My Trigger In Full Display

I was very agitated, so much so that I couldn’t get my mind off it even if I knew I should be doing something else. I had no reason to be so agitated since it was not something that concerned me. Something happened to somebody else and I was just an outsider, being a friend or an onlooker of somebody else’s life but not really involved in it, but I was surprised that I could get suddenly so emotional. When I said something, I felt my voice thrilled. I even said it aloud, “why am I so perturbed or flustered?” I didn’t know why, but I sensed that I couldn’t calm myself down. I paced back and forth, here and there, in an unnerving state.

Now looking back, I wonder if I was being triggered. Sometimes my friends would ask me why I was so worried or rattled for nothing. I had no reply. I didn’t even know I was behaving worried or rattled. My self awareness is probably not so good for me to realize the reality of my own behavior.

This happened several weeks ago when I was talking with my friend living in Flushing, New York on phone. She said to me, “calm down. Why are you so excited about this? It is what it is.” She was right. I didn’t know why I was like that. My voice went up an octave, not really screaming, but definitely higher than the normal range. I couldn’t stop myself. Later on, when I listened to the book, “The Attachment Theory” when doing laundry, it said that I should shift my focus on something else and change myself to a reflective mood. If I don’t change the focus or stop doing what I am doing, I am not able to stop my agitation. I guess the book is right.

Then it happened again yesterday. And I felt like I was another person who looked at myself and wondered why I could not calm down. Of course we were talking about narcissism again—the perpetual topic. It was about one of my friends’ work relationship. It didn’t really concern me, but I felt it did for some strange reason. Probably deep down in my heart, I knew I would make the same kind of choice and torture myself in the same way if I were in her shoes. When will women stop torturing themselves? For some women, the answer is “never”. I think men do a lot better in this aspect. What I mean is that men don’t torture themselves in order to fit in a place or suit another person, and men don’t blame themselves when something is not working out—they just go to find pleasures or solutions somewhere else. I wish women can do the same.

Probably the reason for my agitation was that it triggered my memory of my childhood, when I watched my parents being locked in a hellish relationship with no chance of ever getting out.