Glimmers amidst the Triggers

learning to glide past the disregulation of trauma in search of the safety seat

Yesterday was a shit show, as they say. A full-on show of the traumatic shit buried in my psyche that I had moved on from. Until it was triggered to the surface through a person’s voice. Not wanting to belabour or reinforce the power of the trauma by getting into the story, I released it silently in tears that no one could see. Until they could.

When we stopped for a break, the rower in front of me took a video of us and, in panning around, she saw my tear stained face. As I said, I didn’t want to entrench the story by making a big deal of it, so I just let it all flow out on the tide of tears as we rowed.

a portion of Brisbane river to give you a sense of all the layered pathways

It was pre-dawn on the Brisbane River in the 2 seat of a 4 with the bow/1 seat behind me calling out commands for direction and training. True, her voice was unnecessarily loud and, true, I am incredibly sensitive in all senses, especially to sound, so it was not an easy combination. We had even joked about it before launching. “You didn’t bring your ear defenders?” she asked, knowing and owning the level of her volume. Ear defenders have changed my world, making it possible for me to be in the world and still feel intact in myself. But I could not very well wear them while rowing!

me on a better day

The trauma that was triggered triggered many other traumas. I was caught up in a cascade, or maybe even a cavalcade, of triggers. I could take it all the way back to before birth when the yelling started while I was in the womb. Since hearing is the first sense to develop in the womb, I heard it all. Even as an infant on the outside, I did not have the agency to escape the yelling so my next best trick was to buffer it with infection that led to hearing loss.

Of course you might disagree that anybody would want to cause themselves harm to protect themselves, but just look around. Isn’t that what so many of us do? Whether it’s the socially acceptable harm of addictions to poisons or the literal harm of cutting and piercing and tattooing. My means might seem ridiculously far fetched, but I’m willing to own it as what I needed to do to survive the situation with my sensitivities relatively intact. The other alternative is to be a victim, and that I will not be.

Which doesn’t mean it was about me. Neither yesterday’s situation nor any of the other situations where I was either directly being yelled at or simply being surrounded by folks yelling, were about me. Not really.

Even as a child I could see the fear weaving into anger, the grief weaving into love, the complexity of emotions and the projections of any one of them onto me or in my direction. That’s your story. I’m just a good screen to play it out on, or to receive it. I don’t mean it to sound so clean and even arrogant, because, in fact, it’s been a mess of learning to navigate the tangled (unconscious) yarns of Others, spun in together with my own desires.

Here’s a one-liner I wrote as a teen,

“I’m good at finding lost things and untangling k/nots.”

It’s no wonder I don’t mind the tangled skein that is Brisbane’s terrain with all its snaky interwoven roads, tunnels, bridges, river, streams, pathways. I’m accustomed to working things out, or taking my time to untangle the threads, and here’s a post on that very topic:

what I learned from untangling my prayer ties

Back to yesterday. There was the general trigger of a loud voice, of loudness generally. How offensive, even painful, I find excessive volume, noise, talking. When people hear that I dabble in stand up comedy, they often ask what type of comedy I like and which comedians I like. I often answer, “Well I know what I don’t like. I don’t like being yelled at.” It’s a skilled comedian who can get you to laugh without either insulting you, cursing at you, or yelling at you. I may not be skilled at it yet, but I am adamant about steering clear of that style.

Then there was the specific trigger of the accent of the voice—female British, not hoigh-poloigh but not full-blooded Cockney either. How do I convey the immensity of this trigger without telling the story? Is it possible? I’m wary of focusing on them because triggers steal the show. It seems to be in our animal wiring to focus on the negative, but as we evolve it’s imperative that we retrain ourselves to emphasize the positive.

Well clearly I didn’t manage to communicate the immensity of the trigger yesterday because even though I said the situation had triggered my own traumas, and it was obvious I was crying, no one checked in on me after we headed our separate ways. Apparently I didn’t make it evident enough just how much had been stirred up by that voice.

