I agree, many if not all the people who trigger me carry a lot of baggage themselves. One difference is that to the best of my knowledge few if any of them are aware that they are less than perfect, and many of them have this very smug denial thing happening that really gets to me. Fortunately I have little occasion to see any of them. But high praise to you for being on top of things in your own life!!! Have a blessed day.

My internal phrase for this in my real life is: the competition of needs.

And yes, it's a balancing act.

I've come to see it as a Trust Issue. Do I trust you to not exaggerate your needs? Do you trust me to 'do my best'? Vice versa and so on... Life, being life, there will be days when "things just come out wrong" and other days when "we're just not at our best".

Far easier to type about this stuff, than to actually live it...at least for me.

Thanks for posting, Patti

Oh and in many ways, I think that this issue is what brought my marriage down. And at heart, why my mother could never connect with me. I was perennially THE trigger.

Example: Once as I was carrying a box of comic books, I almost lost my balance. I scared myself badly and let go of the box, rather than falling down the stairs. The sight of the comics flying everywhere along with my fear...it all suddenly struck me as VERY funny and I started laughing.

Unknown to me, my mother was in the living room right next to the stairs. For some unknown reason, she was SURE that I was laughing at her.

She came to the top of the stairs and started ripping me apart. At dinner she told my father that I had laughed at her. Next time she spoke to my sister (who had moved out) she told her how I'd laughed at her. She told the neighbors, my teachers...basically every single person she could. Most agreed that I was just a horrible child.

From long experience, I'd learned to stay quiet. Her reality was the only one that counted. White cloud comes down and helps me forget the actual words.

Without a doubt I was triggering things that I had no knowledge of. And I felt sorry for her (part Stockholm Syndrome? part insight?

I think what sets that incident apart from the hundreds of others...was that I remember so clearly what I was thinking when I laughed. And I know that I sure wasn't thinking of my mother, or I'd have stayed silent. Most of the time I just blamed myself and tried harder, and harder and harder.)

IDK...sorry if I took your post off topic. Irony...my trigger really is my issue...

Working a mutual trigger event from both sides is, indeed, harder than hard. For the most part, I still walk away from it and go work my strictly personal program from my own side. I don't get to fix the world.

Still. . . The times I have accomplished it have been healing events for everyone involved. The healing seems to extend to all who touch either life of the central players. Enough so that I find myself wondering if there are ways to make it easier. Got no expectations of easy, but easier seems possible.

Just wondering. . .