Safe Triggers

If you cannot maintain emotional and physical safety and consent with others when you are triggered, you are not ready for close relationships.

Exposing another to emotional threats is abuse. Exposing another to physical threats is abuse. Consent violations are violations. The intensity of the emotion one experiences does not and cannot justify enacting abuse and violation on another person.

Hurting someone because you’re triggered means you have a practice of hurting people. Pursuing someone who is trying to walk away from your behavior in your triggered state means you have a practice of violating boundaries. There’s no need to make further meaning or value-judgements about these practices; this either is who you choose to be or it’s not.

I ended my abuses of others when I recognized that a triggered state is simply a somatic configuration of my safe body. I went cold-turkey when I decided that is not who I would be toward my loved ones no matter what.

A triggered state offers me thoughts largely unworthy of my investment. Because I do not personally invest in the thoughts that arise in my triggered state, I have no need to share them with a loved one. We can speak when I am through the trigger, post-process.

I can be in and show any somatic state to my loved ones which respects their boundaries and consent. I am still safe in any extremity of emotion if they walk away. I am safe enough, in any extremity of emotion, to walk away.

There is no excuse or justification for abuse, boundary violation, or consent violation. Close relationships are founded in safety, so I hold a high standard for being safe toward others at all times and in every situation, no matter how intense my feelings get.

I also practice Abundant Boundaries so that I am doing my part to ensure my emotions stay within my own preferred and comfortable range. If I am reliably upset when with a specific person, I don’t need to investigate any further. I call it misalignment and move on.

If someone hurts me “because they were triggered,” I recognize, neutrally, that hurting me is part of their practice, that hurting me is on the menu at this restaurant. I make my choices from there.