Daily Gratitude: This definition comes from the PsychCentral website: “In psychology, a ‘trigger’ is a stimulus that causes a painful memory to resurface. A trigger can be any sensory reminder of the traumatic event: a sound, sight, smell, physical sensation, or even a time of day or season.” The key word there as it applies to this quote is “reminder” since that refers to something in the past. It often takes intense work to decrease the intensity of a response to a trigger but if you can just keep in the front of your mind the thought that you are being sucked into the past, it might help. Continue to reinforce (in your non-triggered moments) that this is the present and the trigger just shoots your thoughts into the past but you are still in the present. Maybe that can help keep your feet on the ground and make your “stay” in the past shorter and shorter. Think of it as fishing. Although the fishing hook has been tossed way out there, into the past, you are still standing on the shore (the present) and you have the power to reel your memory in and bring it back to the present. Sometimes you’ve hooked a whale and that experience will be more intense and take longer to reel in. Other times you will have hooked a small minnow that you can pull in easily and quickly. The thing about the whale, though, is that the more you practice reeling it in, the stronger and more adept you get at it and it will become easier. What happens to many, though, is that they just fling themselves into the ocean (or whatever body of water) along with the hook. They no longer have their feet on the ground – they are no longer in the present. They have tossed their entire being in the water. They’ve lost their ability to bring things (memories) back to the present to relieve themselves of that pressure. If the fishing concept doesn’t work for you, find some other analogy (or simile or whatever the right descriptor is) that contains something to keep you grounded so you’re no longer floundering around in the past.