It Wasnt Just A Trigger It Was A Violation
June 23, 2025
That moment in class — when my tutor brought up something I’d shared six months earlier, in front of a room full of people —
that might have been the most triggered I’ve been in years.
It wasn’t just unexpected.
It wasn’t just inappropriate.
It was violating.
I didn’t ask for feedback.
I wasn’t struggling with the assignment.
And I had made it explicitly clear the week before that I didn’t want to discuss personal matters in front of the group.
But she brought it up anyway.
No warning.
No check-in.
Just public exposure — dressed up as help.
In that moment, something deep stirred in me.
It wasn’t just a childhood wound.
And it wasn’t just adult anger.
It was both — fused together.
The part of me that remembered what it was like to be shamed publicly, not protected, exposed without defence.
And the part of me that knew what she was doing was out of line — right now, in the present.
I stayed composed.
I set a soft boundary:
“I’d rather not talk about this here.”
She pushed again.
And then, when I still didn’t react the way she expected, she said:
“That’s growth, because before you would have reacted.”
No.
That wasn’t growth.
That was me holding a line you should never have crossed.
You don’t get to provoke someone, ignore their clearly expressed boundaries, drag their vulnerability into the light without consent —
and then claim credit for their self-control.
That’s not a compliment.
That’s gaslighting.
That’s manipulation.
That’s rewriting the power dynamic to make yourself the wise guide — while quietly stripping away someone’s dignity.
What hurt more was that I trusted her.
We had rapport.
She wasn’t a stranger.
And that made it worse — because it meant I believed she’d respect me.
But instead, she put me in a situation where any response would make me look unstable.
And yet again —
I didn’t react.
I didn’t explode.
I didn’t collapse.
I regulated.
And I should be proud of that — not just because of my past, but because of how clean my anger was.
I didn’t suppress it.
I didn’t let it hijack me.
I held it.
Carl Jung might say:
“Your anger was the Self rising up to defend the sacred space within you.”
Carl Rogers might say:
“You were congruent in the face of incongruence. That’s maturity.”
And I agree with both of them.
I’ve since realised:
I still wanted to believe she was on my side.
That’s the hardest part.
To admit that someone you trusted wasn’t looking out for you.
That they saw your past not as strength, but as something to be tested — poked, prodded, provoked — just to see if you’d snap.
I didn’t snap.
I didn’t shut down.
I stood my ground.
And no one gets to rewrite that.
Reflective question:
Have you ever called something a “trigger” — when actually, it was someone crossing a line they never should have touched?