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4:12am March 15, 2014

angrybabybirdofprey:

okay can we just one last thing

spreading the idea that one is only triggered when having a full blown, system-shut-down panic attack is damaging and delegitimizing to people who have physiologically and emotionally different reactions to triggers.

like slow burning, long lasting unease and fear.

that’s a trigger reaction too.

please stop.

Some other trigger reactions (not an exhaustive list at all, some I’ve experienced, some I’ve known people who’ve experienced):

  • Feeling disconnected from yourself or the world.
  • Having any emotional or psychiatric symptom that you’re prone to but don’t always have (depression, hallucinations, delusions, etc.)
  • Physical symptoms made worse by severe stress or anxiety (I just got diagnosed with adrenal insufficiency, now I know why a sufficiently stressful interaction once left me barely able to breathe without a bipap, lots of chronic illnesses are susceptible to stress, some even have their onset triggered by stress)
  • Sudden distrust of everyone you interact with or are close to.
  • Disorientation.
  • A sense that the bottom has fallen out of the world and you don’t know where things stand anymore, everything seems alien and strange and impossible to navigate.
  • Inability to identify anything in your surroundings anymore (as in, what’s a chair, what’s a desk, etc.), everything reduced to sensory information only.
  • Emotional exhaustion.
  • Feeling keyed up or nervous all the time.

And that’s just off the top of my head.  There’s lots more triggers.  And a trigger can set off a short-term reaction, or a long-term reaction.  The long-term reactions can last for far longer than you’d imagine.  And if a person has the wrong physical illness, a sufficiently strong trigger can even be dangerous to their life – even if it's not in the form of a total emotional breakdown.

So triggers don’t just come in one form, and they don’t just have one set of effects on the person, or one obvious severity.

Notes:
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    This is pretty much how i feel a lot of the time. So this is me saying, if I need space or for you to not get in my face...
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