This podcast episode delves into the complex topic of triggers experienced by those in the Babylost community. Siobhan and David explore various triggers—sights, sounds, smells, and memories—that can unexpectedly evoke intense emotional responses related to their loss. They discuss the nature of these triggers, how they manifest physically and emotionally, and the coping mechanisms they have developed over time. Additionally, the couple engages in a thoughtful conversation about the pros and cons of trigger warnings, emphasizing the importance of being able to express and process grief without fear of discomfort. Ultimately, they encourage listeners to share their own experiences and strategies for navigating the challenges of living with loss.

Takeaways:

• Triggers can be unexpected and can evoke intense emotional responses in those who have experienced baby loss.
• Understanding and identifying triggers is crucial for managing emotional responses and processing grief effectively.
• Using music and scents intentionally can help individuals connect with lost loved ones and process their emotions.
• The conversation around trigger warnings and content warnings highlights the need for sensitivity in discussions about grief.
• It's important to recognize that feeling triggered is a normal part of the grieving process after a significant loss.
• Developing strategies for grounding and calming oneself can aid in coping with triggers when they arise.

Welcome to life after baby Loss, a podcast brought to you by Grace in action.

I'm Siobhan, Grace's mum, and together with David, Grace's dad, we'll be exploring life after loss.

Hello.

Welcome to life after Babyloster Grace in action podcast with me, David and Siobhan.

My wife still is still here.

Long suffering.

Okay, enough of that today.

Yeah, what are we talking about today, David?

Don't trigger me.

Don't trigger you.

See what I did there?

Yeah, yeah, today.

And you're not talking about only fools and horses, are you?

Love triggered?

There'll be people listening who are too young to understand that reference.

And I'm gonna cry silently now.

Yeah, we're talking about triggers today because I think in the Babylost community, once you have a child that has died, things are gonna set you off.

And those things are called triggers.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a word that's been thrown around quite a lot in the last, I think, five or six or seven years.

And a lot of people don't actually fully understand what they are and what it means.

For instance, it's a sight or a sound or a smell or sometimes a piece of person.

Sometimes it's a piece of music.

It could be the feel of something as well.

Anything.

Anything that takes you in the moment, that takes you out of the moment and out of where you are at that present moment and pulls you right back to another moment, a traumatic moment.

Does it pull you back in terms of memory and flashback or sometimes.

What am I saying?

I'm saying do you get the sort of emotional response, the physical response, and sometimes you don't flash back to the memory.

So sometimes you can go, what's happening to me, do you reckon?

Yes, I think sometimes you don't associate.

It consciously with what you've been through.

Yes, exactly.

So you can.

You can be.

The emotional response can be triggered and you're not quite sure what it's related to.

I think sometimes it depends on the quality of the trauma, if that makes sense.

Quality, perhaps isn't the best word, but something as huge as your baby dying then is a pretty obvious trigger.

That event.

Sorry, that event is not the trigger.

Let me just be very clear.

But it's a pretty obvious trauma, is what I mean, which can easily be triggered by many, many, many things.

I just got a website up here and it's called betterup.com.

and one of the things they said, when they're defining what a trigger is, they said something which I thought was really interesting.

It says a trigger is a person placed thing or situation that elicits an intense or unexpected emotional response.

And the thing that stood out to me and that was unexpected.

And I'm like, maybe the response, you didn't see it coming, but when you sit here and talk about it, it's not unexpected.

No.

The moment you enter into a place like this, where trauma is, it's part.

Of your life, part of your daily.

Life, it is absolutely normal, it is absolutely standard that things are going to trigger you as you go around your daily life.

It's not unexpected.

I remember having a conversation about the term post traumatic stress disorder, and I was like, well, should we just call it pts rather than PTSD?

Cause it's not a disorder.

It's normal.

It's standard.

It's the way your body is normally going to react to post traumatic major trauma.

Yeah.

And I was thinking, it's not a disorder.

That's what happens.

It's actually.

It's to be expected.

Yes.

It's actually your human condition responding and your brain processing and your body still reacting.

