide to take a walk when you can that helps to begin to create movement and then maybe you discuss it with a friend or your therapist or your partner or whatever so um I'm gonna think about some more because I know that I just had a few more come to mind but I don't have notes about those so anyway please feel free to share your own thoughts and turkey recipes down below I'm sort of half kidding but um and definitely if you have more you want to add to this group of of Concepts um I'd love to see it so once again thank you so much for being here I appreciate you so much I'm so grateful to be at 100K I cannot believe it I just I I don't even I'm kind of speechless about it like I've been working so hard and at the same time you just think like oh well you know and I'm just it just means so much to know that not necessarily the number but like the work is like creating awareness and people are sharing things and saying oh my gosh you know this reminded me of that and thank you for helping me be seen or whatever you know that that really means a lot to me because I think a lot of why I've done this is because I I just always felt like am I crazy or I'm so alone in this and it's shameful when you have certain childhoods you don't want to talk about so I am so grateful for all of you and for your honesty and for your support and just for you being here thank you so much please stay safe and well and I'll see you probably tomorrow okay bye thank you [Music] foreign

Channel: DR. KIM SAGE, LICENSED PSYCHOLOGIST

Views: 32,026

Keywords: cptsd, triggered, triggers, complex ptsd, ptsd and relationships, relationship triggers, dr kim sage, complex post traumatic stress disorder, specific triggers, oddly specific, automatic responses psychology, reflex response, control issues, anxiety, attachment issues, attachment wounds, narcissistic parents, emotionally immature parents, narcissistic partners, criticism in relationships

Id: 45C3dT04jgY

Length: 25min 32sec (1532 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023