I was going back through my old school stuff from like 1st grade and there was this like journal where we had to write like a couple sentences each day to practice writing and stuff and i had this one day where part of what I wrote was "I hate myself today because I had to change my card to yellow" (the cards were like discipline things so you started with green and if you weren't being good you had to stand up and go to the front of the class to change your card) and I don't remember what it was for but I'm sure I was just like maybe talking or something like that.
But like damn. Even just thinking about the times I had to change my cards in those classes makes me want to cry. I remember always being so upset anytime the teachers weren't happy with me and then I think about me now and how I'm always expecting people to think the worst of me or be hiding that they don't like me or always expecting the other shoe to drop even if they've been telling me I'm doing a good job because I'm bad and I need them to just tell me why and what exactly they're holding back
And I've got a review coming up at work soon with my bosses since it's almost my 6 year anniversary of working there and all I can think is oh good now they can stop telling me how great I am and how happy they are to have me there and just tell me everything I'm doing wrong because I know the compliments aren't right and they have to have been holding back what all my issues are.
And I think something in my upbringing may have kind of fucked my head up... just a little bit
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Embarrassing, ridiculous TMI under the readmore (not gross! just way too personal!)
I do not have PTSD and I don't want to be a part of the "flippantly using the word 'trigger'" problem at all, but I think I finally found a proper name for this harmful behavior I've wrestled with since at least high school, and it's called self-triggering.
Again, I don't have trauma... well, everybody has some trauma, but that's not the thing I'm triggering myself about here. And if I explained what I had actually been doing to myself (which may be obvious to someone who's reading between the lines but I don't want to talk about it for reasons I've stated before), it would sound laughably, mockably trivial. But the results are still an acute increase in depression and obsessive negative/angry thinking and distress and alienation from something that usually gives me joy... so it's still harmful to me, no matter how stupid and frivolous it sounds. Perhaps it's an OCD/depression self-triggering instead of a PTSD self-triggering.
I reiterate, what I'm discussing is not trauma, not EVER claiming it is, but:
In a similar vein, one set of case studies (De Young, 1984) conceptualized approaching situations reminiscent of the trauma as “counterphobic behavior” (i.e., an attempt to master anxiety by repeatedly approaching its source, resulting in a greater sense of control).
I understand this, the "maybe if I keep looking I'll become desensitized", and "I need more information so I can better avoid this thing and people associated!" Or even "well maybe it wasn't really that bad, maybe I'm remembering it as worse than it was" (I'm not, if anything I've forgotten just how bad it was!)
Likewise, if trauma survivors perceive reexperiencing symptoms as inevitable, they may wish to decide the time and place of their occurrence, affording them a sense of control.
...is that the irrational "gotta get it over with" compulsion??
Alarmingly, many users also report being unable to stop this behavior once they have begun despite the dysregulation and distress that it causes.
This is how it goes: I will read or even just skim through something that causes me serious emotional distress, whether that is a fanfiction with something horrible happening to characters I find comfort in, or a really nasty article full of harsh, baseless criticisms of something I love so much. (Again, these things sound laughable but to the way my mind works, it is not. Though I also do something similar with actual bad memories from my life [I think everyone does], well, you can't "reread" or refresh those. And I also have the power to delete/destroy any physical records I have of those.)
So, I will vow to never ever let this wretched thing enter my eyeballs again. I will ruminate about it and quietly seethe about the fact that it exists, and that some people even like/agree with it! I won't be able to get certain upsetting phrases out of my head and I will obsess and it will ruin my enjoyment of related things whenever I get reminded of it.
Maybe I will find ways to block or blacklist to lower my chances of seeing it. And I will be very vigilant about this for a long time and will successfully avoid it, even if I see reminders here and there that make me mad. Slowly, I'll only remember a few specific sentences from the thing, and even those may be unclear.
And then I'll suddenly develop the belief that I "have to" look at it again for some reason, and my heart will start pounding as I start bracing myself for this "inevitability". And eventually the irrational, self-destructive side will win out and I'll do it, believing that it's like ripping a bandaid off for the greater good. Gotta get it over with, you see. I'll only glance over it, of course, because this time I already know how bad it is - I'll just read a few sentences here and there on my way to do something "sensible" like block the url or check who liked it so I know it wasn't my friends - but it will be enough to make me feel like absolute shit for days again, and now I have these fresh memories in my head to contend with and the cycle of trying to forget these bad bad thoughts and be able to freely enjoy the thing I love starts all over again.
and that's what you missed on Glee!
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