Triggered Quotes

“Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion... Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being "just like" the past and "emergency" emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.”
― Suzette Boon, Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

“I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw.
The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn’t be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike.
I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn’t feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror’s reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus.
These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall.
The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. ‘Who are you?’ I’d ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn’t me. I’d watch my lips moving and say it again, ‘Who are you?”
― Alice Jamieson, Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“Too often the survivor is seen by [himself or] herself and others as "nuts," "crazy," or "weird." Unless her responses are understood within the context of trauma. A traumatic stress reaction consists of *natural* emotions and behaviors in response to a catastrophe, its immediate aftermath, or memories of it. These reactions can occur anytime after the trauma, even decades later. The coping strategies that victims use can be understood only within the context of the abuse of a child. The importance of context was made very clear many years ago when I was visiting the home of a Holocaust survivor. The woman's home was within the city limits of a large metropolitan area. Every time a police or ambulance siren sounded, she became terrified and ran and hid in a closet or under the bed. To put yourself in a closet at the sound of a far-off siren is strange behavior indeed—outside of the context of possibly being sent to a death camp. Within that context, it makes perfect sense. Unless we as therapists have a good grasp of the context of trauma, we run the risk of misunderstanding the symptoms our clients present and, hence, responding inappropriately or in damaging ways.”
― Diane Langberg, Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“i touched her in the middle of her heart.
i never saw her again.

–– scar”
― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt

“From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough. I loved solving problems and getting into the thick of things and also had well-developed skills in reading people and anticipating their needs.”
― Olga Trujillo, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder

“It is my belief that High Altitude Observatory Disease (HAOD) may be triggered by a single exposure to 13,797 feet.”
― Steven Magee

“Genetic adaptation processes may be triggered in sea level adapted humans that spend prolonged time at high altitudes.”
― Steven Magee

“Words once triggered cannot be undone; they are as deadly as weapons. Be mindful while delivering. - Dr. Shweta”
― Linda Greyman, Soul Works - The Minds Journal Collection

“The -woke- see people in terms of their group identity rather than their individual qualities. Race, gender and sexuality -as opposed to class or economic disparities- are taken to be the determining factors when it comes to mapping the power structures that undergird society. This is why intersectionality plays such a significant role within the discourse of Critical Social Justice.”
― Andrew Doyle, The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

“First and foremost, -wokeness- is a belief system underpinned by the postmodernist notion that our understanding of reality is constructed through language. Its adherents are convinced that words can be a form of violence and that censorship -either by the state or Silicon Velley tech giants or societal pressure (colloquially known as cancel culture)- is therefore necessary to guarantee social justice.”
― Andrew Doyle, The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

“The religion of Critical Social Justice, in other words, is a hydra with many heads. When one encounters someone who speaks in the familiar slogans of intersectionality, one can almost always predict their opinions on a whole range of other subjects. This is why the shorthand of -woke- has become so useful to encapsulate a range of interconnected identity-obsessed movements.”
― Andrew Doyle, The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

“These humans, these creatures who play at kindness, are each ruled by wounds that, when triggered, make them the opposite of kind. Often, they justify their actions with excuses as shallow as a rain puddle, unable to see that I have my own kind of beauty simply because I’m a mermaid.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories