Triggered

I had a deeply triggering experience at work involving a male coworker that I’d never had any interactions with, and even in the moment, I still didn’t actually interact with this coworker while he interacted with me. The coworker was a young. He was busy at work. I was also busy at work as well, and I was minding my business. I wish he had minded his.

Without any warning whatsoever, this male coworker seemed to respond to me in a way that was harsh in tone. I’d been battling a lingering cough after suffering from the flu. I wasn’t contagious, and even if I was, I was wearing a mask. He could have kept his comments to himself, but he chose to speak. If I’d known him and we’d had conversations before then I might have realized that he didn’t mean me any harm. However, kindness was lacking in his articulation to me. He actually sounded mean and very aggressive.

The male coworker said, “[inaudible] ewww … sounding like you got the corona.” More than what he said, I was taken aback by how he said it. There was an aggressiveness within his tone that made me instantly feel unsafe. I didn’t know how to respond him; I actually felt myself freeze in place. I went mute. Within myself, I tried to determine the seriousness of the situation, but I already felt great alarm. Since I didn’t know him, I was attempting to make sense as to whether he meant to sound as harsh in tone as he did to me.

Because my sense of responding was frozen in the moment, I kept working and moving along. If I thought that was the end of the interaction, it was not. The coworker followed me and then said, “watch out or you’re gonna get hit”. I was side-eyeing his movements enough to where I knew I wasn’t really in his pathway. Neither did I believe there was a reason for him to follow me. Something inside of me told me not to respond or even look at him either way, but the urge within me felt so much greater that I wanted to just lash out and tell him to leave me alone.

However, I erred on the side of extreme caution and kept moving along in silence. I didn’t even look at him or acknowledge his presence. Then this coworker further reiterated that he didn’t want me to get hit, but because I neared the end of the aisle that he was on, he changed up his words and said, “I just want you to be careful that you don’t trip and fall”, and even though this seemed like a statement of concern for my well-being, his tone was very harsh and condescending.

By this time, the coworker’s tone felt more and more aggressive towards me even though the way he phrased his last comment seemed to be one of concern for my well-being. Despite the comment, I didn’t feel he had any deep concern that I’d fall. Instead, I felt the total opposite. His “concern” didn’t make me feel safe at all. In fact, I felt like was in danger. So I hurriedly moved along until I was out of his workspace. By the time I was in a different location, I felt angry and intensely bothered by that interaction.

I felt angry enough that I briefly vented about it to one of that coworker’s male associates, a team member who’d I hope would share my sentiments about the interaction. In fact, I felt so shaken by the incident, that venting about it to this coworker actually took me by surprise because venting to anyone is not a norm for me at all. Yet, I felt so uncomfortable with confronting the coworker in question that I felt it safer to express it to someone else.

At the time, I didn’t know why I felt so triggered by that coworker’s remarks towards me, but I did express to his fellow teammate that maybe he meant no harm. I explained that it was his aggressive tone that got under my skin and made me feel uncomfortable, not to mention the fact that I was minding my business, and he didn’t have to say anything to me at all. The coworker simply listened, and I thanked him for listening. Then I freely walked away and continued finishing up my tasks.

Yet, that interaction with the coworker bothered me so much that I could feel myself trembling on the inside. I felt so triggered that my mind went back to a past occurrence from my early 20s. It was an occurrence that I never understood the reasoning behind and had long been forgotten up until this point.

During that occurrence, I’d gone into a convenience store to buy a soda. A young male who’d I’d never seen before in my life came over to me and physically assaulted me (slapping me in the face and punching me hard until I fell back against the glass door of the freezer). He muttered some words to me with a lot of explicatives, calling me names and laughing on his way out. He was loud and boastful, and I felt like he had something to prove.

In utter shock, I was speechless and didn’t even know how to respond. More so, I couldn’t respond. I felt frozen in place; I went completely mute. The few patrons and store workers who saw the interaction didn’t say a word, and most turned away from looking at me. No one came to my aid, and I hadn’t done or said anything to provoke that person. After all, they were a stranger to me, and I was a stranger to them. I wasn’t even in a familiar place.

After that experience, I marveled at the brazen boldness of the young man. I wasn’t sure if he’d assaulted me on a dare or what. I never reported the incident, mainly because I didn’t know the attacker. How was I going to explain what happen? Since no one came to my aid inside the store, I’d likely not have anyone who wanted to be a witness on my behalf.

Yet, I was angered by this attack. It wasn’t just the attack itself, it was how I responded in the aftermath. I was mute. I was frozen in place. I couldn’t even help myself. I didn’t fight back. I didn’t defend myself. I took the slap and punch as if I somehow deserved them even though I did not. Within myself I felt enormous shame in my helplessness. I felt that I could have done absolutely anything but stand there, but that’s all my body knew to do in that moment. I couldn’t even fully process what had happened until long after the fact.

I was reminded that in the same way that young male was unnecessarily aggressive and disrespectful, and his remarks—especially with that tone—crossed a line, so had the male coworker in the current situation. Given my past traumatic experience, it made sense that my body responded by freezing and going mute. I didn’t know it back then as I know it now, but that trauma response is called tonic immobility, where the nervous system reacts to perceived danger by shutting down verbal or physical responses.

Stay tuned as I explain more …