On-Screen Depiction of A Major Trigger

...and the character's managing of it.

This movie (Vigilante with Olivia Wilde) has a scene where the main character is almost completely taken over during an extreme trauma moment. Physically, mentally and probably spiritually, she loses almost all control and awareness of reality and is on the precipice of ... well, probably madness... certainly despair.

…then she is able to bring herself back.

It's the only onscreen place I've ever seen that depicts this visually. Super accurately, as well.

[What I'm talking about and define as a trigger is: a moment when her body, mind and spirit were swept back into a past experience of violence, lack of control and fear. She was re-living (whether she realized it or not) a moment from the past during which she was harmed and couldn't protect herself.]

She scrambles for her coping tool, to hold it in her hands and to touch it with her fingers -- a physical object in this case, a representation of love -- that helps her come back to the present. Everything that it signifies and it's tactile properties calm her and allow her to gain access to her "core" -- an internal reality of Presence and of safety.

At least partially, for the moment she is able to regain enough stability to move forward. The whole movie examines her buried fight response finally coming to the surface... and then those impulses perhaps not being deployed in the most constructive or healing way. But I actually found the movie extremely satisfying (remembering that it's a movie) in terms of — yes, a revenge fantasy. But I really would put it more accurately as victims being able to finally deploy justice (in some ways).

Anyway, I've been there with these kinds of triggers. And this was what it was like.

There might be other movies where this kind of moment is portrayed.

I don't watch horror. Perhaps that occurs in those films. But I do notice more and more movies and TV shows lately, with way more awareness of what everything related to trauma looks like for people. Here are two others — below first, the trailer for the Vigilante film.

In the pleasurably funny sitcom Unprisoned, the main character’s inner child is portrayed literally by a real kid actor. Other characters in the show deal with past trauma and navigate healing, within themselves and in their relationships. I enjoyed it from start to finish.

In the crime drama Will Trent, two of the detectives grew up in foster care together. Amidst the whodunit plots of each episode, they are facing their past harms and walking through attempts at healing, amidst living life and doing their jobs. There are some really good funny parts in this one also. I’m looking forward to the next season.

I’m glad for the growing awareness in our society about the underlying reasons we do what we do as people. Our increasing choices to alter by healing (and integration) our “knee jerk” reactions of fight, flight, freeze or flock, offer encouragement because of their potential to cause us to become more settled in our interactions with one another.

Films and television can help.

“Films can heal! Not the world, of course, but our vision of it, and that's already enough.” -Wim Wenders