Triggers Make Anxiety and PTSD Flare Up

Well don’t I feel like the failure because I can’t happily calm these eruptions fairly easily with three little steps.
Dealing with triggers, known or unknown, is never easy. We can become better practiced, but it’s never a joy filled experience of ease, just like the authors metaphor of a sudden burst of grief from a loss is never easy or joyful.
The end of this post left me feeling so much worse because I struggle with trauma, anxiety, and all that comes with that despite hard work and having a toolbox full of techniques and theories. And just like no one is thrilled to get out their toolbox to do home repairs, even if you are skilled or even a professional at the repair need, it still sucks to have to fix the leak, creaky door, or whatever needs repair in the home. Sometimes you have to call in a professional for home repairs because you tried the quick easy fix to fairly easily try and repair the leak but instead you got a busted pipe, ruined carpeting, need new baseboards, and have to tear up the sub flooring, living in a disaster for quite a while, not to mention the other costs, literal or metaphorical.
Please don’t ever say psychological work is easy or quick or just a matter of xyz because it seldom is and in a culture that teaches us to measure up to media propaganda, the measures of easy, quick, happily etc. when not achieved can leave a residue of defeat and shame on top of the anxiety and trauma we try to work through.
It’s being judgment disguised through the slyness positivity culture language. Call a spade a spade, getting triggered is hard whether just learning or years into managing and it is going to require a different set of steps for everyone, not just three easy ones (which really are categories of vast numbers of possible steps)

I'm still looking for answers five years after the Boston Marathon bombing because it retriggered a smoke bombing I experienced in high school to no end. Fired my therapist when he treated my confessed need to buy body armor as a joke. I need the psychological protection that body armor would give because I am convinced that people are only out to kill each other in the wake of the bombing.

I have lived super high functioning for the past 20 years while having good therapy and moving beyond childhood and teen trauma. Recently I got involved with a dear friend from HS. We fell deeply in love and we also fell into PTSD retriggered by being friends at age 15 DURING the trauma we both had, but never then having shared what was happening at home with each other. NOW we were sharing and almost reliving the trauma we had experience then. In my case, I had unpacked a lot of that trauma already but was still triggered. In his case, he had gone BACK to live with his family recently as a middle aged adult, and from my perspective was living BACK In the trauma to a degree, too. The relationship completely re triggered my PTSD and I began to have panic attacks and all kinds of physical symptoms. When I came to see that he had not done any of the trauma work and he was enacting some of it with me and very much in his own life- I lef the rellationship which was terribly painful as I fel tlike I was walking away form him in a car accident to save myself (since I was a lot more conscious and he was not, and was acting out in teh relationship). Since I have had panic and some depression for the first time in 25 years. It's been a very very dark time for me the past couple of months. I am climbing out but it's been scary to be SO re-traumatized. I am working with a good new trauma therapist. The one silver lining is it made me see I have more work to do to heal that I hadn't realized and now I get to do it.

My ex-fiancé and I have a young child together. My ex also has 2 other children each 4 yrs older than eachother. The father of the other two is aggressive in nature apparent by his collegiant sport and now coach. He was convicted of domestic abuse and continued all forms over my family especially targeting me. My anxiety level once non existing rose through the roof and decided to separate myself avoiding his presence all together. After my ex had a heart issue requiring me to reseaitate her and induced into a coma he took the opprortunity and stirred up amazing trouble.Breaking into my home I found him and HE called the police onme?! After hanging up he attacked me attempting to make a criminal out of me but after 4 separate attempts unsuccessful. The story deepens but here is the bottom line. Separating my self from all of them I have lost my child because I'm betrayed as an abuser and and somehow the blame has shifted on me. I've been diagnosed with signs of PTSD, My Therapist agrees. The entire Court System among others treats me different now. I understand my PTSD a bit. I'm ok until my triggers leak into my life even through others cause my internal alarm tells me.
Is someone who suffers from PTSD a protected class? I feel it needs to be understood as I clam up sometimes and fail to defend myself. Looking for help I stumbled on this blog.

I've been having major issues with stress or anxiety to the point every time it starts I feel like I'm going to throw up, I'm planning on going to a doctor to see if there's anything they can do I started noticing it majorly after my boyfriend got into a motorcycle accident and then went out and bought another one but anytime him or my toddler starts acting horrible causing stress it flares it up my boyfriend claims its in my head or if I try to go somewhere I start becoming overwhelmed and nauseous so I try to avoid going anywhere and masseuse medicine barely touches it I'm even avoiding eating because that's making it worse also

Why do individuals who suffer from PTSD from various tragic events that's happened in their life (well..actually has been diagnosed on three events desperately that they have PTSD, and then married someone how has PTSD), I don't know if that makes the PTSD more severe??...anyway...the question is why does your body remember anniversaries of times of these events and start having reactions before you even know Why? How can your body tell, before you remember? Please explain.

