Triggers Are Guides

One year ago today, I made this post on Facebook:

When I saw it come up in Facebook memories, these were my thoughts:

"I hold true to that. And, sadly, I also acknowledge that when a society requires emotional avoidance and suppression to function, feelings become a threat. It’s easier to drink, drug, gamble, shop, eat, play video games, watch tv, fuck, and numb out, than it is to feel. Workaholics do the best, even though their avoidance style still harms their lives and relationships.

This is why people like me—the poets, the artists, the emotionally intense—are problematic. We make people feel. When emotional avoidance is the ideal, anything that spurs on unexpected emotion is not. Feelings—triggers—become a danger that must be avoided at all costs, lest we open a floodgate that none of us are prepared for.

Unfortunately, this emotional minefield is not sustainable. It will inevitably blow because numbing the pain doesn’t actually make it go away. It’s still brewing beneath the surface of the faces we encounter each and every single day.

I know people like to roll their eyes at me as if feelings are some flimsy thing, but really, how many people are currently incarcerated because they lacked control over their anger, lust, or envy?

As those of us in recovery know: The way out is through. We have to feel what we genuinely feel and then we must learn how to not act from that space. That’s not the same thing as emotional avoidance or suppression. We cannot intellectualize emotional healing.

And no, I’m not perfect at it. Far from it… I am a highly emotional being in a world that sees feelings as problematic. I’ve never been able to fit into the system because of that—I can’t compartmentalize. I wear my heart on my sleeve. And, I do see a breaking point. Our current way of living is not sustainable. When those floodgates open, and they will, we as a society are not remotely prepared for how to navigate that. This is why I believe that those in the recovery communities today will be amongst the future leaders of our planet. As I said in this post from 2025:

“When we numb the pain, we also numb the pleasure. Our feelings and emotional triggers are guides. The way out is through feeling what we’ve tried so hard to run from.”

~Amy Frank