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Contains sexual abuse - Triggered by yet another news story... *trigger for all abuse*
I seem to get triggered by news stories involving abuse/violence a lot. Does anyone else get this? This time it's the shooter in California who targeted girls because he thought they should give him sex. I tend to be triggered (but simultaneously obsessed) by all these shooting stories, because of two exes who had very scarily similar traits to the mass shooters that always end up in the news (both would find ways to threaten violence to both myself and others, and insinuated they could do things like this). And this time it's even worse, because my ex husband not only used to be like this back in the early years we were together, but a huge part of the abuse was him thinking he deserved sex and manipulating/coercing me in any way possible to get it. I also get this problem when there's a high profile sexual assault case if it hits too close to home. Or a case involving religious abuse. As you can imagine, this can be a lot of the time. And it's somewhat random which specific ones will trigger me and which ones won't.
I'm trying not to read the news on it (or even worse, comment on stories and get into internet arguments on it), but I always end up clicking on it out of some morbid sense of wanting to understand something that I know I'm not going to understand and just leaves me angry, raging, and feeling damaged and depressed. And brings back memories. I live in the U.S. and so these stories unfortunately aren't going to go away. They happen on a regular basis here. I can't keep getting triggered every time this happens. I have to somehow not get so worked up about something I can't control and keep reliving things because there are a lot of similarities. I unfortunately know what those type of people are like and how they think. It's like it all becomes more real and everything comes flooding back, and I feel so angry and unheard, and re-victimized. I just want someone to understand what I went through, even though I know there are people who do and that someone understanding isn't going to change it anyway. And then I feel guilt, because many people who knew the people I am referring to would think I was crazy if I compared them to these people. But when I read stories about what they would say, wrote, how they acted, etc., it's sometimes almost word for word the same thing that came out of my exes' mouths. But then I wonder if I really am just dramatic and that spirals into frustration and feeling horrible about the whole thing.
Does anyone have any ideas of how to lessen this? Anyone able to relate? I just have to be able to learn how to handle it. Or at the very least learn to avoid it and just not read the news. But it seems almost impossible. I'm going to talk to my therapist about it today, but I'm not sure he can do any more than just tell me not to click on it. :/
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