I find it's little things that happened during the abuse that trigger it - a word here, a smell or sometimes the thoughts just come into my head - his awful breathe and so on.

I tell it to go away and that it can't hurt me anymore (I say it to myself in my head) and then it usually goes away. I also pray a lot and ask God to help take it away.

I have to remind myself that was the past. When I found out I was pregnant the first time, I got so scared. Then when I found out it was a girl..I panicked. I started having all these nightmares that my husband would sexually abuse her. The nightmares eventually went away, but only after confronting him about my nightmares. She is now almost 7 and of course I still worry, and about my son now too, but I also feel confident in my ability to teach them to tell me if anyone ever does anything to them that doesn't feel right, and my ability to be a watchful mother hawk!

I think triggers are different for each of us. What triggers me might not trigger you. It can be anything...the faintest scent, a simple phrase, the taste of a certain food, a song...anything.

For me my triggers are the scent of original chapstick, speed stick deodorant, crest original toothpaste, Irish spring (green) soap, being on the left side of the bed and many more that I may not be able to even recognize until it's too late.

I do my best to avoid my triggers, but it's not always possible. I try to remember that my abuse was in the past if I feel triggered. I try to stay present and tell myself that I am in a safe place..no one is going to harm me. It takes a lot of inner dialogue for me to work past that feeling of terror or anxiety, but I think with practice it gets easier to work through it. Sometimes I just have to focus on one thing and just repeat it over and over...like "just breathe". I say it over and over in my head...sometimes I'll say it out loud. Just breathe..just breathe...just breathe................until the feeling passes.

Fallen....I didn't even know what a trigger was until I was 30... unfortunately, I lived every single one of them out repeatedly, over and over again. You don't fight them, you work with them, you work through the emotions attached to them. OK, this is what happened, why am I feeling this. Recognize IT ISN'T the situation, it is your old emotions REACTING to the situation. You have to learn how to ACT, instead of RE-ACT, and that takes conscious control. And that takes working through the old emotions first. Point is, when you start feeling these things, that is the time to face your fears. If you don't, it goes on and on, and on.

I, too, have similar triggers that everyone has mentioned. I think it's good to recognize that these are triggers of something real that has really happened so you don't think you are totally insane. I am starting to meet with a new therapist who specializes in PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) which talks about triggers. We are like soldiers who have been through a war and will have many sensory and memory episodes the way they do. Please go to counseling to at least talk about them and feel some sort of release that way.

I don't fight the triggers anymore. I learn new ways to deal with the things that trigger me instead of going back to the programmed ways of survival. It's not easy, working and thinking my way through the macabre past, but I will to deal with it and somehow, I manage to do it! Keep your head up, Fallen! You can and will deal with it, but you have to find the way that's right and works for you!