In the process of learning what triggers our children, we learn what triggers us. This hasn’t been a natural process for me. I didn’t find it easy to be open to it, but the triggers that secondary trauma can unavoidably give us as parents of children who have experienced trauma are a good starter to identifying those that we have held from our own childhoods.
Being ignored is my major trigger. Especially via the phone. I can feel all reason evapourate when I get no reply calling one of my sons. Frustration becomes rage. I’ve started using breathing to try and manage this but it’s not easy. How much harder is it for my sons to manage their own rage, if I struggle to do it, with my insights and awareness?
Control is the other. I find it hard to cope with not having everyone safely in the places they are planned to be, such as school.
These particular two triggers have led to me screaming at the top of my voice in the street at S that I was “shutting you down, fella” like Joan Crawford on a budget. Poor S was trying to make sense of my actions. I was visiting a number of his hang-outs to warn the occupants off harbouring him, and he was trying to make it easier for me by pointing me at the addresses I’d been given, but my rage had blocked all reason and his offer of help, and I strode my own path and made things much harder.