Lesson 1: Building a Habit

So, this is where I might burst your bubble. Triggers will be a part of your life now and moving forward. Ugh!

The silver lining is that you can get yourself to a point where they won’t have a grip. A trigger will come along, you’ll use your tools, and they will dissipate as quickly as they arrived. Your mood won’t change, you’ll continue moving through your day as you were before, and you’ll feel, well, as normal as a “new normal” can feel.

To get there, you must make your healthy trigger response natural and automatic. That means building a habit.

Here are some best practices to help build a habit:

1. Take a Bite-Sized Approach: Take the process of combatting a trigger and divide it into smaller pieces. Then focus on just one part. For example, when a trigger happens, just focus on the moment when it happens and work on not reacting and giving yourself a moment to collect yourself.

2. Attach a Habit to a Routine: It’s easier to build a habit when you’re doing so in combination with something that already feels normal and natural. For example, practice a grounding technique while brushing your teeth.

3. Treat Yourself: Did you react to a trigger positively? Find a way to celebrate it. (For me, it’s a Dairy Queen Blizzard.)

4. Give Yourself Grace: You’re not going to ace this from the get-go. There will be many times where the trigger wins and you react in a hurtful way. That doesn’t mean, though, that you’re back to square one. It means you’re on a healing journey. There will be ups and downs—and plateaus, too.

Tracking your progress can help you maintain improvement. Journal your trigger experiences. What did you do well? Where could you have improved? What will you do differently when your next trigger occurs?

Note: You might have heard a habit takes 30 days to build. That’s not true. Habit completion varies as much as we do as trauma survivors. Don’t get hung up on a number. You’ll get there when you get there.