Triggers Aren't Cages. They're Crossroads.

I've been in toxic and abusive relationships. I've had to look myself in the mirror and ask who I was. I've had to pick my face up off the floor. 

And I've been in healthy-ish relationships that still didn't work out. Nothing glaringly wrong. But resentment built over time anyway and snuffed out the spark.

I've leaned preoccupied when my past partners shut down. Panicking. Protesting and begging for presence and repair. Needing to fix it right now. 

How could they want to take space right now? While feeling this way? Are they punishing me?

It didn't help that sometimes they really were punishing me.

But even when they weren't, I didn’t understand how suffocating it was to add to their overwhelm. I was too busy drowning in my own panic. 

I've let relational ruptures keep me up at night. I've let them distract me from work and family and friends and life and myself. I've let preoccupation blind me. I've let it get to me so deeply I felt sick and helpless to it at the same time. 

The last time was the big time. And it was the very last time. I had to surrender that fight. 

"If someone wants to be with me, they'll show me. I won't have to fight for that. I will not have to question it and I will not have to beg."

From there, I overcorrected, leaning avoidant instead of preoccupied. The patterns stayed the same. I just switched sides.

Suddenly, I was the one shutting down, assuming it would be too suffocating to share how I felt - for them and for me.

I didn't know how to handle this without shutting them out. I'd be put off when they didn't do the same. Empathetic - I get it - but they obviously hadn't learned what I learned yet. 

Yes. I was arrogant. I thought this was a positive outcome of me learning my lesson.

And under that arrogance was insecurity, still. Insecurity that had me overwhelmed with my own emotional experience. I still hadn't learned to attune and connect to it.

Before, I needed my partners' help to regulate. That help never came, so I started repressing it - still unable to help myself.

And just like avoidants do, I was still second-guessing whether I was good enough, or too much. I took any hint of negative feedback as evidence that these things were true. And I immediately tried to hide the parts of myself that were being highlighted from the relationship. From them. From me.

I tried to protect people from my humanity by shutting and shoving it down. Deep down so it wouldn't get in the way of my relationships. 

I tried to protect myself by shielding myself from the humanity in their responses and reactions. 

This was a mistake. Shared humanity is the fire that keeps connections alive. Keep throwing dirt on it to cover it up, it burns out. Be careful what you aim for. You want a shield. You'll get a wall just as thick.

The bottom line is that I've been in relationships that didn't last. And the reason they didn't last was because we didn't know how to repair.

And I couldn't do a thing about it, because I didn't know how to repair.

Ruptures are living, breathing visitors in our relationships. When you don't repair them, they have no choice but to stay past their welcome and escalate. 

A neglected rupture doesn't know what to do but grow.

This is the pattern we have to break. The pattern of neglected ruptures. We have to learn how to actually tend to and heal them. We have to learn how to reconnect.

They say we heal in relationship. 

They say that this is inevitable because when you get into a healthy relationship, your old shit comes to the surface. Healthy relationships are spaces where you finally feel safe again. But safe doesn't mean comfortable. 

You will feel vulnerable. A spotlight will be shone on the parts of you that were once wounded and exiled. Your triggers will find you. 

This is your opportunity to finally repair the ruptures that haunt you.

I knew what this meant on some level, but I'm finally, really starting to understand what that means. 

My partner and I have experienced rupture before. But recently she had a moment of shutting down for the first time in our relationship. I felt it immediately. Whatever walls I had up during my years-long avoidant era were nowhere to be found. Whatever preoccupied inner child was still hiding inside me was fully alive.

All the preoccupied panic and torment I used to feel came right to the surface. I couldn't shove it down if I wanted to. 

But I also didn't want to.

And I am so grateful for the work I've done since the relationships of my past. 

They say triggers are here to show us where the wounds are so we can heal them. 

We picture what this means. We see ourselves pulling out a journal and spilling our guts. So we do that.

We see ourselves thinking critically to make sense of our thoughts, our stories, our feelings. So we do that.

We see ourselves feeling our feelings, doing somatic shaking. Screaming the rage out into a pillow and being with the parts of ourselves that are hurting as we cry it out. So we do that.

And it all helps. It all heals.

It all built the capacity within me that got me here, to the place that we picture less often:  

The moment you're triggered is the moment you get to break the pattern, if you're paying attention.

You can see yourself breaking the pattern, right then & there.

It took everything in me to pause and let her have her space when I realized the moment was going dark. I finally felt safe with someone. I desperately did not want it to sacrifice that safety. 

I did not want to be wrong about this being a good thing. And my past showed me that when someone I feel connected and vulnerable with shuts down, that is not a good thing. They're not just shutting down. They're shutting me out. 

I let her take space anyway.

