Reframe: Stressor > Triggers

In your recovery & healing journey, you may have heard the word “trigger” used quite frequently. 

I learned (Thanks to Mary Ellen Copeland Foundation & W.R.A.P.) recently to change the term to “Stressor” & here’s why: 

Trigger: like that used in a gun, is a strong and powerful term used to identify the visceral feelings our bodies & minds go through when we are faced directly or indirectly with a memory of an incident or a person/place/object involved in said incident. 

But what happens when you pull the trigger of a gun? The bullet shoots, and it’s force is destructive. Regardless of what it hits, paper, soft object, target etc. it will destroy whatever it comes in contact with on impact. More over, you can’t stop the bullet from its trajectory once it’s released from the gun. Lastly, you can’t put a used bullet back inside the gun. Once you pull the trigger that’s it! No changing course, no changing the outcome. 

But that is not the case with Trauma & “Stressors”: 

We deal with a plethora of stressors every single day! Some more significant than others. And 100% of the time we somehow manage to cope and deal and overcome every single stressor we face, daily!! 

EVEN THE EVENTS FROM THE PAST THAT YOU EXPERIENCED. You survived it, you lived through the actual event, once already! So when faced when a memory, or a person directly or indirectly, you WILL Survive that too! 

You might say but the term “Stressor”

Isn’t a strong enough word to describe the impact my “Triggers” have on me... 

The term “Stressor” minimizes the impact on purpose. By changing the term and language in our own minds when faced with our (now called) Stressors - it immediately **empowers** us and reminds us, we CAN overcome, as we do with every other Stressor everyday, we can change the trajectory AND the outcome!! It does not *have* to destroy you. Not even for a moment. 

That Stressor does not control me. My body and my mind may continue to have an immediate and unexpected visceral response... but I get to control how I will cope, to overcome that response and more importantly to what degree I will continue to let that Stressor have power over me!! 

E.G. “... this situation stresses me out! (Instead of ‘Triggers Me’) What will I do to release and reduce the stress?” ... then use your wellness tools. (Don’t have Wellness Tools? Ask me!) I acknowledge that, it’s “not that simple”, and those physical responses happen so quickly we often don’t have time to think through our reaction. But training ourselves now-before the incident will help. And continuing to practice this every time, will make it easier and easier to become our new “normal” “go-to” response.  

(W.R.A.P. Is a SAMHSA Evidenced Based Tool to help you feel better and stay better. Developed by Mary Ellen Copeland). 

You are stronger than you know & braver than you believe. 

REMEMBER; STATISTICALLY SPEAKING!!!! 

You have *already* survived 100% of everything you’ve been through. You will survive Stressors too! 

Phil. 4:13