The trigger isn’t the trauma.

For example, a veteran with PTSD might be triggered by loud noises. We understand that the loud noises are associated with the trauma of experiencing a battle or surviving an attack. But the loud noises are not what actually caused the damage; they are just something the brain has associated with the trauma.

One of my trauma triggers is yelling. My mother would fly into rages and yell and scream. I knew I would never marry a yeller. 

But I ended up marrying someone who traumatized me in similar ways to my mother, because I didn’t realize that while yelling was associated with the trauma of my childhood, it was not what actually caused the damage.

The most traumatizing part of my childhood was not that my mother yelled at me. It was the way she consumed me. It was the fact that she could never accept me as a separate person. She appropriated my energy and time. She siphoned my talents. She exploited my patience, compassion and good nature for her own benefit. 

She raised me without boundaries. Anything good I did, she took credit for. Mistakes were met with the disappointment of a lifetime of failures – hers, not mine. 

The yelling was loud and unpleasant and I still can’t relax if someone in the neighborhood is raising their voice. But the damage was done by something else entirely – and until I realized that I was susceptible to people who employ that kind of boundary-less love. 

The abuse didn’t just happen in those terrible moments when I feared for my life. It was the air I swam in, the ocean I breathed. Those moments were when the light broke through and I could see, sure. But the damage was happening all. the. time. 

Worry less about the specific behaviors and more about the long-term patterns. 

This holds for evaluating our relationships. It also applies when we are thinking about how we parent. Specific behaviors are easy to isolate and recognize, but the underlying patterns and ways of thinking are what really matter. 

Maybe you are concerned because your partner has a behavior that triggers you and you wonder if your relationship is unhealthy.

Maybe you feel guilty because you keep yelling at your kids, and you worry that you’ll traumatize them.

Try digging beneath the specific behavior to find the reasons. 

Your partner may be abusive, or they may have a thoughtless habit that triggers you. What is it that they do? Why does it bother you? Why do they do it?

You yell at your kids. Why? When? What is going on inside of you right before you lose your cool? It is more effective to address the underlying needs and thought patterns than to try to change a behavior.