It only took a couple hours of her cooling off to reach for repair and reconnection. 

It took everything in me to reciprocate. By then I was already on my own kind of shut-down. She'd left. Parts of me didn't trust that. They already knew how this was supposed to go. And it wasn't a happy ending.

And that's exactly what being triggered is. It's when we can't accurately see the potential for the future because we're too busy reliving the past. 

Past and future become one & the same and it all crashes into the present moment.

We anticipate that the way things happened in the past is how they'll transpire now. Even when we're not doing this consciously, our bodies are working on muscle memory. This memory tells us we must protect ourselves. Usually in ways that didn’t work back then, and only reinforce the pattern now.

The issue is that when we're protecting ourselves this way, we're just surviving. But the pattern we want to break is one of just surviving in relationships.

To break a relational pattern of survival, we have to finally experience an outcome of connection & safety, where survival and pain used to be.

And we play a major role in co-creating that outcome.

When a relationship triggers us, we get to choose how we navigate that moment.

Do we strive to accommodate our fears? Or do we model the kind of loving and connected action we ultimately want to experience in relationship?

I was vulnerable enough to feel all that pain resurface. It was deafening. But something in me was also vulnerable enough to see that, with this person, I get to make a different choice if I want to.

And it turns out, I finally wanted to.

I'd done too much work - gotten too clear on the kind of relationship I want to experience - to allow it all to go out the window now.

In these moments, I want to give my partner space without consequence, just as I hope to be received when I need space.

I want reconnection to feel safe and expected, not fragile.

I want anger and disappointment to exist alongside love and choice.

I want us to trust that rupture is temporary and repair is inevitable, because we choose it.

These are the things I want. So this is how I strove to show up at each step.

In the depth of my triggered spiral, I saw everything I normally saw:

Bad outcomes.

Her changing her mind. Me fucking this up beyond repair.

Her fucking up and me realizing I was wrong about her.

Whatever I imagined, there was no return from this dark place in our relationship.

But this time, I also saw my vision for the kind of relationship I wanted.

I saw the steps I needed to take to walk toward it, and I moved in alignment with that vision.

Not with fear. Not with how I imagined she'd react or see me. Those things were in my head but they were not what I walked with. I walked with my truth.

I stayed committed to the relational values and vision I have. The kind of partner I want to be and the kind of relationship I want to co-create. With flaw, I did my best to navigate within those bounds. 

The trigger wasn't a cage. It was a crossroads.

Judging from the outcome I think I did a solid job moving in in the right direction. She and I both did. And the relief I feel to know the pattern can change is something I'm deeply grateful for. 

The difference in my past experience with romantic ruptures vs. my recent one is pretty huge. 

Instead of sabotaging or blowing shit up, we used all those tools. 

• We took space & returned to resolve it instead of brushing it under the rug
• We listened to attune and learn more about each other and how to show up for one another better, instead of falling into a cycle of fighting to be heard.
• We were generous with acknowledgment, validation, gratitude, patience, and accountability.
• It wasn't about who's right or wrong. This disconnect was hurting both of us and we both wanted to find our way back to one another. 
• We remained steady in expressing love in the midst of upset, even when it felt hard. Even when we were both struggling with feeling overwhelmed.

My exes and I knew how to end a fight but we didn't know how to repair a rupture. Those are two different things, and those ruptures would never heal. They would just haunt us.

This one felt mostly repaired by the following morning and all the way cleared within 48 hours. 

I do not believe it will haunt us.

It's important to note that my body chose a solid person to break some patterns with. Everyone's not up for the task.

They say we heal in relationship. And that healing takes two. I chose to act in accordance with my vision but I wasn't alone in that. She did the same. It was hard for both of us, but she met me there.

My body now has evidence that the kind of connection and relationship I want to experience is not only doable, but actually happening for me right now.

My body is learning that it can be safe to experience rupture in romantic relationships. That rupture doesn't mean abandonment or the end is coming. We can heal the damage. We can reverse the disconnect. But we have to face it.

I'm learning that it is okay to experience ruptures with someone and remain vulnerable.

That in some relationships - the right relationships - rupture naturally leads to repair.

I'm learning that repair can heal something inside of you, if you let it.

Rupture used to lead to confusion and heartbreak for me. 

Now it can mean healing & deeper connections.

This is a pattern I'm happy to nurture. I'm happy to keep. 

Reflect:

1. When triggered, get curious about whether the outcome your body is predicting actually has to be true. 
2. Get curious about if you want to change the pattern, and what you can do differently. 
3. How do you want to show up? What's your vision for what connection and relationship looks like for you? What it feels like for you & them? Let that guide you, over everything else. 

You can use these as journal prompts for a recent time you were triggered. See what comes up for you.

Rooting for You, 

Tori

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