Lesson 17: Triggered

In this lesson, Triggered, we return to the forge and step back into the deeper rooms of memory—where moments leave marks long after they pass.

Being triggered isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s subtle. A smell. A touch. A sound. A memory you didn’t invite. In this episode, I explore how trauma attaches itself to the body and how one moment can shape the way we interact with the world for years afterward.

We walk through the fourth floor—the place of suffering—and confront how certain experiences redefine safety, trust, and connection. I share how being triggered affected my relationships, my sense of touch, and my ability to feel at ease around others, and how I’ve learned to isolate those moments rather than let them define my entire life.

This isn’t a clinical conversation. I’m not a doctor. This is simply my process—how I organized the chaos, separated the trauma from the present, and learned how to function without letting the past control me.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by a reaction you couldn’t explain, if something small pulls you back into something painful, or if you’re trying to understand why certain moments still have power over you—this lesson is for you.

If you haven’t already, you may also find value in the episode “Coping,” which many listeners have connected with deeply.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

Hi, I'm the Timesmith. And welcome back. I hope you had time to listen to my last lesson, Uncertainty. You might like it. But if you want to come along with me today, let's step into the forge. How you been? Have you had time to go through the catalog and see the lessons? I'm really starting to add to it. It feels good that I'm able to get most of it out and to define it the way I understand it. I hope you understand it as well. Today I want to talk about something that has really caused a lot of confusion in my life. It might seem simple, but it's really complicated things in my life. And that's being triggered. Sometimes a smell can remind me of the moment. What moment? The lens of suffering. Check out that lesson. I also spoke about it on the last lesson, uncertainty. But this ties in. Well, it ties into the whole podcast. I always like looking around when I come in here. The counter that's in front of us. The staircase to the right and the elevator to the left, the flooring, the walls. At times it's a cold feeling in here, but I feel very comfortable. But let's go back down to the fourth floor. As we go down, just keep in mind that this floor here is where I spent a lot of time. Questioning myself, wondering, and in fact it was just a huge mess. Here we are. When I would walk down these this hallway, it wasn't as easy as just walking through. Doors were open, junk was everywhere, on the ground, and I needed to put it in the correct place, in the right room, organized, and some of it I had to throw away. I had to get rid of it. So let's walk up to the room. Before we go in here, just remember I'm not a doctor, and no one advised me to do this in my life except that I brought myself to a place that I had to organize, and I didn't know any other way than to do this. But let's walk in. Normally when we walk in these rooms, there's a huge picture. But I've also talked about at times that there's pedestals, and on the pedestal in this room, it's just a hand, a hand with a mark on it, with the tattoo. And that hand has really caused a lot of problems for me, as when I was a child I remember what that hand did. Yes, it was multiple hands, but it's really just a display of what a hand can do or what a touch can do. And I remember the hand. It had a tattoo on it. Not sure. This hand has caused me a lot of problems. That's it. Let's step out. Why has that hand caused me problems? I think it's easy to say, well, yeah, because it touched you, it harmed you, it upused you. In this case, it's not just you, it's me. And what it did to me is that I didn't like touching hands after. I didn't like shaking hands. Still kinda don't. Takes me a while. Even to the very simplest form of going and ordering food from a drive-thru. I didn't like touching new people. I almost felt that whatever they had would pass over to me because that's what happened when I was younger. Is that through their touch, they passed on their evil to me, and I've been left with the responsibility to throw it away for them. It's just the way I process it. But when I look in that room, it's not just a room with the hand and a tattoo, it's a room with the white wall behind it, and it's displayed for me to remember what touch can do. Because that moment caused many painful moments after. It not only lingered, but it affected how I interacted with people after. It was no longer just a loving touch, it was no longer a friendly embrace. It had that evilness attached to it. Let's step back to the threshold and look. That hand has done so much to affect my life negatively. This is one of those things where I had wondered many times. I wonder what would have happened if I wasn't touched. That's the reality. Wondering was a part of my reality of what life would have looked like. Maybe I wouldn't have been so angry. Maybe I wouldn't have felt so confused and lost, and that's not to say that in this life we don't feel those things regardless. But maybe I added on to it, or that moment added it on to me, and the weight was heavier to carry. I don't want it to make it sound that I had the worst of experiences, but I do want you to understand that some weights are just that heavier. When