I think the challenge here, and the real issue is how distressing that can be.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, especially if you're somewhere, like, in a professional capacity or somewhere where you don't have any support around you, somewhere random, you know, you don't have someone you can lean on or someone you can say, oh, my God, I've just had, you know, all these memories come flooding back because I do get quite specific memories.

Not always, but often it will be something very specific for me that comes with the intense emotion that can be really hard to deal with that the.

First person I met who I was like, I don't know how you don't live.

Triggered every moment is Steph Wilde of beyond be the charity beyond be an amazing woman who was a midwife.

And I'm like, how do you, as a midwife, lose a child and then go back to helping birth babies?

I'm like, I can't imagine.

I mean, that's probably one of the most obvious triggers that there can be, you know, people giving birth.

But actually, let's circle around a bit.

What does being triggered look like, feel like to us, to you?

What form does it take?

And it's probably many, isn't it?

Yeah.

Usually it stops me in my tracks to start with.

That's very common, sort of a freeze response, and then usually quite quickly following that is tearfulness, which, of course, is your body's natural way of releasing stress chemicals through your tears.

So I'm like, great.

My body's doing what it needs to do, and then what might happen after that really depends on where I am and maybe what state of mind or health or emotional state I was in before I got triggered.

Do you find where you are in your cycle affects that as well?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Much more likely to happen in my autumn.

You can explain what you mean.

Oh, sorry.

My pre.

Those, you know, will know in the period leading up to my period in my premenstrual phase.

You call it your autumn.

My autumn, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And how tired I am or, you know, the other things going on in my life, just generally where I am.

What about you?

I think I can best describe it as an over.

Oh, here we go.

As an overwhelming chasm of sadness opening up around my heart.

Oh, you poet.

Yeah, right.

I didn't even think of that beforehand.

So, like, an earthquake?

No, no.

It's like you didn't know it was coming, and suddenly the chasms opened.

It's like I'm standing, and I turn around, and all I can see is a big black hole.

That's.

And if you put that image into a feeling, that's what it feels.

And it hits you kind of very physically in.

In your stomach, actually.

Almost.

Almost like that bit on a roller coaster, just when you got to the top.

And it goes.

And it goes down.

Yeah.

And.

But it's made of sadness.

It's deep, deep sadness.

And it feels maybe like there's a weight on your chest and sometimes just needs to take a deep breath to be able to function in those moments.

That's really interesting, because what you're describing and how you're describing it actually is.

Part of the problem of dealing with these things is some of the depth of emotion that we're processing when our babies die is so huge.

Like, we don't have all the abilities to do that immediately.

You know, even people who have experienced other trauma before or done some kind of, like, let's say, conscious processing of things, like any kind of therapy or that kind of thing, or studied psychology or.

I don't know.

You know, even with that experience, like, nothing can really prepare you for dealing with it.

And I think that in itself is part of the challenge, because the more we process these things consciously, I think the less triggering things are in general.

Well, I mean, we've had ten years of processing.

Yeah.

And I know my ability to function feeling like that is, you know, I can do that much easily.

Yeah, absolutely.

I realized, you know, and there will be times where I still will just cry.

I'll have tears come to my eyes.

If this was five years ago, six years ago, it might be deep sobbing.

Do you know what I mean?

Just.

And I just.

Yeah, there would just be moments where it would just.

I could get really sad and it would be what it was.

And other days I'd get that real sadness and just wave of grief hitting me in the face, which demands a bigger response.

But I think what we're talking about is that's what happens as a result of being triggered.

But for me, what's interesting is what triggers me.

Right?

Yes.

What does trigger me?

So I've got some stock ones.

Top of the charts.

Current favorite is putting my children to bed.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, damn.

You're doing that on a regular basis?

Well, pretty much every day at the moment, yeah.

And this comes back to, you know, this is, you know, direct correlation to when Grace was born and I dressed her and put her in a cold cot and then had to come back and tend to you.

So it was the fact that I put her in a bed, essentially a bed, and turned my back and walked away.

Now every time I take the kids to bed, at some point I have to turn my back and walk away and bang, I'm back there.

The intensity of that isn't as much as it was a few years ago, but it's still there on a daily basis.

And I'm like, I can't collapse every day, or I wouldn't be able to, you know, live.

I wouldn't be able to be good for my kids, for you, for myself.

