How to Turn Unavoidable Triggering Experiences into Opportunities for Healing

As survivors of trauma, domestic violence and abuse, we've all had them...those experiences we could not forsee, could not avoid and could not have expected that pop up and trigger burried emotions associated with our abuse.  These things happen and sometimes there is nothing we can do about them.  We can't always avoid experiences that trigger us, BUT we CAN turn them into opportunities for healing.  How?  I'll give you an example from a recent experience of mine.

It was still dark and I was awake with a start!  My cell phone was ringing. I glanced at the clock...1:30 a.m.  When ever your phone rings at that time of night, it's never something good!  I dreaded answering it, but I had to find out what the emergency was.  It was the security company my employer pays to safeguard our office and warehouse.  A woman on the other end of the line is telling me that the alarm has gone off at the warehouse door to our building.  She tells me that the police have been summoned and she promises to call me back just as soon as they investigate the situation.

Since I'm the only employee who doesn't travel, I'm the reluctant emergency contact for such phone calls that wake you up in the middle of the night.  I live almost 30 miles from the office, so there is nothing I can do but wait to hear back from the security company.  I apologize to my sleepy husband and pad downstairs in my bathrobe.  I wait...and I wait...and I wait.  No phone call.

I don't really need a phone call to confirm what I already suspect.  The cleaning woman has left the warehouse door unlocked again after opening it to discard the garbage into the dumpster behind the building.  After many reminders, the cleaning lady continues to forget to relock this door.  It is Monday morning, so I am certain this is the case.  The cleaning company always cleans our offices on Sunday.  A lucky would-be robber has found my company's back door unlocked and has entered the warehouse.  The alarm has gone off to notify the security company.

After that, I don't know what has happened for certain.  After over an hour of waiting, I call the security company back.  The night shift worker who answers the phone has no idea what I'm talking about!  In my slumbering, half-awake state, I neglected to get the name of the woman who had phoned me earlier.  The girl answering there now tells me rather rudely that I would have received a call back if the police had called them back.  Her conclusion is that the police never investigated (a conclusion that turned out to be correct).  She suggests I go back to sleep and follow-up in the morning and hangs up!  I am too tired to argue.  I have already been told that my office is closing and I am out of a job soon, so I don't have much motivation to go trapsing into the night to check out the situation myself.  My exhausted husband has just returned from a long business trip and I just don't have the heart to ask him to accompany me to the office in the middle of the night.  It sounds like a potentially volatile situation.  I conclude that if the police can't be bothered, than neither will I until morning.

Being the recovering survivor that I am, I try to avoid potentially dangerous situations as much as possible.  I have no idea what exactly transpired the night before at my office.  What will I find when I arrive there?  Will the offices be cleaned out?  Since the police never arrived, the burglars had plenty of time to do just that. I am more than a little nervous about entering the building alone!  I am usually the first one to arrive in the mornings.  To avoid the hellacious Atlanta traffic, I usually leave home before 6:00 a.m.  There is only one other employee who gets in that early and he is not on the road travelling.  I worry that he will arrive before me and enter an unexpectedly EMPTY office!  So, I call him to warn him of that possibility.  He doesn't answer his cell phone.  I call his office extension.  He doesn't answer that phone either.  I leave messages for him on both voice mails.

I am growing worried the closer I get to the office.  The only other person who might accompany me into the building is not answering his phones.  I was hoping one of the guys would be there when I open shop.  No such luck!  I arrive at the office around 6:45 a.m.  It is still dark, but the grounds crew are working blowing leaves in the front parking lot.  I drive up to our office, but don't get out of my car.  The office is dark and the front door is still locked.  However, I hear a faint alarm wailing in the distance.  I decide to drive around to the back of the building where the warehouse is.  I figure if something appears threatening, I can drive away fast!  As I get closer to our loading dock, I see it...the back door swung wide open!  The alarm is blaring out the opening into the early morning dawn.  No one seems concerned.  None of the other office occupants who are in their offices nor any of the grounds crew seem to be curious about the alarm or open door!  There are no police in the vicinity and it's obvious to me that they never came to investigate.  Surely, the police would have at least closed the door!

