IMO, triggers are like nasty little pixies.... never know where/when/why they'll pop up or what havoc they'll bring when they do. I just posted in another thread about how installing batteries in a recorder suddenly triggered the unlocking of buried ACoA memories..... a trigger to me is like a portkey in Harry Potter. Looks innocuous - a shoe, a newspaper, a cabinet door.
((((Hugs)))) I think the shock of being wrenched so firmly back through time like that is the worst part of it in some ways. That's the feeling that leaves you nauseous & questioning if YOU took a misstep in your recovery somehow to end up here. But really, you just touched the portkey & travelled in time.
It sounds like you maybe minimized this episode a bit?
Then I was awash in a memory--not one that had ever struck me as even remotely close to the worst thing that ever happened in my marriage to STBXAH
followed up quickly with:
something similar happened with STBXAH (I was in the kitchen, putting away dishes, and hit my head on a cabinet), and he was in the room. And he was absolutely apoplectic with rage at me. Screaming at me for being stupid and not closing cabinet doors, screaming at me for crying after I hurt myself.
...maybe not the
worst, but not small potatoes either? Yet - because you HAVE so many other examples to draw from, it's a natural thing to think - it's not even like it was THAT big of an event, why am I so triggered?
Because it's still awful & it's still something that really happened to you. It is still something to acknowledge & let go of.
Personally, I feel like these episodes can be GOOD for our recoveries, you know, in moderation.
It's like - now that I AM strong enough to face/deal with what happened, I can. You just can't control the "when" so much sometimes. (And conversely, I think we CAN if we wanted to - I used to do yoga exercises mixed with memory games to try dislodge "junk" like this in my system... especially throughout the hip area where we tend to store our deepest, darkest emotions & hold ourselves tightly in a fight-or-flight stance internally.)
In my experience, when I face the trigger head-on, rip into it & examine it fully, it helps to put the issue to behind me more permanently. I still suffer from triggers in my world, but not necessarily the SAME kind in the SAME ways, over & over. I keep moving on to new garbage, lol! I hope this helps!!