Article on trigger warnings and mental health

[Anakin McFly]

I didn't expect to agree with this, but I do:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ind/399356

From personal experience, trigger warnings made things much worse rather than better, greatly increasing my anxiety to dysfunctional levels and making me extremely susceptible to panic attacks from triggers that previously did not bother me. There is a lot of psychiatric evidence that avoidance of something that reminds you of a traumatic event (in PTSD or otherwise) only strengthens its negative association with that trauma, giving it even more power to hurt you, because you're training your brain to recognize it as dangerous.

So while trigger warnings originated with good intentions as a way to protect people from traumatic flashbacks (rape, assault, war, suicide, etc), they only ended up impeding the desensitization and healing that needed to happen with time and natural exposure therapy, resulting in worse overall mental health outcomes.

And I can definitely relate to that, as someone who used to have debilitating anxiety that's now mostly gone. Once, just seeing the word 'rape' could give me a panic attack, even though I haven't been raped and the word alone had never been a trigger in itself, just certain discussions of it. Whereas repeated trigger warnings eventually conditioned me to *expect* those disturbing discussions whenever I saw the word 'rape', to the point where I needed those trigger warnings - for something that had previously not been a trigger. For other things that were already triggers, those warnings served only to reinforce the expectation that I would be reminded of something traumatic - which then reminded me of it, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, when the actual content might have been otherwise innocuous. Meanwhile, it created a false sense of safety whenever warnings were absent - leading to greater harm when those triggers appeared, because my guard was down.

So I agree that it's a better approach for people to be prepared instead to deal with offense and triggers, rather than chase the futile goal of eliminating them altogether. The world does not come with warning signs. I can't say for sure, but do US colleges teach people things like how to deal with it when is racist to you? (Other than reporting it.) Or how to heal from past trauma? From what I can tell, most diversity training seems to focus instead on how to create a safe space and not offend other people, but I think actively teaching coping strategies would be very helpful.

[Whitey]

I see people claim they've been triggered by all sorts of stuff. You can't protect people from everything, and nor should you be expected to. Granted, there are some issues that I can see warnings being useful for, for people who've genuinely been through something, if they're about to read an article or something that they might not be expecting to concern their issue. But you're right that teaching people how to deal with encountering their triggers would arguably be better as you can't expect everyone to know what you've gone through and what might set you off. And you can't expect everyone else to care and avoid the topic either. It's not feasible and people will be better off if they know how to handle it. And you can still hope that people will be careful around difficult topics.


I also think being 'triggered' has been abused. In the same way people go 'Oh my god, I've got such bad OCD about that' when they don't have OCD and it's insulting to people who do have it, people are devaluing being triggered and being offended, to some, if something happens they don't like they'll claim they're triggered, and I think that's insulting.

[Blade Azaezel]

[aels]

I don't have PTSD, so I'm wary of commenting, but there are topics/things I don't handle at all well Because Reasons. Also I haven't read the article (I've skimmed) because it's really long, so there.

I'm generally in favour of trigger warnings because I think it's important to give people the information they need to decide for themselves whether or not they're capable of handling something. It's why we have content warnings on movies, it's why my sister warns me when articles have pictures of spiders in them. I guess I'm also naturally irritable at arguments that run along the lines of 'political correctness is ruining things because everyone is easily offended' and/or 'things were better in the old days but the younger generations are sensitivie/stupid/spoilt/afraid of thinking about difficult or scary things'.

IDK, it's possible to goo Too Far with just about everything but I'm generally pro measures that are designed to protect the vulnerable, unless there are, as you suggest Anakin, hard evidential reasons not to. I'm also not comfortable with the article indicating that students who are liable to be triggered need to habituate themselves to the things that trigger them, like, maybe they do, but they need to do that on their own time and for their own reasons and in their own way, not running to someone else's schedule. And the 'the real world is tough and scary so deal with it, crybabies' attitude is just infuriatingly callous.

[Whitey]

I just think that no matter how hard you try, at some point you are going to get triggered by whatever triggers you, so you need to be able to handle that. Common sense should dictate what should need a trigger warning. So harsh upsetting subjects should be prefaced with a warning obviously. If a link is going to set off a common phobia it should be mentioned beforehand. Most people do this naturally without thinking of it as preventing triggers, I would warn someone if they were going to watch a TV show which had something in it that I knew they would have a particularly upset or triggered response to.

It can go too far though, not so much with people actually being triggered, but people using it as a catch-all response to something they don't like.

[phe_de]

From the linked article, I snowballed through the web, looking for other articles about trigger warning.

And I noticed something: When I Google "in favor of trigger warnings" (without parantheses), I almost only get articles on the first page that agree with the linked article in the OP, and believe that trigger warnings are some sort of political correctness gone mad.