So, you know, you deal with that.

But I'm not ignoring it.

Anything else?

Lots of tv and seeing other people grieve or experience seeing other people grieve, seeing depictions of people losing people and how raw.

So I've been watching.

Tom, you're going to finish that sentence.

Watching other people being.

Watching other people grieve.

So this is my point.

It's my point.

Going somewhere?

I get up every morning with my eldest daughter at six, and we watch Buffy the vampire slayer together.

And there's an episode in which someone very close to the inner circle in that show dies, and the next show is all about watching grief reactions.

Now, I watched this and found it really sad and really emotional, really poignant and touching years and years and years ago, and I was watching it with my daughter, and the tears just flowed and flowed and flowed.

And it hit me so hard because I was.

Because before, I could watch that and feel sad for the people there.

And now I was like, these actors are brilliant because I recognize that look on their faces and I recognize what exists behind the look on their faces and that just, you know, I could see grief and empathize with it, but now I'm on another.

Another level.

I mean, there are some programs that we.

We've just turned off, haven't we?

It's been too much, and we've like, nope.

If this is.

This is where this is going, we can't.

We can't do it at all.

But it could be.

It could be something as simple as a certain type of sunshine, which reminds me of the sun shining the day we left the hospital.

Do you mean it's.

I can't.

I can't account for what's going to trigger me.

Yeah, that's.

Well, and that's actually the point, isn't it?

Maybe it's the response.

It's not the response that's unexpected, because the response makes total sense.

But you weren't expecting it in that moment.

It's the thing, whatever it is.

Yeah.

Music's quite a big one for me, which I guess makes a lot of sense.

I'm a singer, but I mean, not even just as a singer, you know, somebody who enjoys music.

Certain things will definitely just transport me to a moment of intense emotion that then needs to be released somehow.

I was thinking about it.

It's been in my mind a while.

The idea of triggers.

I was thinking about it in a slightly different way as well.

One of the things that I do is I purposefully trigger myself.

What?

What you say?

So I guess by the definition that we just read out a few minutes ago, maybe it's not technically a trigger because it's not unexpected, but I use some of those things, like music or smell is a big one for me, and I use them on purpose.

So I have still some bottles of the fabric conditioner that I washed all of Grace's clothes in before she was born.

Very distinctive smell, and I've never used it since.

And thankfully it still exists.

And I, you know, bought a couple of bottles and I've got them in the cupboard.

And usually around her anniversary, I wash her bunny in her blanket, give them their, like, annual wash, and reuse that fabric conditioner.

So then when I want to think about her, you know, if I am feeling sad, then I can cuddle them and smell them.

And it takes me right back there to that moment.

It's a way, almost, of staying connected with her.

It is triggering, but it's also quite affirming.

Yeah, well, I often find that I need that.

Sometimes I need some kind of reminder that she existed and she was.

And she actually lived, albeit just the womb life.

And those things do that.

They do.

They do.

And it's affirming, regardless of how sad it makes you.

Yeah.

And I've also.

We've got her playlist.

I've got her playlist on my phone.

A small number of.

She didn't actually choose that.

Oh, no, sorry.

Yes.

Very good.

No, she didn't choose them.

No, the songs that we chose, that, we played one of them at her funeral.

David sang one of them to her when she was born.

There's another one that mentions one of her names, that kind of thing.

So.

Yeah, I put that on on purpose.

Sometimes, though, those songs, I have heard them at random somewhere and it has kind of, wow.

Caught me off guard.

I'm not afraid of my triggers.

No.

And I'm not afraid if I get triggered in a way, I can't quite control it.

And people see that I'm alright with that, too.

I've got to live with this.

How do you deal with it then?

What do you do in that moment?

I, again, do you remember we were talking about.

Well, in the podcast episode, how many kids have you got?

It depends what mood you're in and what you all want to deal with.

And it's the same way, you know, sometimes I'll be in a place where actually, I don't want to deal with this right now.

So I'm just gonna, I don't know, remove myself or just fake it and carry on.

And sometimes I'll let that sadness show quite viscerally on my face.

You know, I remember I was rehearsing for Nye at the National Theatre, and it was coming up to grace anniversary.

And I didn't tell anyone, but it was on my face.

