What are your triggers?

I think just about everyone has certain colors, sounds, smells or sensations that for some reason trigger a very distinct emotional response. I think they’re usually caused by some earlier emotional event that also occurred together with the smell, sound, etc. so that now one conjures up memories of the other. We may not remember how these triggers were formed or even be aware that they exist at all.

Two of mine that caught me off-guard until I realized what had caused them:

  • There’s a piece of classical music, which I don’t know the name of, that used to make me feel extremely tense. When I did my first performance in front of a crowd, the venue had that piece of music on an endless loop for the half-hour or so before the event when I was stressing over my lines and wondering if I could still call everything off and make a break for the door. I couple of years later, with a few hundred performances under my belt, I went back to that same venue and during the preparations my heart started beating faster and I was tensing up over everything. Finally, I realized I was feeling like I did on my first show and that it was the music that was doing it to me (since that was the only thing about this venue that was different from any of the others). Since then, I still feel it, but now I can just smile and laugh at it.

  • The other one’s a bit odd, but I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one. The smell of mothballs gets me turned on. I’d get these sudden rushes of a ‘forbidden sex’ kind of feeling at seemingly random moments (random, since the kind of people who smell like mothballs aren’t usually the ones who turn me on), until I noticed the feeling was always in conjunction with that smell. Once I realized that, it was easy to piece together: old Penthouse magazines found in the attic. I was in my early teens, heavily into puberty, and without cable TV or Internet porn, when I found some mid-70’s Penthouse/Playboy magazines under a pile of old blankets and clothes that were covered in mothballs. The magazines had the same smell, and I ended up with a powerful mental imprint.

So what are yours?

Well, it doesn’t turn me on, but it does bring back fond memories. The first love of my life had mothballs in all of her closets, and I remember her vividly when I smell mothballs.

When I start seeing “Back to School” ads and signs, I feel ill. I don’t consciously notice them until I start to wonder why I’m feeling so nervous.

It’s a really weird reaction, considering how good I always was at school.

What a great thread topic!

Me too, me too! All of my close friends know this about me, and pretend to hide the ads when they come out. Same with seeing school buses in late summer. Like you, I was a great student, and also a daughter of two teachers- but I just dreaded school.

The smell of hot concrete and sand makes me extraordinarily happy as I spent my happiest summers at the pool and the beach. I am happiest in the summer, so I love the feeling of a wood dock or deck beneath bare feet. The first swallows of Spring fill me with optimism. Conversely, the sight of the first flocks of starlings in Fall make me sick. After major spinal surgery, I spent two weeks chasing Lortabs with Creamsicles, so that flavor makes me feel weak and helpless.

I am a very tactile girl, but music is by far my most profound trigger. Listening the the radio, especially stations that play a blend of music from the last 30 years is an emotional rollercoaster for me. One song will turn me on (My 15 year old green-eyed boyfriend sang Gong to California to me), the next will make me melancholy (Open Arms and my 8th grade prom), angry (I had a terrible fight with my best friend and drove away playing Mr Brownstone), and horny again (Trippin’ On a Hole in a Paper Heart, but I’m not gonna share that one).

The smells of products that past boyfriends used… the British version of Axe, whatever it is, and also a particular hair oil (I don’t know which one it is, I just know when I’m smelling it). Those are the sensual stimuli that produce the strongest triggers in me.

Sour cherry pie is a strong reminder of home and family. My grandparents had a big Northstar cherry tree on their property for years, and pies made with its fruit were on the table every single time we visited them. Butter lettuce dressed with raw onions, vinegar, and oil, too… and fresh corn and fried chicken.

There was also a bookstore I used to go to, back when big bookstores with coffee were still a novelty–this whole store smelled like the flavored coffee they put out for customers to use, and the sweet coffee smell permeated all of the books. It was just heavenly, that sweet-papery-coffee smell. I was 13-15 at the time, when one forms really strong emotional ties to various books.

Sigh. I want a coffee-scented book. Bad.

OK, before I go any further, I just have to point out the Google ads that are popping up right now:

Fishy Vaginal Odor?
Curing Anxiety Problems
Body Odor Woman

Talk about emotional triggers.

I used to have a problem (which has not come up at any point recently, because I don’t know that the show comes on anywhere these days) watching the show “Hunter” (remember, from the 1980s?). When I was in high school I was madly in like with a fella. We weren’t “officially” a couple yet, but had been seeing each other and exchanged a few trinkets. I knew he’d had something going on with this other chick, Gail, mostly because she hated me for no apparent reason.

