I fucking hate it when you’re in such a fantastically giddy mood and then you see one simple little thing that makes you think, “oh” and then you just get this empty feeling in your chest and you get nauseous and the world just crumbles and you want to just lay under a blanket and close your eyes and fall asleep and never wake up.
From what my therapist told me, this happens because our emotions aren’t really on the ‘opposite’ ends like we tend to think of it. Happiness is not ‘up’ and sadness is not ‘down’-. In a way they’re actually right ‘next’ to each other.
If you’re super happy, it can turn into super sad very easily, because your emotions are already highly elevated and it’s only a very minor shift as far as your brain is concerned.
Knowing this can help you fight it, and it can help you be more aware of what’s going on while you’re happy and help avoid shifting towards misery.
I used to always wonder why it seemed like my happy days ‘couldn’t last’ or that bad things would ‘always’ happen when I was happy. It’s not that happiness is doomed to fail, it’s that emotions are volatile. I hope that helps people who experience this too- when you understand what’s going on more it’s easier to manage.
Tag: mental health
“It’s only a trigger if it causes horrible flashbacks” is so utterly divorced from how the concept of a trigger is used by actual real therapists
a thing doesn’t have to cause traditional flashbacks to be a trigger. a trigger can be a thing that causes:
– panic attacks
– emotional flashbacks*
– anxiety episodes
– paranoia/delusions
– hallucinations
– seizures
– rage episodes
– manic episodes
– depression spikes
– suicidal thoughts
– dissociative episodes
– sensory overload
– obsessions and compulsions (as in OCD)and probably more things than that, i don’t know all the possible things. I’m not trained in clinical psychology, but neither are all the assholes who say “It’s not a real trigger unless it gives you flashbacks”
* an emotional flashback is a type of flashback where you feel the emotions associated with the trauma happening to you while still on some level knowing that the trauma isn’t currently happening to you. this is a more common type of flashback than the traditional kind.
tl;dr the word trigger in clinical psychology (the field of therapists) can refer to many things other than traditional flashbacks. stop telling ppl “that’s not a trigger unless it gives you flashbacks,” because you are utterly fucking wrong.
•Addiction relapse.
In simpler terms, anything that causes a worsening of symptoms is a trigger. This applies to physical illnesses too, (foods can be migraine “triggers” for example).
Anything that causes a worsening of your symptoms is a trigger for those symptoms.
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