The Revolving Door of Triggers
How do we advocate for the things we care about without triggering each other?
Bob was his name. “You want it spelled forwards or backwards?” he joked when I asked him. Bob’s a portly man in his 60’s sitting alone at a local dive bar talking to anyone and anything with an ear. I wasn’t sure if Bob was intoxicated or naturally belligerent. It turned out he just needed someone to listen to him.
I had stopped into the place to play my favorite bar arcade game — PhotoHunt. Not working, Bob’s external dialogue caught my partner’s and my attention. Before you know it, the three of us were knee deep in Bob’s story about serving in the Vietnam War.
It started with Bob’s exclamatory remarks towards the football game on the TV — “If these fools don’t stand for the national anthem, I’ll take a bat and wwhhacck every one of them!” He swings his arm across his body. He’s referring to the NFL players who are demonstrating against police brutality.
“It’s a personal offense against me and every veteran that’s ever served this country! If I ever saw one of them in public, I’d…” The rage-filled rhetoric continued.
My stomach turned over and my chest tightened. “How dare he speak about these NFL players like that!” is my first reaction. I’m immediately flooded by the hurt and pain of the Black community. My sociological understanding of our history’s power dynamics rings through my head. I get ready to go into a heady, heated discussion around the First Amendment and the history of race. But I’m paused.
My partner’s energy anchors me as he leans in to hear more about Bob’s story. I let go of my defensiveness and anger. I let go of my de facto assessment of who this person must be. I let the thread of our collective consciousness that riled me up wash over me. I softened and listened to Bob’s story.
At 18 years old Bob headed off to Vietnam. Most likely drafted (my assumption), he served as the guy who had everyone’s back during combat. Either on the ground or in the air, he served as backup, shooting down the opposition as they got close. He was shot at repeatedly. He watched multiple friends, or brothers at that point, die. And was embedded with this reality for the rest of his life.
He didn’t care so much about his country as he cared about his brothers. He went out there every day and did everything in his power to protect them. A responsibility he holds in the core of his being, takes pride in still to this day.
He returned from being overseas, never being able to un-see the atrocities he witnessed there. Some committed by his own hands. What happens when he returns home? The first moment he steps on American soil he’s hit with paint and food by protesters. Activists who were denouncing the war for its lack of credibility. Bob became a physical symbol of that war for those activists to express their anger towards.
Only 20 years old at that time, Bob has carried the experience of how he was received home for the rest of his life. Never having received the proper mental health support, the trauma and reality of that war and those activists lives on within his mind and body.
As he spoke, a tear rolled down his cheek. Of course he felt personally connected to the flag. A key part of his identity was formed around that flag. Memories from his youth are permanently associated with the flag.
We sat together and held space for each other. I could tell no one had listened to his story in a while.
I empathized. I too experienced deep trauma as a young person. Abuse at the hands of my family driven by addiction. I shared briefly. I told him I also was a survivor. I didn’t press it, but lightly offered the perspective that he probably has more in common with those NFL players than he thought.
Although I didn’t go in deep, he heard my story of abuse. He said he’d hurt anyone trying to hurt a young person like that. He went to use the word ‘cunt’ at one point and refrained. I appreciated it.
These triggers — around the flag, racial violence, misogyny — are real. And in our current political climate we all seem to be perpetually enflaming each others’. I believe it’s important for us as individuals to take a step back, see this and take responsibility for it. Take this understanding into account as we’re expressing our views and standing up for our beliefs.
The question remains: how do we advocate for the things we care about without triggering each other? How can we better recognize that, at our cores, we’re all children who have been wounded in some way? That my hurt and your hurt are the same. And that the us-versus-them, revolving door of triggers is not going to set us free in the way we truly desire.
Hi, I’m Liz Moyer Benferhat. Writer, facilitator, coach, and development practitioner dedicated to the subtle interplay between how inner transformation feeds the outer transformation we need in the world. Welcome 🌿