There'd be things that would happen all day.

A set was basically a hospital wards, but there were things that would happen and I would let it show on my face.

And sometimes people go, you're right.

And I'd say, daughter's anniversary.

And they go, oh, I'm so sorry, man.

And I was happy that they knew.

I was happy that they could see someone who was living with this and knowing that this is just a fact of life for us.

And it's horrific fact of life, but it's not just a fact of life for us.

It's a fact of life for so many people.

And probably half the people, you know, have got something going on that you don't know about and so on and so on.

I'm quite happy to let it show.

I think.

I think what makes it different for me is that sometimes it can really take me out of stuff, but I never find it crippling.

Yes, because that's the hard thing.

Then, actually, if the response is so severe that you sort of don't have a choice, like, I will often end up crying with no control over that.

So I've had to get very, very good at saying, excuse me, and leaving a situation or asking for what I need in that moment, which I find I very difficult.

It's not something I find very easy to do at all.

So I've had to learn how to do that, especially as time has gone on.

In fact, sometimes, you know, there's a little bit of me at the back of my mind that goes, you know, those things.

Yeah.

We didn't include this in the what not to say episode, but this is later down the grief road.

But, you know, you should have got over it by now.

There's a little bit of conditioning there at the back of my mind that says, you know, I shouldn't be having those intense reactions, you know, this far down the line when I had one just a couple of weeks ago, and I have to shut that bit off and say to my own brain, shut up.

That's someone else's voice.

That's not my voice, and I don't have to do that.

These feelings are genuine and valid and I can express them and handle them and I can ask for what I need.

And it doesn't matter if it's happened three months ago or three years ago or whatever.

Yeah, it is a little bit easier to deal with, though.

Now.

I find one of the reasons, though, I think that is, is because in general, I've done a lot of work around processing those feelings.

And also, incidentally, I've done a lot of work around learning how to calm my nervous system, which is actually nothing to do with grace dying.

I've just been doing that anyway for my own health.

And that has helped majorly, because what happens when you're triggered, it is a nervous system response.

Your brain perceives some danger.

Danger wasn't quite the right word, but it's that some kind of sort of a threat or a danger and has a response to it which echoes the response that you had initially.

You're actually responding again to the initial thing, which is why I say it takes you out of the present so the stuff around calming your nervous system is what brings you back to the present.

What is that?

So you sort of have to notice five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can.

What are the other senses here?

Two things you can taste and one thing you can smell or two things you can smell and one thing you can taste.

Something like that.

I'm not sure I ever remember the order.

Right, but we'll put that in the show notes.

So you can find a link.

Yeah, find a link, yeah.

I mean, that's a really, really easy one.

The other one I do is just a bit of concentrating on my breathing.

I do something I call triangle breathing.

Box breathing is another one where you breathe in for four counts and you hold it for four and you breathe out for four and you hold it for four.

And I do a version of that where I breathe in for four, breathe out for four and hold it.

So it's kind of a triangle in my brain rather than a box.

Things like that just really, really brings you back.

Scrunch your toes inside your shoes.

Just ground yourself?

Yeah, basically, physically ground yourself physically.

I often carry a little stone or a pebble in my pocket and I rub that.

Rub my forefinger and my thumb on that.

Do you think I was thinking about the twelve step program.

Oh, yeah.

In that.

So if somebody is struggling with their addiction and they feel like they're going to sort of capitulate to temptation, you've got a whole load of numbers in your phone of brothers and sisters that you can call struggling.

Right now.

I'm like, why don't we do something like that?

And baby loss.

I've been triggered.

I feel like I'm spiraling.

You've got go to numbers of people who get it, who can just go, I'm here, let me help you ground if you can, just like, I don't.

Know that's a good idea.

Set something up like that.

Yeah, because that's one of the challenging things, isn't it?

In that moment, you know, if you're not around people who do understand, or it's not even being around people who don't understand, it's about being surrounded by a bunch of strangers.

It happened to me on the train the other day, and I just sat there crying on the train, and there was a guy sitting opposite me, and he, at some point I looked up and he went, are you all right?

And I went, yeah, thank.

I will.

Yeah, I will be.

Thank you.

