Trigger Warning. This piece describes events that includes a period of SA/abuse. Those with PTSD, SA in their past, and/or an overly empathetic nature should probably not read the post that follows. The author takes no responsibility for any aftermath of reading this piece, given that this warning is present. Read at your own risk.
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So, I’m going to tell you a story, to give the sneerers, doubters, and eye-rollers some idea of the importance of trigger warnings. Many perfectly reasonable people dismiss them as an overreaction, being too extra, or pandering. Once you realise what your basic trauma response is though, it makes huge sense to give one.
PTSD may be characterised as survival instinct, ramped up to 11/10. It may cause certain stimuli to feel deeply threatening, and possibly even deadly. It could be a smell, the sound of angry shouting, gunfire, or it could be something as apparently inert as media of some sort that recalls their trauma. This is commonly referred to as a trigger. A triggered trauma survivor might be immediately rendered furiously angry, aggressive, and even violent. Alternatively, they may be pushed too far into flight mode, and dissociate, flee, or become extremely distressed. At this point they could actually be endangered. This very article would trigger many trauma survivors.
When you have a severe trauma from early in your life, stemming from a single, intimate, incredibly violent attack, you will always let lovers know what may trigger it. That is an important act of trust in an intimate relationship. You have to tell them your biggest weakness; the thing that will most effectively break you; to ensure that they don’t accidentally do damage that you can’t readily come back from. Even in a Friends-with-Benefits situationship, the trust needs to be there that they won’t trigger you when you’re being intimate.
Imagine waking up from a nightmare about a vicious, long-ago attack, to find the person you share everything with is doing precisely the thing you told them early on that they must never do (the trigger), and has directly brought that nightmare about.
It’s paralysing. The mind goes to a diverse and extreme extent to try and process what’s going on, and work out how to respond, but the knee jerk reaction is to freeze.
“Will I be injured if I face them down?”
They’ve never been violent before now, but everything you’ve ever believed about this human being, YOUR human being, the person you love so much, has crumbled. From t = 0 you feel you’re in terrible danger, and your brain sends you to terrible places.
“Will I die? Best to pretend I’m still asleep, and roll away. Maybe they’re asleep too. Maybe it’s not a deliberate attack on me. Maybe they’re asleep too. Maybe it’s a one-off, freakishly unfortunate concatenation of circumstances. Maybe they’re asleep too. Maybe I imagined it…”
At a later date, having said nothing, having done nothing but ruminate on this, triggering what feels like heart convulsions, having stayed silent and quiescent, you wake up to the same thing again.
This recurrence lets you know that he’s aware and acting consciously. This time you can’t delude yourself into thinking he’s unaware of exactly how much harm he is doing. This is abuse, but you are too scared to confront him. You employ the same trick again, and wonder when it will recur.
Life devolves into days, and weeks of anticipating the next attack. You live in fear of this person, who has been your everything. This cycle of abuse goes on for months; then a year has passed; eighteen months. You’re so broken. You don’t sleep. You have to work so hard to be normal.
The last time he assaulted you, you woke up so abruptly, and with your terror at such an extreme pitch, that you lost all ability to reason. You screamed, leapt to your feet, ending up standing on the bed in the dark, and all pretence fled the room. You had to face him in your bedroom that night.
Thoughts fly. What would he do? Would he try to convince you that it didn’t happen? Would he bluster his way out of it? Or would he just force submission with violence? Might he actually kill you to hide this vile secret? WHAT?!
He did the one thing you hadn’t anticipated. He wept.
He gaslit you. He acted so contrite about this “one-off error of judgement.” His repentant tears looked like crocodile tears from your perspective. Who enacts this kind of poisonous horror over months, then pretends it’s a once in a lifetime fuck-up?
It stopped, but his complete lack of authentic, honest acceptance of responsibility for the most fearful period of your existence spelled the end of anything resembling a relationship.
The fear didn’t go away or abate. You still worried that he might do something much more drastic to protect himself. All that remained was a pretence that everything was as it should be, with continuous and convincing lying taking the place of communication. Whether or not you’ve previously been skilled at dissimulation, with safety possibly at stake you can build skills like a fucking prodigy. You lie at an expert level.
Eventually he ends it where you don’t dare to. You disentangle your lives, and part ways. Your tracks no longer overlap. You’re safe now. You still live as though you’re prey though, because who knows where the next blow will come from, or in what form.
You’re prey…