I sit in my car trying to decide what to do.  The longer I sit, the angrier I become.  No one cares!  No one cares if we were robbed! No one cares if I have been put at risk!  No one even notices or even seems curious as to why our alarm is blaring away!  Even those we pay to protect us don't care!  This realization makes me angry!

Well, I won't go into the rest of the details of that aggrevating morning.  Suffice it to say that I was not hurt, thankfully and the would-be burglars must have been scared off by the alarm when it sounded, because after my investigation, I found everything in it's place.  It helped that the cleaning woman remembered to lock the fire door separating the warehouse from the main offices, so the robbers were not able to enter that part of the building.

What I want to relay is that my being placed at risk and no one caring triggered rage that was burried deep inside of me about my past abuse.  You see, no one cared then either!  The people you count on to protect you as a small child...your parents, they were my abusers.  So, they obviously didn't care about my safety and well being, but no one else did either.  People who saw me every day, never asked questions.  Never seemed to wonder why my eyes were always so swollen and red from crying.  No one seemed to wonder where the bruises and marks came from.  No one seemed to wonder why I was always exhausted and why my eyes...my expression always looked so hopeless.  Not one neighbor.  Not one teacher.  Not one Sunday school teacher, pastor or youth counselor.  None of my friend's parents.  None of my other relatives.  No one cared enough to ask, to find out what was desperately wrong.  No one wanted to protect me, just like the current experience.  That's why I became so enraged.  I didn't try to hide it.  After I gave the security company a piece of my mind about their failing to protect the company's property, I decided to let some more of my rage out!  I had to.  It was eating me up inside.

Luckily, no one else showed up at the office that day.  Most of the guys were on the road and the one employee who was supposed to be in the office that day, just decided not to come.  I think it was a blessing that I was alone, because it gave me an opportunity to safely release some burried anger and rage. 

Safely Releasing Rage:

The three rules of safely releasing rage are:

1.  You can't hurt yourself.  WARNING: Be careful! Be sure to do some stretching warm up exercises before you begin any physical release work...just like you would any other strenuous exercise.  Be careful not to pull, strain or sprain any muscles, ligaments, joints, bones, etc.  Use caution while you strike any surface!

2.  You can't hurt anyone else.

3.  You can't destroy anything of value.

Since none of our office neighbors seemed to care about the screaming alarm, I figured they would pay no mind to any noise I made either.  Since we recycle plastic in our break room, I decided to use an empty plastic water bottle to release some anger.  I took the bottle and wrapped some paper towel around the mouth of it, to protect my hands.  I then proceeded to whack the empty bottle against the counter top in our office break room.  There was nothing on the counter that I risked breaking, so I flailed away with the empty plastic bottle letting all the rage come out with every stroke.  As the minutes passed, I felt a feeling of power well up inside me and I felt confident as I continued to lash at the counter with the plastic bottle.  I started to rant as I swung the bottle again and again.  I cried to the empty space what I thought about the police who never showed up to investigate the would-be robbery.  I used some choice swear words to vent about the idiots who worked at the security company (that's some misnomer!).  Security my you-know-what!  After I started to feel relief about the current situation, I started to strike and wail about my lack of protection as a child.  I yelled and screamed and swore and struck that empty plastic bottle until the mouth of it broke off at the neck! 

During my beating of the bottle and my venting I felt an enormous release and relief!  I did this without hurting myself, anyone else or anything of value.  The empty plastic bottle was another story.  It was shredded beyond recognition, but I think the recyclers were able to recycle it just fine!

For more ideas on releasing pent up rage, please visit my Web site:

http://www.hope4survivors.com/Triggers4.html

For ideas on releasing other buried emotions, please see this page:

http://www.hope4survivors.com/InnerChildHealingWounds.html

God bless, love and light, Hope