But when I perform the same search on Yahoo, I get more hits on the first page that are in favor of trigger warnings. They are supposed to protect people with PTSD; and one article in particular, from ms, raised an important point: The articles who criticize or mock trigger warnings usually don't provide the point of view of those with PTSD.
The MS article is here:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/05/29/t ... rs-voices/

As for me, I can see both sides. On the one hand, I believe that trigger warnings can lead to outright prohibiting thought, and censoring; on the other hand, I don't have PTSD, so who am I to comment?

I believe trigger warnings are ok; but I don't believe it's ok to banish works of art because they may trigger something.
In short: Warning yes, censorship no.

[aels]

I believe trigger warnings are ok; but I don't believe it's ok to banish works of art because they may trigger something.
In short: Warning yes, censorship no.

That. I have no problem with challenging content (whether that's art or debate or course material or whatever) but I'm also not opposed to flagging challenging content for people who may experience avoidable distress.

[Anakin McFly]

It's probably worth separating trigger warnings for things that might offend people vs trigger warnings for things that might cause PTSD flashbacks. I'm against the former in all situations, partly because it's borderline censorship and there's no end to it. For the latter, the best would be to find a balance between protecting vulnerable people and also allowing them the space to heal and reduce the power of those triggers.

For me, the worst incidence of being triggered in the PTSD way by something online led to a panic attack and set off a week of high fever (which the doctor found no cause for and said was probably psychosomatic), plus three weeks total of alternating between intense depression and debilitating anxiety, being a jittery mess throughout, frequently breaking down and crying a lot, and culminating in a suicide attempt that didn't go through. So I definitely don't want to mock or belittle people who do get triggered by stuff, and this isn't just about wanting to avoid things you don't like or are offended by.

But one thing that happened that time was that the net of potential triggers kept growing. So I kept shutting myself up more, and it created a vicious cycle. It's like if someone got raped in a red van - right after that, she might be triggered every time she sees a red van go by, which would be wholly understandable. But red vans in themselves are not dangerous, and if she decided to keep avoiding them - say, staying away from roads and carparks - because they triggered flashbacks of the rape, she'd only be teaching her brain to recognise them as such and restricting her own freedom. And then red vans become the new trauma in themselves: and new triggers emerge, like red apples and red crayons would trigger memories of red vans and thus the rape, and then soon it would be green apples reminding her of red apples, and she would be avoiding fruit stalls and supermarkets, etc.

That's what happened to me. It's possibly the worst mental place to be in. I was literally getting triggered by almost everything because everything was connected to something else in this ever-growing chain sequence of triggers to the actual traumatic thing. And the more I avoided those things - during a time when I was very thankful for trigger warnings precisely because they enabled me to avoid them - the bigger the net grew, because that's how the psychology of trauma works.

I agree that people should take steps to protect those who have been hurt by trauma, but I'm not sure that trigger warnings are the best way to do it. What would be best would be teachers etc being aware that they have students who are sensitive to certain material, and keeping that in mind when they discuss material. Let the material itself by the trigger warning: instead of saying "Trigger warning: suicide!", they could say something like: "This book is about someone trying to deal with the aftermath after their best friend commits suicide, and how they found help from their community."

That way, people who are triggered by suicide would be prepared beforehand: but crucially, it's not presented as a warning. The expectation of danger is no longer there, and neither is the suggestion that you should avoid the material if this is something that triggers you. It serves the purpose of preparing someone, but it's presented as something completely neutral, and implicitly safe.

[Pope Bucky]

it's why my sister warns me when articles have pictures of spiders in them.

True story.

I once posted a spider on Aels' FB wall. I now exclude Aels from anything I post with spiders in it.

Aels' sister scares me.

[Anakin McFly]

gah, just found this:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/h2/fbpt/andyneu ... tkgkaXN5EK

The comics themselves are hilarious and irrelevant, but of note here is that the first comic has the artist apologising for not including a trigger warning - for something that shouldn't need a trigger warning. Yet somebody must have complained, and I assume that it was something they were affected by. Which begs the question of how we ended up here, and how much the whole culture of trigger warnings and over-protecting people is leading to extreme sensitisation that in turn necessitates trigger warnings in order to prevent genuine harm.

It's like germs. If you're uber-hygienic and constantly doused in anti-bacterial solutions, the moment the mildest illness-bearing bacteria floats by you're going to end up sick, because your immunity hasn't had a chance to develop. And then you *need* that uber-hygienic environment in order to stay healthy, which further compounds the problem.