At the time, though, it was enough that the one in front of me reached back and put her hand on my foot, to say ‘I’m in solidarity with you. I see and hear you sister.’ You likely know how it is - you can get by until, or if, someone asks if you’re ok. It’s when someone shows some concern or love that you fall apart. So, in a way, it was good that we all just carried on.

And in another way it made me wonder about the psyche of this land that’s evident in such phrases as, “Don’t be a sooky la la.” Meaning, don’t be a baby, suck it up and move on. I suspect there’s been enough suppression and, while going to the opposite extreme of drowning in the stories is also not advisable, acknowledging what has happened and allowing the fullness of expression of the experiences is necessary for true healing. Sweeping things under the proverbial rug makes for untidy collective karmic housekeeping.

But then the loud-voiced one, in her discomfort, made it about her. Even when I said it wasn’t about her. Her voice had avalanched me, but it had nothing to do with her, ultimately. Instead of asking if I was ok and would I like to talk, she, strangely enough, glossed over her own awkwardness and embarrassment by focusing on herself. I felt like the pariah that made everyone uncomfortable and avoidant.

Which was a further trigger in itself. There have been so many times in my life when, in my attempts to be heard amongst the ruckus, the other person then made my discomfort about them. So many times.

Which is why I write and have been writing since I first learned how. No one talks over me or interrupts me when I write. If you don’t finish reading this, I’ll never know. And part of what drew me to acting and comedy, and even teaching, was that the agreement is clear in those contexts. I’m the teacher, or the one onstage - the one with the mic and in the spotlight - so it’s clear I speak. You listen.

In everyday engagements, though, it’s been a long journey to learn the timing of conversations and gauge the true receptivity of folks. Cuz I have no interest in sharing if it’s falling on deaf ears.

I notice again how I want to tell you all the traumas, perhaps so I will feel justified in my level of upset yesterday. In my momentary lapse into woe-is-me-ness, I want to justify, explain, and feel the empathy that would be bound to come from you, if you only knew the extent and level of betrayals I am talking about here and how heavily they impacted the course of my life.

However, even that transparent approach is not a foolproof tactic. Whether or not my experience is truly received still depends on the person and the context. If I had tried to explain anything yesterday I would not have succeeded and would have been even further traumatized and demoralized.

No blame here, but I’m sure their own stories were too loud in their ears to hear anything else. Their own agendas were too urgent for the next thing in their lives to really be present for whatever my issue was. There was not enough spaciousness in their day or in their minds to really receive me. Even if the circumstances were right for full and spacious receptivity, it’s also likely their responses would have come straight from the cultural tendencies most of us have to fix, advise, gloss over, or lighten situations. We’re not, collectively, so skilled with simply being-with.

We have yet to experience a groundswell in non-violent/compassionate communication. We have yet to reach the tipping point where enough reparenting and consciousness-raising has been done that we can then listen to one another without projecting, judging, advising, or avoiding. We’re still swimming in so much competition from late-stage capitalism, or have too little self-awareness within the context of the broader collective consciousness. We have far more questioning to do about how we communicate before we can better co-navigate this thing called being human.

Instead, we assume. We plow on ahead, barely manage to get by, and then wonder why we’re addicted and distracted. Or we’re totally in ignorance or denial about it all.

What, you might ask at this point in the rant, are the glimmers? Before I share what I’ve learned a glimmer is in relation to a trigger, I’ll say that the only ones that came yesterday were brief glimpses that proved I was making progress, even in amongst the mess. In the past, I would have been steamrollered by the resurfacing of the traumatic relationships, deaths and other violences in my life. Although I felt pathetic and ineffective for the rest of the day, I managed to keep going. That, in itself, was a victory - a glimmer of a new age dawning in me.

A glimmer is the sense of safety that helps to regulate us, bringing us calm and expansiveness, versus the disregulatory impact of the triggered traumas that cause us to contract. On the water, the only glimmer I was faintly able to feel was when the rower ahead reached back and put her hand on my foot.

