Connecting The Dots

How Certain Triggers Pointed To Something Deeper

Recently, I’ve been trying to work through some things from my past, both childhood and not so distant. One of the things that I had been working through was something that I had no answers to for the longest time. There were certain things; certain songs that I would avoid because they caused me to feel unsettled. A while back, a family member and I got on the topic of this and they questioned what might have happened that would have caused this. At the time, I had no answer. It seemed as if the memory of what happened had been blocked. Then, not so long ago, I heard something on a video about how certain things, such as songs, can be a trigger if they had occurred while something traumatic had happened. At that moment, I thought about the thing that was a trigger for me. I continued to think about it off and on, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to remember what happened and why that particular thing was a trigger that I avoided. It was something that went back to my early childhood, something that I couldn’t talk about during that time out of fear of being judged harshly. I started digging deeper, finding out all that I could about this and it’s when I realized that it went even deeper to a root cause that caused a constant fear throughout my childhood. I recalled something that occurred that left me unsettled as a young child. I had an understanding that what occurred was horrible. That event was coupled with the very thing that became a trigger for me for the remainder of my childhood. This was the thing that made the fear I was experiencing seem real. It was like a horrible nightmare that haunted me. The fact that there were times when I could not escape it was even worse for me. The moment I’d hear the counting, I knew what was coming and the tension would rise. I couldn’t talk about it out of fear of being punished or judged harshly for it. I felt alone in the torment that I was dealing with from within. A few years later, something similar had occurred and with it were the same unsettled feelings. It may have been the reason I struggled with sleep for most of my life. Of course, there were other things that occurred that played a role in my sleep difficulties. I covered that in a past post.

Realizing the connection caused a release and a greater understanding. I understood the reason behind the fear and unsettled feelings. In a way, it felt like power, be it small. It also felt like a huge leap in the right direction even though I was also a bit frustrated because of what could’ve and should’ve been. I know that there is nothing that can be done to change what happened in the past, but the journey of healing can proceed as I continue to work through more obstacles along the way.