Oh, So That Is What A Trigger Is

[wlotus]

Last night I watched "The Ten Commandments", an old favorite I used to love to watch every year with my mother when I was growing up. It is the first time I watched the movie since I renounced fundamentalist Christianity. To my surprise, the movie (specifically the narration which was directly from the Old Testament) triggered all of my old fears and shame and sense of not being good enough, a side effect of spending so much of my life worshipping and trying to please a punitive, all-male God. Also to my surprise, I had one of my (now rare) recurring dreams of being unable to accomplish a necessary goal. Every time I took one step towards the goal, I remembered five more steps I had forgotten, and time was quickly running out. I woke up after nine hours of sleep feeling mentally exhausted.

This is the first time I made the connection between my religious background and those draining, frustrating dreams.