Triggers

Triggers are those words, situations or memories that bring about a certain amount of anxiety and sadness. It can hit out of nowhere. Sometimes triggers are easy to work through. Other times they drag you into a put that you can't escape from. You may or may not even know what the trigger was.

I have several triggers. The year that I had my breakdown I had several major events happen all at once I switched jobs going from elementary to Middle School. My husband told me that he no longer wanted to be married. I moved back in with my mom and Papa, and I became a single parent. While I had a good bit of support from my mom and Papa, I didn't understand what was causing my mood to plummet so I didn't know how to combat the decline.

After recovering from my attempt and working my way through the darkest place I'd ever been in I wanted my life back. I wanted to work. I wanted to buy my own place. I just wanted to be independent again. But the thing about triggers is you could get all of the things that you want and those things can be those very things that make you implode. I can get overwhelmed by tasks set before me and when I went back to work I had a lot to prove to myself. The biggest thing being my ability to maintain my job.

I loved my job as a Special Education teacher before my breakdown. I worked hard and as a result I had many accolades. I was lead of my department, on the leadership team, on the scheduling committee, teacher of the year, and blah blah blah. After my attempt I loved the kids that I worked with but my actual job was very taxing. The paperwork, the meetings, and the added demands that fell under all other duties as assigned could put me in a tailspin! I was very blessed that I had a paraprofessional who was phenomenal! Shout out to Kimberly Archer! I rotated up with my students so my parents trusted me. My class showed tremendous growth and I was awarded a performance stipend by the county as a result. The problem with all of that excellence was the more my students thrived the more demands that were placed on me. With each demand that my admin added I began to crumble.

Feeling overwhelmed and fearing that I would be unable to continue to perform on the level I'd always performed was a trigger. In 2016 I used a stipend that I'd earned from work to put as a down payment on my houe. I closed on my house in the beginning of January 2016. That following month during winter break I was asked to come to the county office to assist with some upcoming changes that they wanted to make with my program. I was sick at the time so I said no. This phone call triggered me to a point where I called my psychiatrist and I never returned.

I've learned that stress is a big trigger for me. Mental and emotional stress can come in many forms. While I can now identify my triggers, I still get a sense of suffocation whenever I am triggered. Things can snowball pretty quickly. I find that I get tired more easily, I cry more easily, I'm more irritable, and I can literally feel the weight of my emotions on my shoulders.

I've had a lot of trauma that I am just dealing with. My grandmother died in 2017. She was one of my best friends. She could make any bad day seem better. My son battled his own mental illness in 2018. As a mother I couldn't worry about what was going on with me. I threw myself into wanting to make everything okay for him. In 2019 my dad's health declined. He was always sickly but I really began to worry about how poorly he cared for himself. I was always able to get him to "do better" but in 2019 he rarely listened to my nagging. He passed away in 2020. We buried him on March 17th 2020 and the world shut down three days later.

It took my therapist labeling all of the back-to-back trauma that I'd experienced for me to understand that I needed to heal and not survive. I'd always been able to throw myself into some activity or work but the amount of trauma that I'd experienced in such a short amount of time was more than I could handle. I began to crumble once again. I really thought that I had my mood under control, but I didn't. I walked away from the most supportive work environment that I'd had in a long time. I found that my triggers didn't have to be as weighty because I had not dealt with the events that had left me scarred. I'm still healing. I'm also becoming more aware of the things that affect my mood. As I work hard to identify what my triggers are and how to work through them I feel stronger. Sometimes I actually feel like I am in school, but as I continue to work on my mental wellness I remind myself that I am worth the hard work. You are worth it too!