Heyyyyy my beauties!!!!

Let's talk about

EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS!

I'm going to tell you some upsetting things but not for sympathy. It's for context.

I want to use one of my own more recent journeys of healing to show you and we all have so many.

Some people know, some don't that my second husband who was active duty military since before we married a decade prior, decided to file for a full ANNULMENT of our ten year marriage due to a clerical error they found in my first divorce that nobody was ever aware of until then.

My first husband and his new wife didn't know either. We were all shocked.

Anyways, my second husband did this KNOWING FULL WELL that I was already disabled from chronic illness for many years and literally COULDN'T provide for myself at all due to those disabilities.

When the annulment was #UNFAIRLY tried in #VB courts and shockingly granted, I lost EVERYTHING.

My children and I had still been living in #WADSWORTH military housing and were evicted and I also lost my military health insurance leaving me literally #HOMELESS and #DISABLED with nothing.

He even cut off my phone while I was living on the streets with nothing.

Nor could I receive my normal medical care and ended up living in my truck in various parking lots around VB.

One of the parking lots was not far from the intersection by our old home, of almost ten years, where I raised my beautiful children. It was behind the abandoned McDonald's on General Booth Blvd.

I think I gravitated towards that location because even though it wasn't my home, it was in close enough in proximity to still feel a little familiar to me which was at least some tiny semblance of comfort.

Some of the darkest and loneliest times I've ever experienced were there alone in my Silverado.

So, fast forward maybe a year to dating a man who I'm very grateful for.

He's a lifelong fisherman. The man lives for it. It's like therapy for him which I've always been very supportive of.

We all need our own little slice of heaven sometimes to reboot and it looks different for everybody.

The ocean is Eric's heaven on earth and it's actually quite beautiful!

I never missed out on an opportunity to drop him off at the docks early in the morning and pick him up afterwards so he could just enjoy himself and not worry about getting there or home.

One of the the docks that the local fishing community frequents, is at the Marine science museum which is maybe a quarter of a mile from that intersection outside the neighborhood that myself and my babies resided and that empty and overgrown McDonald's on the corner and my daughter's school was right there too and this was about a year since I'd seen her because she was (and is still very much is) being unjustly kept from me.

There were multiple times that being stuck at that light would just bring me to overwhelming tears but I always tried to dry them before my BF got in the van or wait until after he got out because I didn't want this trauma to hurt him too.

I wasn't cool with ruining what should have been fun and relaxing days for him just because of the monsters from my past. They've already hurt enough people. They've alre4ady done enough damage.

But one day, I came to get him and was just extra overwhelmed that day anyways and I couldn't compose myself before seeing him and he of course was like "What's wrong? What happened?"

And it was then that I confessed my emotional state about that area because of how close it was to me from before. And then with just using the quickest of human logic, he goes....

"Then why don't you just go the beach way instead?"

*For those who don't live here, that's just another way to get to the museum and that ramp by coming from the opposite direction and not using that intersection.

 

And this is what I told him.

"I don't want to do that because this trigger is INSIDE OF ME RIGHT NOW and nowhere else.

This intersection isn't going anywhere, and it would be an outrageously unrealistic expectation for me to have that my hometown to change or rearrange important and necessary geographical features just because I went through some dumb shit one time.

That doesn't make sense."

 

I went on to explain to him that the intersection is just a place.

Nothing more nothing less. It's not inherently good or evil.

It's ONLY power over me is IN ME and it's MY OWN RESPONSIBILITY to handle that.

I'm not the type of person to allow something as simple as a stop light to control my internal climate or emotions.

I told him that I needed to continue to just face it to teach my brain that it's not hurting me anymore;

that there's nothing to fear there anymore.

 

I was basically doing my own exposure therapy to get over this.

I needed this to heal, relearn, and reframe my own internal sense of stability and safety and I'd be okay.

And I am.

 

It was NEVER Eric's job or VB's job or anyone else's to fix that trauma inside of me. It was always mine.

This is why I tell people to really get to know their own triggers like they are your very best friends.

So, you can make peace with them.

So, you can control them instead of being controlled by them.

 

Because you can pretend that roses don't have thorns all day but

it's still not going to save you from getting pricked from time to time!

 

You are ALL so much stronger and tougher than you give yourselves credit for!

I promise you are! 

 

IT'S ALREADY INSIDE OF YOU.

 

-JAMIE C. SPENCE

 

#COACHINGANEWGENERATION #RISE

 

 

ALSO