I Am Not Your Trigger

I feel the need to call attention to a pattern of destructive behavior that I feel needs to stop immediately. Like all destructive behavior, the only people we ultimately hurt with it is our ourselves. The one I want to talk about is labeling other individuals and their life paths as “triggering.”

Before I can fully address that, I feel I need to discuss a different but related damaging pattern in the church, that I think is at the root of this other problem. I call this pattern of behavior FUBAR, because it is a messing up of the Gospel in a way that makes the Gospel virtually impossible to recognize. Effed up beyond all recognition. And that pattern is when we tell people that there are a bunch of rules that they need to follow, and if they don’t, they are damned. Then we hold up as examples people that we think are following the rules the way we think they need to be followed. And we shame people for not living up to that standard. That is not the Gospel. That is a perversion of the Gospel. That is a distortion of the Gospel that makes it virtually impossible to recognize the Gospel for what it is. The Gospel is, in case we need to name what it actually is, an invitation into a relationship with God, where the only rule is to love him, love others, and love ourselves.

When we start to preach the FUBAR gospel, it creates hierarchies. It inculcates feelings of deep, fatal unworthiness. That’s actually what the gospel is supposed to free us from. But that’s what the FUBAR gospel does. It traumatizes us, and it makes us vulnerable. The FUBAR gospel enlists our own hearts and our own minds against us, making us our own worst haters and critics. This is not the Gospel. Most of the trauma (the the triggers related to that trauma) I’ve observed in the LGBT Mormon community are a result of this very anti-Gospel, antithetical-to-the-Gospel type of behavior that masquerades as the Gospel. Anybody calling themselves a disciple of Christ ought to be on the watch for this and name it and exorcize it the moment we see it.

OK, so let’s talk about triggers. I have triggers. I’m pretty sure everybody has triggers. The important thing about triggers is owning them. My triggers are inside of me. They belong to me. I might be triggered by something that somebody else says or does, or even by some aspect or characteristic of somebody else. (The color of their hair? The timber of their voice? I was once told by somebody that I triggered him because I looked like his ex-boyfriend. OK.) I might be triggered by these things, but these things are not my trigger. My trigger is inside me. It is my own. And I do not ultimately help myself by externalizing it, by making my stuff somebody else’s, by blaming somebody else for the fact that I am triggered. And if something that you say or do or are causes me to be triggered, it’s not up to you to be less of who you are. It’s up to me to do the soul work to figure out what is bothering me and why.

I would never deliberately try to trigger somebody else. That’s just mean. That’s bully behavior. And we certainly see a lot of that. Especially on the Internet. But I want to say that situations that trigger me are actually some of the most important learning situations in my life. They become learning situations when I do the soul work that the triggering prompts me to do.

Soul work is just that. It is work. Work is hard. And sometimes we’re tired. We are too tired to do the work. That is OK. If we’re being triggered by a particular situation or person, it’s OK to pull back a little bit. There’s no shame in it. But be aware that if you are feeling triggered by a person, just because of who they are, or how they are, that is not their fault. It’s OK to call somebody on bullying behavior. That’s one thing. But but it’s not OK to label another person triggering.

OK, so back to our individual paths in life. One of the things that I love about being a Latter-day Saint is that I chose to be one. I am excommunicated, so I don’t get any brownie points for studying the scriptures, praying, for living the Word of Wisdom, for going to church on Sunday. I do all those things not so I can keep a temple recommend, not so I can please my husband or our son (who I think would find it an enormous relief if I would just let go of this Mormonism thing). I do these things for the connection I feel with God and with the Spirit as I do them. I embrace Mormonism because the doctrine and the teaching help me to understand my world a lot better. They help me to put the adversity I experience, including the adversity of homophobia, in perspective. Mormonism teaches me that I am made of the same stuff as God, and that there is a glorious future awaiting me, and all that is made possible by the struggles and the challenges and even the suffering that I experience in this life. My religion makes me happy. It makes me whole. And it roots me in a community! A community which is blessedly imperfect! A community that occasionally wounds me, and even triggers me! A community that allows me ample opportunities to do the soul work that allows my God potential to shine through.

There’s nothing about my path as a gay Mormon that I feel ashamed of, or that I see any reason to hide under a bushel. And if I am not going to be in the closet about being a gay man and loving another amazing, beautiful man who has been my life partner through the twenty-five best years of my life, I sure as HELL am not going to go into the closet about being a Mormon. I sure as hell am not going into the closet about claiming any aspect of my faith as part of me and as part of my journey.

I am not your trigger, and I am not your role model either. Don’t take my path as a sign that anything you are doing is inadequate or wrong. That's the FUBAR gospel. Just because I go to church doesn’t mean you should be going to church. The only "should" in your life is what you are doing right now, which for the majority who are reading this who are LGBT, is probably not going to church. Unless you decide differently! And that’s the whole point. It needs to come from within you, whatever you do. If there’s any aspect of me that you want to take as a role model, Let it be that. Not that I’m going to church! But that I’ve come to where I am today, to a place of profound peace and happiness, because I listened to my heart. Because I did what I knew I needed to do. I left the church for 19 years, and I did that because that was what was in my heart to do. And when I came back, it wasn’t because I had some nagging sense that I’d been neglecting some duty for 19 years. It’s because I knew that that was the right thing for me to do here and now.

In terms of our relationship with the church, in terms of our decisions about whether or how to be related to a significant other, you and I might be completely opposite of each other. But we could both equally be role models in our authenticity. Parenthetically, that’s what I think is admirable, or praiseworthy, about Josh Weed. Not that he was in a mixed orientation marriage. Not that he’s now chosen to end his marriage. Neither of those things did I ever see as praiseworthy in and of themselves. But that he listens carefully to his heart, and he’s willing to change course when that’s where his heart leads, in that way, I want to be just like Josh when I grow up.

Speaking of Josh, I keep hearing people say things like, “I don’t care what decisions he makes for his personal life, but he should just shut up about it. He shouldn’t put himself out there as a role model.” I’ve heard the same thing said about Tom Christofferson, or Ty Mansfield, by folks who’ve left the church, and I’ve heard it ad nauseum on the church side about folks who have left the church. “They leave the church, but they can’t leave it alone! And if they want to leave the church, why don’t they just leave and keep it to themselves?” That’s bullying behavior. On both sides, that’s bullying and that’s shaming. That’s telling people that they need to go into the closet about some aspect of themselves. They can’t share their path or their journey with us.

Well, I reject that. I’m here to say that they can and should. I want to hear their stories, even (maybe especially) the ones that trigger me. Our stories are sacred! Our stories are our holy text, they are our scripture! There’s no reason why we should be ashamed of our stories, and there’s no reason why we should have to hide them under a bushel. There’s no reason why we should protect others from our lives, from who we are. Let’s protect that which is sacred within us! Let’s protect and hold sacred our journey, and protect and hold sacred our triggers as well! That’s part of the path! Let’s do the soul work that we need to do when we are able, and rest when we need to.

And if we can find it in our hearts to do this, to be authentic, to be fully who we are, without holding any of it back, and embrace others and support others in doing the same, no matter how different their individual choices and lives may look from ours, we will find the deepest and best possible kind of holy unity, happiness and peace it is possible to find.

And at some point, we'll stop being triggered... We'll just be whole and happy and well learned in the divine intricacies of this sacred journey of life.