Then one Friday night, I showed up at the school basketball game, and she not only greeted me cheerfully, she complimented my outfit with gusto. Next thing I know, here comes the fella, offering me my trinkets back and wanting his. He told me we needed to talk (a phrase which probably triggers a giant sense of ICK in 99% of the population), and that he would call me after the game. So I went home after the game and waited, watching “Hunter”, with a knot the size of Jupiter in my stomach, for the Hammer O’ Doom. And then he never even called! (Turns out he got into some trouble with the cops that night, but he didn’t even call EVER, until a few weeks later when he decided it was time to ditch Gail for ME, and then he was all, “What? Oh, you thought I was going to DUMP you that night? No, not at all! Why would you think that?” I didn’t fall for it. But I digress.) So for awhile after that, I couldn’t watch “Hunter” without getting a huge knot in my gut.

Also, for some reason, hearing certain Allman Brothers songs in the spring, in the car, with the windows down, makes me happier than a pig in poo. I feel so full of freedom and glee that I can’t help but grin like an idiot, and sometimes I even laugh aloud. I’m sure it makes other people think I’m crazy. And maybe I am, because I don’t even know why that trigger exists for me.

Three scents for me, associated with three people. First, my mom’s an avid gardener, and the smell of tomato plants always reminds me of her. I wish tomato greens weren’t poisonous; that would make a wonderful herb.

Second, apple cider vinegar. My gramma uses it for all of her recipes which call for vinegar, which is a lot of them. So whenever I use cider vinegar, it smells like Gramma’s house, with all of the good things that implies.

Third, hot wires/insulation. My grandpa on the other side was a ham operator, and always tinkering with various pieces of electrical equipment (including an extensive train set in the basement, for which he made all of the transformers and controls himself). I don’t remember much about that grandpa, but I definitely associate him with that smell.

The smell of new construction makes me happy. My dad was a mason contractor, and when I was little, I was his sidekick. I went to so many construction sites I couldn’t tell you about all of them. My dad died many years ago, but when we were building our new house during this last year, I loved going over there and just inhaling the scent.

For reasons I don’t understand, the smell of tar reminds me of autumn. I was in a freshly paved parking lot on Friday and it was at least 90 degrees, but I thought of autumn.

This might sound stupid, but for me, “Europe” has a smell.

And I’m not just remembering one particular area or city. I traveled through all kinds of countries and environments.

It’s a smell I rarely smell in North America, but when I do I’m instantly transported to Europe.

Hmmmm…

Taco bell makes me want to vomit. The ads are ok but the food or smell of the food does not sit well with me. It all goes back to the time I got seriously ill at a friend’s birthday party in 4th grade. Psychological studies say food aversions are very long-lasting mental thingamajiggers.

Catholic school girl uniforms give me a boner more often than not. Goes back to my high school days as a lonely, repressed dweeb.

More to come.

The smell of a camp fire on a cool or crisp night. From family camping to Scouting days to large three-day paries in my early twenties. It is a calming an soothing smell.

A light rain on hot pavement. Growing up in Florida I cannot begin to imagine the origin of this effect on me but it is childhood and playing in the rain.

I recently heard about something like this in Japan, called “Sazae Syndrome”, where the theme song to the TV show “Sazae-san” provokes feelings of illness, stress and general depression.

The show has been on for nearly 40 years now in exactly the same time slot at 7pm on Sunday evening, so multiple generations have now grown up hearing that song as a reminder that the weekend is running out and they have to return to school/work tomorrow morning.

Elton John songs always make me think of my older brother that passed away in 1999. The sadder ones make me tear up. I have to becareful not to have Empty Garden on my iPod.

Washing the dishes makes me go to the bathroom. It was a chore when I was a kid and going to the bathroom was the last delay I could use befor having to do them. So now, befor I start, I have to go to the bathroom.

Ivylad wears Grey Flannel cologne. Every once in awhile I’ll go sniff the bottle and I’m instantly back to when we were dating and we were dressing up to go out.

You know that old CBS Special logo and music? That transports me back to when I got to stay up late as a special treat to watch *Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer * or something. It’s kind of a “squee” feeling, like, oh, goodie, it’s starting now.

The first girl I ever kissed had been eating a green apple Jolly Rancher. To this day - 20 years later - the taste of those still gives me a little thrill at the base of my spine and a little tension tightening in the pit of my stomach.

Sounds quite reasonable to me.

What sorta smell?..curry, chips,rain (yes it does have a smell) fresh mown grass, sweaty armpits, toe jam? c’mon be specific

Just askin’

Hospital soap. The smell and texture make me nervous and nauseous. I was in and out of the hospital, sometimes for a week or two at a time, during the year I turned eleven. Unfortunately, most hospitals seem to use the same handsoap, and still do almost twenty years later. It’s the stuff that has a strong antiseptic smell that they’ve tried to cover with some sort of lemon/honey type of scent. The first time I noticed it I was probably only twelve or thirteen when my grandfather was in the hospital. I washed my hands and the minute I smelled it I totally freaked out and started babbling to my parents that we had to leave. I can usually manage going to the hospital now to visit someone, but the minute I wash my hands there, I can’t stand it.

So the moral of this story is: I might be a freak, but I have company.

The question is, is this a good or bad thing?

Or maybe you are turning Japanese.