What triggers intense emotional pain for you?

A real life Shinji wrote:People like ourselves tend to breakdown and fall to our lowest due to "triggers". So what triggers pain for you? Watching normal people, certain movies, songs, memories ect?

Sometimes a tv show or movie will affect me more than i can handle. Especially if there is a character that reminds me of someone i am attracted to in real life. I will become upset because it triggers me to think of how much i am lonely and will never be good enough for someone to want me.

A lot of my triggers seem to be based around seeing others (real or in tv/books) in a relationship that i desire for myself. It just solidifies the fact that i will never have the one thing i desire more than anything else.

Also, sometimes a line in a book or song can articulate something that i feel so well it just brings me to tears. I completely break down and i become flooded and overwhelmed by the emotions which have been supressed for so long. And sometimes that will in turn trigger other memories (of past mistakes or awful events, etc.) and it causes a snowball effect. Then, all i can see and feel is dark and sad for weeks. And then i berate myself for being so weak and pathetic by letting something as simple as a tv show or song make me break down.

When i get in these states it is very hard to see how i can ever manage to go on again the same as i did before. Each time it is as if i will never be the same again. Something has snapped in me and i can never go back to how it was before.

I try to keep myself numb just so i can get on with daily life, but everytime i have a trigger, it changes me and it gets harder and harder to keep up the act.

I can't tell you how many movies or shows or songs i have to avoid because of past instances of these emotional episodes.

A real life Shinji wrote:There are many things which trigger me off also. Although I had some happiness during my mid twenties, ruined by some Satanic and evil BPD psycho, I had no teenage years whatsoever. I was fat and did'nt socialise. When I lost the weight I was COMPLETELY socially ignorant and naive. So I avoid teen movies like the plague.
Yeah memories really trigger me also. I just beat myself up thinking..."if only I had done this or that". I also try to numb it with reading, video games and non-trigger movies but thats not a life.
I'm not a robot so eventually I get so tired of meaningless distractions I just become overly emotional,bitter, sad and hopeless.

I hate teen movies - i can't relate to them at all. Just seeing the previews for those kinds of movies make me nauseous. Also, if i watch things which have embarrassing moments for a character - i literally feel their pain. I feel like its happening to me. Its really annoying - i don;t know why i take things like that to heart.

The worst thing is to be with a friend or group of people and be forced to watch something. If i get upset by something i have such a hard time hiding it. I have to make excuses to leave or something just so i don't have to watch it with them. I have a few friends, but all except for one really "know" me. So when i am with them and they want to rent a movie - its is agony on the video store. They always choose things that depress me. It's so awkward.

I always live in the past and think about how i should have done things differently, or shouldn't have done the things that i regret, of which there are many.

I try to find "safe" neutral things to distract myself too. But, we are not living if we spend every day trying to avoid everything. I feel as though i have and still am spending my youth trying to hide from everything. Its like living on eggshells. I have to be so careful not to upset myself.

I plunge myself into work a lot - but my job has no meaning, its hard to be passionate about it.

A real life Shinji wrote:When I was a teenager I read and watched Carrie I never felt so sad in my life. I felt her pain and I was so desperate for her to have a happy ending to. Ironically Carries Mother was very over-protective like my own Mother, although shes not evil just a bad mom. And that evil bitch who messed everything up reminds me of the BPD girl.Lol!

OMG! I identified with Carrie White so much! That book made me so sad in the pit of my stomache for weeks after reading it. Some things just resonate so well for me. I remember in the movie when the mother said "They're all gonna laugh at you" - it just made me ball my eyes out.

And, i must admit, watching Carrie's revenge was such sweet justice - i really wished i had her powers for so long. (I saw the movie first, when i was fairly young).

Watching two people who are really in love with each other. Real life is better than the movies if you can find such a couple to observe (but movies are good too, cried most of the way through "Ghost").
I think then I feel everything at once, sad, longing, self pity, self loathing, frustration, I like watching them but it hurts.

I remember seeing all the anouncments in the newspaper of people I knew in hs getting married. It also told where they were working. And there I was years after graduating school, an unemployed virgin.

Then after college I got the alumni anouncements that tell how people are moving up in the world, getting PhDs, having kids. And there I was, an unemployed virgin.

Just going to a movie and seeing a couple. Happy bleeping people make me puke!

The movies like Carrie don't bother me too much. They're just movies. Maybe when I was younger they did.

Parador wrote:Then after college I got the alumni anouncements that tell how people are moving up in the world, getting PhDs, having kids. And there I was, an unemployed virgin.

Just going to a movie and seeing a couple. Happy bleeping people make me puke!

I feel sad when i see people in my age range who seem to have their life together. All of my friends are in relationships and I am the only one who has never had a boyfriend. Its painful to see life pass you by.

But, i never want to be someone who is bitter and jealous of other peoples happiness. I just dont want to be that person. Granted, i will admit that i am envious at times. But i only want what they have, i dont want them to be sad and alone like me.

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Memories are my trigger. Thinking back to how I should have done everything better. Usually its the memories of bad moments which I recall so well. Also just simple mistakes I made. Sometimes the happy times I took for granted... yeah just memories.

Jesus, everything jessica's hope said.

Couples, and seeing other peoples really active facebook updates where there they travel around every week, and take happy pictures and you know, live life.

I look at other people's facebook pictures when I'm feeling especially masochistic. People I was friends with, people who I knew, people I could have or wished I could have been friends with. They all have such glamorous lives with a million friends accumulated a they travel, looking artistic even when they're drunk, in foreign countries or in ivy league colleges, looking beautiful and wearing fashionable bohemian clothes. They look like so much fun to be friends with. And most of them are ###$ up, just not in the way that I'm ###$ up.