The bigger glimmers came today when I moved into a new day and stayed focused on gratitude. Also, outside of what I could do in myself, there were the graces of a visit from overseas whanau (non-blood family) with whom I felt seen, known, energetically held, and cried-with. Not bound by the 15 years of stories of how we knew one another, but supported by the structure of connection that our shared her-story offered us both.

And the brightest glimmers came in the kids yoga today. I had been struggling to ‘keep on keeping on’ with them because I felt inadequate in the crowd control department. What has most distressed me is that, due to my lack of skills in directing the troubled child’s attention, I’ve raised my voice. As a partially deaf child raised in meditation, mantra, prayer, yoga and deep Southern manners, I was trained to pay attention. So, without children of my own or training in this realm, I’ve struggled to know how to steer and sustain their attention. The times I’ve resorted to yelling have so upset me that I’ve let go of the class where that continued to happen.

But today this group of kids was present, shoes off, water bottles ready, sitting on their mats. They could recount the rules about staying on their mats for safety, raising their hands out of respect, and keeping their hands to themselves except in partner poses. Spurred on by the mad skills of another kids yoga teacher, who is also a primary school teacher trained to corral kids, I brought in a singing bowl. What magic it wrought in their willingness and ability to truly listen. Sitting tall, each ready for their turn to try to get the bowl to sing. Each cultivating the one-pointed focus necessary to make that magic happen.

Other glimmers came in their delight and inevitable hilarity at seeing my belly-button every time we raised our arms overhead. And specifically the look of being heard and recognized that appeared on Meera’s face when I instructed everyone to do gentle Down Dog sounds since last week’s cacophony of barking had caused her to burst into tears. (Oh Meera, I am so with you on that!)

Then there was their desire to not only do, but to extend the exploration of, the meditation I had never before managed to get them to do. Out of nowhere three of them wanted to teach the whole group what they know of meditation, including sound and mudra. And finally their willingness to share their experience of each other’s sharings. Happy. Good. Sleepy. Like waves. Ticklish.

Top left and bottom left are toe-made drawings. Make note the robot at centre has a belly button and the fish are smiling!

Look at these drawings they did, which they all decided to gift to me. Oh, the tears of frustration that came to Rishi’s eyes when I asked them to at least try to draw with their feet. It was such a beautiful, spontaneous teaching moment of emphasizing how far he’s clearly come from when he first learned to draw with his hands and would have had the same frustration. The gap we forget existed between not doing and doing, because, for the most part, we’re now capable of so many things that we take them for granted. We forget we had to learn them.

I admire their enthusiasm and ease in expressing themselves in drawing - so natural for children. At some stage most of us stopped drawing. The example from Rishi’s vulnerability and suffering in the process of learning to communicate swings us back to the start.

Our tears came from present pain that could trace its roots to past pain, both of which are best released in safe, respectful space where we know we are heard. We know because it is echoed back to us without judgment and maybe even with the encouragement we need to grow from the pain. Whether it’s the leg muscles or the heartmind muscles, they must tear in order to repair and strengthen.

For it’s possible that the nature of the trigger will also be where the glimmer is found.

This feels advanced and, like I encouraged Rishi to do, I re-cognize how I’ve evolved and feel proud of my progress. The British woman’s voice was wrapped up in the trauma of not only not having a child in this life, but the story of the man I was living with betraying me on my birthday and impregnating a British woman I never met but who, for whatever reason, tracked me down in the midst of the drama to yell at me over the phone. I was the one deeply betrayed, yet I was the one being yelled at. The pain from that situation was surreal and searing, and spread its poisonous tentacles in all directions in the spacetime continuum of traumas.

So to share joy today in other people’s children, and to glimmer - or feel regulated by - the very thing that has cut me so deeply is evidence in-deed of my growth.

For this I am grateful.

May your days grow in their glimmering,

Mox