Takes one to know one, but fessig up to the similarities is often a different step, altogether. At least for me.

I find myself reviewing the too many human triggers I have encountered in my healing journey. Child sex trafficking to comfortable retirement has been a lo-o-o-ong healing journey with a diverse array of human characteristics represented in the Janes and Johns who nurtured my trauma. Not too many of my human triggers are part of my everyday life. I still find it hard to sit calmly in the presence of someone who reminds me of the horrors I wish I could forget, whether by the crime of looking like or sounding like or . . . Whatever. It helps when I remind myself that the trigger is not the source of the trauma, but it only helps. Avoidance remains my primary coping tool. It is still hard to sit with the reminder, much less like the reminder. I have had the good fortune of meeting such people in my peer support rooms and working through the trigger with the mutual respect of a peer support network. It was very healing, but buddyship has yet to result from it.

The only tidbit new here is the way this review seems to be weaving with the recent media blurbs about the stigma of mental illness. Wondering how often my trigger responses have been perceived as this stigma by the people I am reacting to. I don't wear a PTSD armband to warn them. My own mental illness doesn't show on the outside. At casual glance, I look like Missus Normal. There are people I have done business with for years who don't have a clue and vice versa. How often are we recognizing one another without awareness of the recognition?

Rambling here. . . Am I making any sense?