I've been thinking for some time that what we call triggers in relation to trauma are actually forms of conditioning. Treating triggers as conditioning would - I think - help in a number of ways.
Conditioning is a process of learned, unconscious responses. The original experiment involved a scientist called Pavlov feeding dogs, ringing a bell and finding that after a while the dogs would salivate when they heard a bell. (If you aren't familiar with it as a process it's worth reading around a bit.)
This is something that happens in the body. That's a really important consideration. It isn't conscious, or a choice, it's an immediate trained response to specific things. You get there with trauma because you've had a powerful association built by an experience or multiple experiences that were harmful and dangerous. There's a tendency to treat triggers like this is just people making a fuss. If it was understood as conditioning, that perception could change to something more helpful.
We know that unpicking conditioning is really hard. It's possible, but difficult and takes a lot of time. Mostly what treatment for PTSD and CPTSD does is asks the person in distress to unpick their conditioning - often without anything like enough support to make that realistic. The best way to get rid of problematic conditioning is to layer new conditioning over the top. This isn't easy either, and it's not really something you can do on your own. If you take a person into their triggers and they just suffer, what you're doing is embedding the triggers further. Making people revisit their trauma without the right support is known to further traumatise them.
All too often, people see trauma as a head/brain issue that the sufferer ought to be able to think their way out of. My own experience is that these things are really physical, and they are body responses, not brain responses. It's very hard to mentally stay in control when it's happening, which is what makes it so hard to deal with. I have a lot of willpower, I'm very good at managing my thoughts, and triggering takes that from me. I cannot will myself out of a situation that has robbed me of my ability to think clearly.
In the past, people used violence to train animals. Once an animal has learned to be afraid of the consequences of not obeying you, you can make it do things. Plenty of children are raised the same way, in fear of punishment. Like all animals, we're set up to learn from our experiences so as to avoid pain, hunger, thirst and so forth. Hurt a person enough and their body will try to learn how to avoid that. Salivating for the bell is the least of it.
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