I was young, if someone would say, Hey, this is so-and-so, maybe an uncle or an aunt, well, you know how it is. Many times we don't know the people that we're meeting when we're young because they've seen us when we were little babies, and then you don't see them again until you're maybe eight or nine years old. And well, my have you grown? And yeah, they could be family members, but we don't know them. They could be friends of your parents, but we don't know them. And I was very young questioning who is this person touching me? And if I cringed a little bit, then I look like a rude child. And it would be met with either a backhand or a thump on the head or a scolding that I shouldn't act that way. It shouldn't be like that. So I had to develop the trust for my parents. When I was younger, I didn't process that it was their friend in their home and their children who had done this. I did my best to continue to trust them, but there was some unavoidable facts that I was dealing with, and that's that I didn't want to be touched because I was triggered. It would just take me back every single time to that moment. Well, that's what suffering is. Suffering is reliving the moment, even now. If we continue to talk about this, it seems like I'm reliving it. I know that at the moment no one's touching me, that no one's around me. So I would say that I'm not suffering from it, but I remember, and that's what I'm trying to explain here was that when I was even greeted, it triggered me and it reminded me, and that was suffering. Well, I hadn't told anybody, so if I acted scared or awkward, it wasn't well received. It came with questions. Why are you acting like that? What's wrong with you? And I just didn't want to say it was embarrassing, it was shameful, and I was triggered. That hand in that room, it triggered me. The way it looked, the marks on the hands, the tattoo, it triggered me. I didn't like it. Well, we can go back up and continue this conversation. I just wanted you to see that. Let me close that door. Let's go up. You know, I can get out of here now, but I wasn't able to do that before. I would sit there and stare at that hand. If I would have my interactions, I just didn't know how to overcome it. I didn't understand. Here we are, the forge. But let me share something with you. I began to think to myself about a loving father and an abusive father. My dad wasn't abusive to me, but it's just the idea of what came to me. Remember, I am a Christian, and I pray to my father. And I thought about how the idea is that he can embrace me and that he's not abusive. Well, that brought me to understanding what hands can really do. If you have children, if you're married, if you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, if you have a loved one, you might grab their hand and hold their hand together. But if you've ever been in trouble or maybe even during abuse, those hands aren't touching. It's probably their hand around your wrist and you're being led. So I thought about that. I thought about how my interactions with people were not abusive. It was that one moment. But if you're wondering, this is how deep the triggering was. As I had to process that. I had to process touch. I had to process marks on hands. I had to process tattoos on hands, things that I grew up not liking. I did not like that. I began to understand that it wasn't my parents who hurt me, it wasn't my siblings or cousins or you know, I can go down the list of people that it wasn't. And it took me time to separate that trauma. Are you triggered? Maybe it's not a hand that causes you to be triggered. Maybe it's a smell, maybe it's something that you see or you hear. Could be a song, it could be a location. But what have you done to overcome that moment? I had to isolate it. I had to say it was them. Yes, and it caused me to be more careful with how I'm being touched. You know, at times I wear gloves. There's days where it's not even cold enough. And I'll wear gloves. And jokingly, sometimes people would say, Hey, are you a germophobe? To be honest with you, the easiest answer is just to say, Yeah, I'm a germophobe. Because I don't want to have to explain all this and go around and say, Well, this one time when I was a child, and and well, you understand. Sure, I'm a germophobe. And I hold my head up and just keep on moving. It doesn't bother me. I don't have to explain every moment to everyone. Isolate it. Isolate that moment. Understand what it is, and outside of that moment, even though you might not feel good about it, it might not be those people that are hurting you. Might not be those marks that you saw that I saw. So I hope that today, if you become triggered, that you can overcome it, that you can put it in its place and put it away, and not let it take control of your life, and that you can find an alternative to do what you need to do for the day, so that you can function, so that you don't have to be afraid or scared or disgusted, but that as you deal with the issue, you can see for yourself that you can overcome some with support, and and some parts of this walk is done alone, and overall, it's gonna be okay. So I'll leave you with that. There's always more to say. One thing before we go, I've noticed that a lot of people listen to the lesson coping. If you haven't listened to it, check it out. It might help you, and I have thought about doing a second part to that. Anyway, here we are, talking about triggered, and I hope it blesses you today. And if you feel lost, you can be found. If you feel unloved, you are loved by me. I am the Timesmith. God bless.