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Lecia_Wynter
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16 Dec 2022, 8:07 am

How do we move past triggers? Online search engine results just seemed like a cesspool of quackery and low-tier advice that isn't really helpful.

Example of what I mean by trigger: An example is someone's name, perhaps an ex, or someone who rejected/ghosted me. Just seeing the name again triggers me. That is one example. Another example are numbers, a good cultural example is the number 13. But it could be another number, maybe the name of a day that happened to be traumatic or something.

Browsing online I can't find any good advice on this, it all seems to just be bogus or handwavey "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" nonsense. So I am looking to you all for your opinions on how to neutralize these triggers.

Side rant: The search engine I used is creepy and I didn't want to use it. I tested it against other search engines and it returned the creepiest results, much creepier than Google search. The search engine seems to consistently return creepy and disturbing results often. What's even more infuriating is I tried to change my default search engine and it ignores that when I use private browsing mode. The irony is the search engine is Brave search so your only alternative is using search engines that literally spy on you, how dystopian. Of course when I tried to search for tech help on how to fix this garbage there were 0 helpful results.



Edna3362
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17 Dec 2022, 10:14 pm

There are plenty of techniques about how to react and manage triggers, some less concrete stuff like what to do in meditation and during therapy, and a lot of explanations why it exists and how humans are evolved this way.

The solutions are somewhat too abstract to articulate.

How to move past triggers is first to know one's own emotional make up. And acknowledge the facts about it -- it's like knowing your ego.

Emotions and it's neurological counterparts along with the subconscious function, is faster than the conscious and it's neurological counterparts.

The subconscious and the conscious are two different entities. The bridge between the two is usually awareness.

Now, it's up to the individual's emotional make up. This is not a linear process.
One may suddenly automatically 'judge' the reaction as it happens. And one may try to consciously stop it.

Does forgiveness work? Does unforgiveness work? Does anger, shame, guilt and regret work? Does confrontation work? Does hiding work?

Again, this is a very abstract and a very individually subjective thing. Emotional processing is a headache that humans carry.

Emotional processing could look like basically doing "nothing productive" on the outside, kinda like meditation.
Or mindless chatter of small talks over a drink.
Like mindlessly cleaning or taking walks in a forest as opposed to browsing for memes and stress eating.

The mind has to not have a goal or expectations or anything to work on -- the conscious has to steer what to focus then letting itself be and let subconscious process it which is very automatic, very abstract and somewhat seems "too boring" and basically feels like doing "nothing".

Until with enough time, realizations comes. To question your beliefs, your feelings, and whatever was ingrained in you that the subconscious holds and eventually resulted the reactions and triggers.

One that may or may not change reactions to triggers.

And this can be repeated.
This can take weeks or years, just like any therapy sessions do it seems. Again, this is not a linear thing. And it's a very abstract thing.


I'm not a therapist. Or a psychologist.
And language isn't my forte.

And perhaps one of the reasons why search engine sucks is because it's not easy to articulate or even communicate whatever solution.

I don't know about the creepy parts.
I also have questions that the search engine just cannot answer either.


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Lecia_Wynter
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01 Jan 2023, 7:46 am

Hmm thanks for the reply. Normally I would check the forums more often, but I didn't want a reminder of the subject matter at the time. I appreciate the suggestion, but I'm not convinced its exactly a subconscious/conscious dynamic.

Rather, the triggers simply seem to be a function of memory. For example, let's say someone has a bad day at a building, and the room where it happened had a color theme of the organization of the building. Then whenever someone sees that color scheme, it might remind them of the bad day. That is a vague example.

With my brain, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to disassociate the trigger with the memory. For example, to just tell my brain that "the colors are fine, its just coincidence, etc." My subconscious has ample time to fix itself during sleeping, there also times of the day where I am bored also.

What needs to happen is either some way to delete the bad memory altogether, or at least sever the connection between the trigger and the memory so they remain separate. There seems no obvious way to do either.