Everyone has triggers.
We’ve all been mishandled, multiple times. The resultant wounds – the ones that haven’t yet managed to heal – cause visceral pain when someone steps on them. When you pull my triggers, I’ll feel something similar to what I’d feel if you punched me in the face.
My first reaction will be to punch back, figuratively speaking.
And there is nobody more qualified at or passionate about pulling my triggers like the small humans I’ve committed to. These kids have assaulted my triggers like no one else.
For example, I struggle when someone disrespects me. In my early teen years, there were no shortage of bullies and popular people who went out of their way for whatever reason to make me feel like garbage. I’d go to bed most nights worrying about how I’d get through the next day.
I now realize that these poor kids were dealing with their own abusive situations, and I was selected at random to pay the bill. I wasn’t the problem, nor was I worthy of such abuse, but the wounds remain, unhealed, waiting to be stepped on.
When one of my kids decides that disrespect is the best way forward, a deep, very longstanding trigger gets pulled.
I get confused in those moments, struggling to realize that I’m actually not being attacked, or that the trigger-puller doesn’t pose some kind of threat. Sometimes, I manage to slow down, or excuse myself into some private space to reframe things. Or I fight back, not physically of course, but in a way that most parents respond when they’re triggered: super long, shame-based lectures; a raised voice; overly harsh consequences; inappropriate distance; etc.
Retaliation.
All of this to ensure that my kids are endowed with their own triggers when they hit adulthood.
It’s helpful, however, to know that I’m not actually mad at my kids when I get triggered. I’m mad at something else, something older than they are, almost completely unrelated to them or their alleged misdeeds.
Ultimately, I don’t have to be a bond servant to these unhealed places, and my kids don’t have to be victims of them.
I do manage, from time to time, some healthy parenting, I’ll call it “discipline” here, and it looks much different than my triggery moments. I’ve come to learn – with much trial and error, and many mistakes – what works; for example:
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- Discipline kids when they’re not triggered/angry/unresponsive
- Discipline kids when I’m not triggered
- Spend time connecting in ways that are meaningful to them
- Remind them that they’re breaking their rules, not mine
- Deploy consequences that move them forward
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Healthy discipline is the exact opposite of triggery parenting: it has little to do with me, and everything to do with helping kids become better versions of themselves. I don’t always do it right, but the more I come at it from a place of care and concern, the more I learn about what these kids really need.
Triggery parenting is soooo much easier, in the short run at least. It requires no emotional energy, no advice/intervention from others, no study, no humility, no pain, and in general, no work. It looks like parenting, sort of, and it feels good, like we’re doing what we’re supposed to do – what our parents did – and, simultaneously enables us to tell those little f@%$ers where they can put it.
Discipline-based parenting requires the bearer to face his triggers, and there’s no way to do that without facing the pain that put them there. The internet is full of advice here, all in agreement on one thing: if you’re going to begin working on your triggers, it’s going to be difficult, and its going to hurt.
At the end of that is freedom of course; not just freedom for our kids, but a corresponding level of personal abolition from the fear and pain that lies underneath our deepest hurts.
Sadly, I’m not qualified to speak about the healing process. I’ve been to therapy many times to discuss my wounds, and not much has happened to them. I’ll most likely take them to my grave.
But It’s been helpful to name a few, to see how they affect my closest relationships, and to realize that the fear that they cause isn’t actually real; I don’t have to worry about being disrespected, or cheated, or shamed.
And its fascinating to reflect on the world that my mental/emotional wounds create when they’re triggered, unreal as it is
When my kids traipse into these sensitive spots, all I have to do is take a moment to think about what’s really happening. They’re little more than little humans, with scant experience of this world, pushing boundaries like any healthy little human should do, and dealing with desires that are much bigger than they are.
When they set themselves on an unhealthy trajectory – one that’s sure to make them a miserable adult – I’d like to respond in ways that put them back on a more human path.
Triggers can’t do that.
