ANCHORS
Simply put, an anchor is a PAST EXPERIENCE that has an emotional charge attached to it.
An anchor can be positive (have a positive emotional charge attached to it)
or negative (have a negative emotional charge attached).
When it comes to trauma, we are dealing with negative anchors, which have survival fears attached to them.
When an overwhelming distressing event happens, and the trauma (our reaction to it) is not resolved,
the experience becomes an anchor for the fear and other reactions we had at the time,
holding it all in place in our body, nervous system, and subconscious mind.
REGRESSION
When triggered, part of us regresses back to the age we were when the anchor (original experience) occurred.
We then see the current situation through the filter of the past.
If we were a real victim in that past experience, we will see ourselves as a powerless victim in the current situation, even if we aren't really.
If we were a child when the past experience happened, we will feel and think in a child-like way about the current situation.
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
It was helpful for me to learn a little about child development, so I can better understand my regressed state when I am triggered.
If the anchor occurred during childhood, I can often observe child-like feelings and thoughts in myself.
That is a big tip-off that I am triggered, and it helps me resist fully buying into my thoughts.
- Powerless
Children are fairly powerless, helpless and dependent.
Triggered adults often collapse into a puddle of powerlessness. - Unmanageable
Adult Problems feel unmanageable to children because they are not equipped to handle them.
A common symptom of being triggered is feeling overwhelmed by our adult problems. - Incapable
Children often need someone else to help them and do things for them. Their size, physical strangth, skills, and knowledge are limited.
Triggered adults often feel incapable or incompetent, even when they are not. - Limited Choices/Options/Resources (or none at all)
Children have limited choices, options and access to resources, including people.
They are dependent on whomever is in their immediate environment, because of their limited ability to travel.
When triggered, I often feel helpless, like I have no choices or very limited options, and that there is only one person, who can meet my need. - Always/Never Thinking (especially when it comes to needs)
When children have an unmet need, they think, This need will never get met! Its always going to be this way!
Triggered adults often create a negative prediction of the future, in which their needs will not get met. - Egocentricity
Very young children are egocentric. They cannot see a perspective outside of their own. At that age, everything that happens around us is happening to us, for us, or because of us (TUFUBU). We are the center of the world, and, cognitively, we cannot see otherwise. When harm is inflicted upon us, we cannot help but think it is because of us. However, it was never about us. Almost nothing done to us is ever about us. When we age out of that limited perspective, we can de-personalize what happens to us.
When we are triggered, we revert to this egocentric thinking and take things personally. - Need for Approval
Lack of approval, acceptance or love is a real threat to an infant or child's survival because they are so dependent upon others. They need others to love, accept and approve of them.
As adults, of course, we are not as dependent on others for our survival. We can fend for ourseles now, so we don't need everyone around us to love, or even like, us. We don't need their approval and acceptance. - No Words / Unable to Speak
Finding it difficult to speak or find words to describe what happened or what we are feeling could be an indication of preverbal trauma.
LIMBIC IMPRINTS
Memories are used by the hippocampus (a structure in the brain) to imprint emotional and physical experiences into the brain.
The amygdala controls emotional regulation and responses to expereinces.
Survival fears get imprinted on the amygdala, controlling our emotinal responses to everyday life.
When imprinted with trauma in the womb, at birth or in infancy,
we come to view trauma as a normal part of life and look for it everywhere.
Acknowledging this can be liberating.
OTHER IMPRINTS
Something else that is good to know, is that our anchors can also be the emotions, beliefs, and experiences belonging to other people
that we picked up or inherited.
- Children's brains are like sponges, soaking up everything in their environment, including beliefs, to maximize learning about the world.
For the first 6 years of life, the brains of children are are operating primarily in the theta wave realm, making them open to suggestion (like someone in a state of hypnosis.) - Children are emotional beings, very sensitive to the emotional states of those around them.
For the first 7 years, children experience the emotions of other people in their environment as if they are their own. The part of the brain that is responsible for separating our emotions from the emotions of others is not fully developed until around age 7.
Many adults are still walking around carrying the emotional baggage of the people in their childhood environment. And many of our subconscious reactive patterns were established during the first 7 years of our lives.
This emotional enmeshment is even occurring in the womb.
The emotional state of the mother and those around her, are felt by the unborn child in the womb.
The emotional state of all those present before, during and after our birth can also leave a deep imprint on us. - Stored reactions to traumatic experiences can be passed down to us through our DNA.
- Collective or Cultural trauma can affect us whether we directly experienced it or not.