Hey, Survivors and Thrivers.
This is Sophilia Lark Woodbury of thehappymeetium.com.
We continue our skills and techniques series with this week's video on how to stop complex
PTSD triggers and start living a fulfilling life right now.
So be sure to continue watching to get all of the details.
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Welcome back, everyone.
If you're new here, I am a trauma survivor, a licensed professional counselor, a trauma
recovery coach, and a certified clinical trauma specialist helping people and organizations
resolve the effects of trauma and build resilience.
So with standard PTSD and complex PTSD, the triggers are often internal and external.
So basically, it just means that externally, the things that we can see, taste, touch,
smell, hear, and internally describes more of our internal experience, our thoughts,
our emotions, sensations and urges.
So this can be anything from a look, the way a person may give you a certain kind of look
or you may think that they're giving you a certain kind of look.
It may be their demeanor, the tone of their voice, their style of communication.
It can really be anything that that sort of reminds you of a time when you were actually
being abused or under threat.
With complex PTSD, the triggers often come from a much deeper well, meaning that there's
something that really makes it much worse.
And that is usually in the form of what we call an inner critical voice.
Now, the inner critical voice along with the other triggers that serve to remind us of
our abusive past, it really is this nagging little voice that really tries to get you
in this dance or this dialogue where you are actively ruminating or being consumed by feelings
and thoughts by that trigger, and it makes you feel much worse.
And so how do you pull yourself out of that?
Before I tell you, I want to give you an example of how a situation that happened to me not
too long ago that involved my inner critic.
And I flashed back.
I had an emotional flashback to a time where I was actually being abused.
And so, I want to tell you about this and if you don't know what an emotional flashback
is, I want you to watch the previous video.
I'll put it here in the cards and you can actually get an idea of what I'm talking about.
But there was a situation.
I was in a group and our group leader was supposed to be somewhere else.
But she was there and she came into our meeting room and just kind of, we were joking around
right before we were getting started.
Another lady was leading the group in her place.
And so she came in the first time, nobody thought anything of it.
And then she left because there was something she was getting ready to do.
And then we got started, we were talking and we started to get into the details of what
we were talking about and then she came back in.
And everybody's like, "What are you doing?"
And she was like, "Oh, you know, I'm just checking some things out.
You know, you guys just go ahead and whatever."
And all of a sudden, I felt myself.
I got triggered.
I got really angry.
I felt judged.
I didn't know until later, but I had emotionally flashed back to a time where my mother ... I
realized it was in connection with my mother.
My mom was a person who was always, it seems like she was almost bent on catching me doing
something wrong.
It was this sneaky way that she did it.
She was sneaking in and dropping by at unexpected times trying to catch you doing.
I was like, "What are you trying to catch me doing?"
I never understood, and she never really explained to me, but it was that sneakiness.
It was the manner of her presence, this group leader.
I'm going back to the group leader now.
But that mirrored some of the experience that I had back in childhood with my mother.
And so the inner critic came in and said, "See, I told you there was something about
her you couldn't trust."
And I ruminated on that.
It bothered me for days.
How do you stop something like that?
What do you do to first recognize that you're in an emotional flashback and then what do
you do to actually stop it in its tracks?
Well, the first thing you need to be able to do is recognize what triggers you.
I just gave you an example of what triggered me, but then I didn't know that that was an
actual trigger until later.
So becoming more aware of, if you engage with somebody, if you go to a certain event or
if you were having a conversation with somebody and maybe you started to not like the way
they sound or maybe their communication style and so you just shut down or turned off or
tuned out or got up and left or whatever.
It's important to be able to start tracking that because that behavior is trying to tell
you something.
You're being triggered, and it's possible that you're being, especially if you struggle
with complex PTSD, that you are being emotionally flashed back to a time in your history where
you were being abused, neglected or threatened in some kind of way.
So the next thing you need to do is to learn how to describe what you're feeling without
judgment.
So it's one thing to know what triggers you, but just knowing what triggers you is not
going to do any good if you don't know how to counter their effects.
And so describing what you're feeling without judgment is one of the active ways that you
can take to start doing that.
So basically, you're just describing a feeling.
Just describing a feeling, calling a feeling a feeling, calling a fact a fact, calling
an opinion an opinion and a thought a thought.
So if you in fact have evidence that something is true, then you can describe that.
You're not really putting a judgment on it because you have the facts to back it up.
Now if you are just having a thought or a feeling or opinion, you need to be able to
call those things what they are so that you don't mistake them for being a fact.
A lot of times when we feel a certain way, we just jump right to the emotion, how we
feel about it without giving any value to what that may be saying to us.
Actually, the message that is actually given to us.
And so we just go, "Oh, you know, that person was rude to me.
How stupid," or, "I tried to make a point and this person just ignored me.
I must not be any good.
I must not be worthy.
I must not be valuable.
I must not be loved."
You see how you start adding these judgments to things without any proof, without any evidence.
And so, if you feel some kind of way just call that feeling a feeling.
I feel angry.
I feel frustrated.
I feel disappointed.
I feel depressed.
Be able to do that and know that you are describing how you feel, but feelings are not facts.
The only time something can be verified is if you have the evidence to back that up.
Same thing with an opinion.
It's my opinion that this is the best route to take, but I don't know.
That might just be my thing.
I can't say that that's going to work for someone else.
So that typically is how you start to really take control of what you're feeling and stopping
those triggers because you're not putting any judgments on them.
And that inner critic is not getting the opportunity to make things worse for you.
And the last thing that you want to do is to develop and use your rescue skills.
So what I mean by rescue skills is that people are not always going to be available to come
to your rescue, but there are ways that you can provide comfort and nurture and self-soothing
for yourself if someone is not there.
And one of the ways that you can do this is by developing things that you can do that
appeal to your five senses.
And so, you know how we talked about earlier how triggers can be both external and internal.
And so the external things, the things that we can taste, touch, see, smell, hear, we're
going to develop counters to those triggers by coming up with things that can soothe us
according to those five senses.
So let's take sight for instance.
Three things that you can actually see that are calming, that are soothing and that are
nurturing for you, that can help you really snap out of that funk or counter those triggers,
the things that have come up for you that are making you feel bad.
It can be pictures or images, the way that you do your hair or your makeup, the way that
you do your nails, whatever it is that you can see and that is pleasurable for you and
it gets you into a feeling of, "I feel okay, I can do this."
And there you have it, your blueprint to stopping complex PTSD triggers in their tracks.
And if you want to go deeper and learn how to build a recovery infrastructure, you definitely
want to get your hands on my Complex PTSD Trauma Recovery mini course.
It includes a 33-page workbook as well as three accompanying videos all for free.
You can click the link below in the resources to get that free mini course.
If you're interested in joining an uplifting community where you can gain access to spiritual
approaches to healing complex PTSD, be sure to join me on Instagram where I share inspirational
content that speaks to the spiritual aspects of healing.
Okay, well, that will do it.
Thank you guys for joining me today.
I really appreciate you being here.
And if you like this video, be sure to show some love by hitting the like button.
Share with your friends and drop a comment below to let me know if you struggle with
managing complex PTSD triggers or if you've got it all under control.
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I'll see you guys next time.
Have a great day.
Bye-bye.