And it was great.

It was great.

But that was really hard because I couldn't stop.

I couldn't stop it.

I didn't want to stop it either.

But also, I couldn't also get somewhere private at that moment.

You know, I was on a journey and I had to get somewhere by a particular amount of time, and I.

You just had to just sit there and let it.

Yeah.

Flow.

I'm unashamed of my tears.

They are very quickly.

If we run out of time.

While we're talking about triggers, how do you feel about trigger warnings?

Yeah, I'm not sure about trigger warnings or content warnings.

I think maybe content warnings are helpful if something's going to be particularly long, so you can sort of choose to engage or not.

I think I prefer the term content warning because I think there's.

We're in danger of not expressing ourselves for fear of upsetting other people.

And this is a really delicate one, because I don't want to intentionally upset other people.

But I also need to be able to share the things that I want to share in an appropriate fashion or whatever, and I don't want to miss out other people.

But if you're being triggered by stuff, then there's things that need looking at, there's things that need processing.

It is normal, but it can be distressing.

And if it is too distressing, then you need some help.

The thing is, if it's there, it's going to come out in one way or the other.

And if you're avoiding all triggers, you won't know it's there to be dealt with.

Well, that's my other thought.

Till it creeps up on you, you.

Can'T avoid all triggers.

It's impossible.

I really hate trigger warnings.

And this is my.

You know, it's a personal opinion.

What I said earlier was, the thing is, when I get triggered, it doesn't cripple me.

No.

If it does that to you, then maybe, you know, that's some trigger warning, something you need.

But for me, if I get triggered by the sunshine, you can't do jack about that, can you?

You've got to learn to.

If I get triggered by sights or smells, so if something happens on tv, fine, I'll deal with it, and if I don't like it, I'll walk away.

You know, I'll turn it off.

But you couldn't turn off the fact that my child died.

You couldn't turn off any of that.

So I'm not going to turn this off.

This is life.

I'm living it.

And if it makes you uncomfortable, bloody tough.

Deal with my uncomfortability, because this is my fact of life and for so many others, and it happens.

Walk around your life pretending babies don't die.

Look, I don't know.

And I'm thinking about.

I don't care about making people who haven't been through this uncomfortable.

I really don't.

Maybe that sounds harsh, but this is how I live.

It's our reality, isn't it?

Yes, our reality.

And you can't trigger warn me from my reality, because actually, a lot of the stuff that you seek to shield me from is not the actual stuff that I can deal with Babyloss on tv better than I can deal with that particular shade of sunshine.

Do you know what I mean?

And sometimes I open myself up to that stuff on tv because it allows me to reconnect with that emotion and remember that other people are still going through with it, and it allows me to assess how far I've come and so on.

I've got a big thing about trigger warnings.

Yeah.

For me, it's that fine line around not being silenced for fear of upsetting others.

I think that's really important.

It's really, really important that we are able to express these really traumatic things that we're experiencing and that people in general, I think, could be more careful about what they let into their lives, if you see what I mean.

So I turn things off, I unfollow things.

I curate the information flow coming in in a way that works for me.

And I suppose in some ways, the trigger warnings, that's the point, is so you can curate.

And I think if you're in those very early stages, especially, you know, if things are still feeling particularly raw, or if your reactions to things are huge and devastatingly crippling, then definitely do seek some professional help.

There are some amazing people out there who can help you with these things.

I've had people on social media, I've mentioned that I want to watch this movie, and I've had people message me privately, go, just so you know, listen.

And you know what, I really do.

I don't need that.

But I do appreciate that thought.

You do that for me.

Yeah, you do.

You'll often say, okay, I've watched the first episode of this thing, I think you might like it.

But there's this.

That's because I know you don't like horror movies.

It's not just horror movies, okay.

If anyone wants to come around, chill and watch aliens with me, it'd be great to have someone in the house.

I can watch aliens with them.

So that's another thing altogether.

Let us know how you deal with the things that trigger you.

Let us know how you feel about trigger warnings.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's have that conversation.

And you can join that conversation at any of our social medias, what they called Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Just search grace in action and you can email us@infoaceracyinaction.org dot uk.

So until next time, take care of yourselves.

Peace, love and strengthen.