Whose Naughty and whose Nice. Hypervigellence VS Vibing strangers.
I am a PTS survivor. I choose not to call it PTSD, like the recent 2010 US Armed Services choice, because it is not something that developed but occured because of a traumatic experience. That being said, I discovered something about Hypervigellence that I think that scientist might learn something from this anomoly.
Over the last 10 years I became hypervigellent without knowing that I was. I would search for threats great or small. It was second nature to me. I was kidnapped in 1998. I was also a survivor of an earthquake/Tsunami, and was stalked, as well as living in the area where the DC sniper was shooting people.
One of these alone would cause some people trauma, I'm sure, but all of them. Were a little overwhelming. That being said.
When I did realize I was hypervigellent. Something occurred to me
When I decided to turn it off, or stop doing it. It had combined with good old fashion common sense about people, or strangers.
When I did decide to stop being hypervigellent. It wasn't as good an idea to stop cold turkey as it would seem.
In fact I discovered that all people seach for dangers, threats. In fact its a healthy thing to do.
You wouldnt' want to ignore a bad vibe you got from someone who was possibly going to do something bad.
In fact hypervigellence probably is inate to people and was willed by God.
When I decided to go cold turkey on Hypervigellence. It was a dumb idea.
Though I talked to people more. The first person I trusted burned me, lied about me, and said nastier things that anyone has ever said in my life.
That being said. PTSD sufferers.
If your trying to work on hypervigellence. Consider continuing to examining whose naughty and whose nice.
Because it is typcial facet of safety.
Its not wise to go cold turkey on hypervigellence.
One suggestion is to talk to your therapist, and to discuss that issue.
Consider continuing to check whose naughty or nice sometimes.
I've found that if you a hypernegative or blaming then scale it back.
If your too trusting, you could be dropping the standard vibing whether a person has good intentions.
Food for thought.

Hello, back in 2011 I had a really bad time, for some odd reason I could NOT sleep for 25 days strait no matter what I did and after awhile I was having visions ect. and things were just getting worse well I was flown from FL. to N.H my home town where all the trauma took place in the first place and I wasn't at my parents house for more than 3 or 4 hours and I guess I just snapped, something took control of my body and I guess I got violent. Well the police were called and I was put under at the hospital and then 2 or 3 days later I was thrown into the loony bin! NOT FUN! but the Dr. they gave me to talk to said that because I have been abused sexually from my step father for at least ten years and I never did anything about it he told me that it had it's own way of making me deal with it. and now I am not the same person at ALL! I hate it! I was diagnosed with PTSD. I wish it would just go away because I want my old self back!

First diagnosed with FTD. was commited 3 times. the second visit i was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Then dignosed with Major depression and anxiety disorder with features of BPD. after 3 years of psycoanalysis, after some brief relief i am back where I started. I cannot recognize a trigger. everything can be a trigger.
The best I can do is to try and distract myself. My wife hates dogs. i think a dog would help me. i need some to touch and not judge what i do and say

Ok, I experienced a second trauma that mirrored the first. It feels the same, yet different. (like big plane/small plane, but more Complex)
Instead of hyper-vigilant, it's something else... highly aware, deeply sensitive... not angry, mad, or violent. It takes a lot to upset me, but when it finally hits, it feels intense (last straw).
(Ok, 1st trauma 2006, 2nd almost 2 months ago & 3rd almost 2 weeks ago... kind of just here/numb now)
I know it's debatable, but do you think these symptoms are the same or different?

My big trigger is rejection. My PTSD kicks in with low self-esteem, depression and lack of motivation. Job interviews do this to me when I do not receive a phone call afterwards. I wonder what I did wrong to excess. I think it came from my mother praising me sometimes and being mean to me at other times when I was young for no reason that I caused but as a little kid, I had no clue and always tried to be perfect.
I try to re-direct my thoughts to get them un-stuck, focus on the present, do something although it is hard to do and use neurotherapy, which helps to calm my racing thoughts.
I wish employers knew how inconsiderate this is. But it's the way things are today. I have to keep searching for a job even though it brings up these triggers, and try to deal with them one day at a time.

In my experience when I trigger it's because a memory has not fully processed. Either that or there is some aspect of that memory that I have either avoided or of which I am unaware. I dissociated profoundly so there is much that does not reside in my conscious memory. In either case it means another trip or two to my therapist for some EMDR work.
I find that anniversaries can trigger memories that are deeply rooted in the nether regions. I just passed a 50th anniversary of an issue that was profound in its horror. It was buried and I was unaware of it until a couple of months ago. I am still working on it, but it has diminished significantly in two months. It is the core issue and I expect it to take a while longer.
To manage daily anxiety I have an EMDR program on my computer that has both visual and audio bilateral stimulation. As background music I play a binaural beats meditation audio and go for 10-25 minutes, depending on how I feel. This has proved to be an effective regimen. If things are particularly difficult 200 mg of L-Theanine can help a lot.