And this stuff is getting worse very quickly, as that model would predict; it's descending into self-parody except they're entirely serious. From earlier this year:

http://i.imgur.com/3MdC2vA.jpg

Lots of people were naturally being assholes about that one, but I think there's definite cause for alarm when people are legitimately getting triggered by photographs of delicious squishy fruit because it reminds them of gore.

[Ptolemy_Banana]

http://i.imgur.com/3MdC2vA.jpg

Lots of people were naturally being assholes about that one, but I think there's definite cause for alarm when people are legitimately getting triggered by photographs of delicious squishy fruit because it reminds them of gore.

That's hilarious. It doesn't take much effort to be nice, but on the other hand, some people deserve to be offended.

[Cassius Clay]

Al Gore isn't that bad...


...I'll see myself out

[Anakin McFly]

Well played, sir.

[phe_de]

It's probably worth separating trigger warnings for things that might offend people vs trigger warnings for things that might cause PTSD flashbacks. I'm against the former in all situations, partly because it's borderline censorship and there's no end to it. For the latter, the best would be to find a balance between protecting vulnerable people and also allowing them the space to heal and reduce the power of those triggers.

The problem: Anything can become a trigger; so allowing people space can be a challenge.

Years ago, in a lecture about rape, I heard the story of a German woman who had been raped by American soldiers after World War II. As an old woman, she was in a hospital, and one day, her roommate had visitors, and they were talking English. This caused the woman to flashback.
So the trigger was spoken English language.
Well, good luck with putting trigger warnings on that. Especially in these days, where half of German ads on TV and radio have English slogans.
In this case the woman should have been able to attend psychotherapy. But after World War II, it was not easy in Germany. Seeing a shrink was still equated to being crazy; and rape against German women was a taboo.

Hopefully times have changed for the better.

Maybe a good comparison for trigger warnings is the list of ingredients that has to be on every food item. I am in favour of it. This way, people with food allergies can choose if they pick certain types of food. And nobody is asking for food with allergenes to be removed from the shelves.

But if a person is allergic to almost any type of food, then this person needs to do something herself, like seek a nutritionist. Just like if a person is triggered by something in itself harmless (like English language, or pomegranates), they should seek professional help. And in my opinion this professional help should be covered by health insurance.

[Anakin McFly]

Yeah, that. Hence the better approach being to teach people how to deal with triggers, rather than to seek to eliminate them altogether - which is an impossible task.

A few years ago I had a really bad experience with a creepy psychiatrist who asked a lot of sexually invasive questions and got me feeling violated and traumatized to the point where I had to call up my mom at work and ask her to take me home, which I hadn't needed in over a decade, because I was in this shell shocked state and could barely move. That psych happened to be Indian, and for a while after I'd end up getting flashbacks and breaking down whenever I saw an Indian guy. That being incredibly racist only made it worse, and I'd then go out of my way to be nice to them to overcompensate; which in turn eventually defused the trigger after multiple times talking to Indian people and not being asked what I fantasized about when I touched myself.

[Cassius Clay]

Did you see this response?

http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/ ... eful-mind/

[Anakin McFly]

Not yet. Thanks for the link.

I don't believe in letting hate speech and microagressions go unchallenged; my concern is that avoidance strengthens the power of a trigger, such that trigger warnings may be protecting people in the short run at the expense of making them more vulnerable in the long run. So that was the main thing I agreed with in the original article.

I like the second article's author's approach on not using explicit trigger warnings, but weaving them in more naturally into the text, so someone can see the warning signs if it's something they know they'll be triggered by, and get out. It accomplishes the purpose of a warning, but also mixes things up and thus trains the mind to recognise other trigger cues, which I think will be much better in the long run.

e.g. instead of 'trigger warning: rape', a more contextual warning might be better: say in a book, there's a description of a romantic encounter in which one party is being extremely possessive and dismissive of the other's non-consent in non-sexual areas. That should be the warning, and the good thing about it is that it's then transferable to any context including real life: people are unlikely to use explicit trigger warnings when sharing personal traumatic stuff.

EDIT: Maybe it makes a difference that I primarily struggle with anxiety triggers rather than PTSD ones. The processes might be different, especially since my triggers aren't often tied to a specific event. One of my biggest anxiety triggers is angry people. A colleague was yelling at her kid on the phone and it was taking all my effort to hold back a panic attack. But you can't warn for that.

[Anakin McFly]

I like this rebuttal to the original article. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1225 ... rning-myth

I like how he suggests that trigger warnings are not meant to encourage censorship but rather to avoid it, and to enable students to be prepared to grapple with difficult and potentially traumatic content, rather than to be scared away from it. Me, I got scared away from anything with a trigger warning for things I'm triggered by, so perhaps that's why my experience with them has been largely negative.