“Oh look! She’s triggered!”

That’s what my middle school students would say when they saw me getting irritated with them. Then they’d ask me if I was triggered. I would always assure them that I wasn’t. Whatever TikTok definition of triggered they were familiar with was not what I felt when they would think I was mad.

But now I really am triggered. And it’s a completely new experience that I am just now understanding is a part of my reality. I recently wrote about experiencing a weekend of anxiety that I couldn’t explain. Go to F’ing Therapy! My amazing therapist helped me to understand that my anxiety was caused by a simple event that triggered emotions about a similar event from my past. Since that appointment, I have been able to recognize another trigger that happened last Friday. I began to feel anxiety about something at work and after a few moments of sitting with the feeling, I recognized it as a trigger and employed one of the strategies that my therapist taught me. And it worked! The anxiety went away and I felt better.

Now, more than ever, I am aware that triggers are a real thing and I have to watch out for them. She said I may have them for many more years. They might not even go away at all. But it’s how I react to them that really makes the difference.

This afternoon I experienced another trigger. However, it’s different from the other two. In this case, I ran into someone at the store who I had a very difficult time with last year when she was a teacher at my school and I was the principal. This woman and I had worked together for many years and while we initially got along well, various issues along the way drove us to be cordial to each other in the hallway and that’s about it. We co-existed professionally. Until last year. As her boss, it was a very challenging year with her. When I quit that job, I not only put my old boss behind me but I worked hard to sever all the other ties that I could. I have steeled my heart against anybody else associated with that place. In fact, one evening at the grocery story after work, I practically shoved an old lady out of the way so I could leave the store before another teacher saw me. This was another teacher who was even worse to deal with than the one I saw today. On that occasion, I got out of the store in time.

Today, I wasn’t so lucky. I swear we ended up in the same part of the store repeatedly. She spotted my husband first and said hello. Then she said hello to me and I couldn’t avoid her any longer, despite my very best efforts. The encounter lasted less than a minute and I gave the standard “good” answer for every one of her simple “how are you” questions. I always hated when students said “good” every time I asked how their day was going. But that’s what I gave her today.

In the car afterwards, I shed a few tears. Seeing, and having to interact with, this woman deeply triggered me. But not in the same way as I have been recently. I didn’t know how to change this feeling. It wasn’t all anxiety. It was a flashback to the worst encounters with her this past year and the feelings associated with them. The strategies my therapist taught me didn’t seem to apply here. The best I could do was come home and splash cold water on my face. She told me to do that because my brain can’t process two things at once. So it will focus on the shock of the cold water rather than the negative thoughts from whatever triggered me. It worked momentarily. After that, I went about my Saturday routine. My earlier post today was me complaining about having to do laundry and other chores on the weekend instead of having leisure time. And yet, my routine of folding laundry while watching my usual Saturday afternoon movie is what helped me move past the negative emotions.

They still stir up, even now as I write about it. I am impatient. I don’t like that it’s been 6 months since I left that place and I still have to deal with triggers. But in reality, as my therapist told me, it hasn’t even been a year. And truth be told, these triggers are new. I spent several months just being damn happy and relieved to be gone from there that now I am processing what really happened.

I have to stop with the impatience and accept that this will take time. I can’t forget that it took many years for me to not feel anxiety every time I heard an ambulance go by. It used to be that the sirens took me back to the ambulance roaring up to my house the morning my mother tried to kill herself.

There will come a day when triggers won’t be a thing that I have to deal with. Or maybe I will always have to face them. But for now, they’re here and I’m incredibly thankful that I have finally found a therapist that is helping me. I get something meaningful and helpful from every session with her. I’ll have a lot to tell her next week. And that’s o.k.

This post from a random mental health group on Facebook resonated with me lately. I haven’t grown completely, but I’m getting there.