Trigger/content warning: this video may upset some people or cause them to have flashbacks to times where they made fools of themselves by misusing the phrase “I’m triggered.” It will also involve actual discussion of common triggers people have.
Trigger warning. What does that mean? Are you triggered by this? That’s unlikely. Using the phrase “trigger warning” has the potential to be a powerful tool. Most people have seen this while scrolling through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or any major social media outlet. It’s something content creators use before their videos, articles, music, etc. to warn people that their content might have negative psychological consequences for the individual.
Now tell me, how often are you triggered?
Almost all of us should be able to sit down and have a weighty conversation about sensitive things. I should be able to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement or about the increasing worldwide threat of mass shootings with most people, without fear of them being necessarily triggered. I’ve attended panels filled with hundreds of avid audience members ready to listen and discuss rape culture, imposter syndrome, police brutality and a whole bunch of other divisive topics. In these panels, I’ve witnessed people in obvious and less obvious states of distress excuse themselves to cool down somewhere else.
I’ve also had one-on-one conversations with people about these same things; with people who have no experience with rape culture or police brutalization who claim that the discussion is triggering them in an attempt to end the uncomfortable dialogue. These people, like many others, don’t really understand what it means to be triggered.
The 4th of July is a celebration of independence in the United States. It’s a day where families get together to attend parties/parades, cookouts, and, at night, fireworks shows. While these fireworks in particular are a great source of entertainment for most, for some it becomes an unpleasant experience filled with fear, awful memories and restless sleep. I’m talking about veterans dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Anybody who has an affected veteran living at home or in the family knows what it’s like to see somebody dealing with the devastating effects of PTSD. Veterans with PTSD have to avoid certain sounds or social situations to save themselves the trouble of dealing with all of the negative symptoms that surround their disorder. These sounds or situations that cause them serious distress are their triggers.
Entire neighborhoods have voluntarily elected to refrain from using fireworks to give the one veteran in the area comfort on these days. For some, it’s easier to sympathize with the combat veteran dealing with PTSD than it is to sympathize with the ‘social justice warrior’ dealing with abuse-related trauma. It’s not a contest to see who has had the more traumatizing experience, the combat veteran vs. the physically abused ‘social justice warrior’; so don’t bother telling me that veterans had it worse and that that is why we take them more seriously. There isn’t a hierarchy for traumatic experiences.
It’s not without reason, though, that people take one group more seriously into consideration than the other.
So many people have experienced or heard stories about the combat veteran who has flashbacks or frequent night terrors that leave them screaming in the darkness. We’ve heard stories that plainly tell us how hard it is to deal with PTSD as a veteran. Nobody tries to argue that it’s easy dealing with PTSD as a combat veteran. Veterans also don’t say that they’re "triggered" by something. It’s just not the language that surrounds veteran PTSD, so the connection between a veteran’s PTSD and the trauma someone experiences with physical abuse, rape, police brutalization, etc. is lost. But the connection is there, and both parties need due consideration.
The abuse and misuse of the word trigger and the idea of being triggered by something has resulted in a diminishment of its meaning. There are entire videos that are “trigger compilations" of 'social justice warriors' that have millions of views. There are Youtubers who make videos about how everyday life triggers them, and those Youtubers are in those videos with millions of views that make fun of so-called ‘social justice warriors’.
#TheTriggering was a social media trend in March, 2016 where people mocked the idea of being triggered. People posted things about men’s rights/ the feminazi movement; they tweeted about #AllLivesMatter and how police brutalization of racial minorities wasn’t a thing and that rape culture doesn’t exist; people uploaded pictures of them eating meat in an effort to 'trigger' vegans; people posted their counterpoints to the foundations of many social justice movements, ending their posts with #TheTriggering. This huge event was trending on Twitter; it collectively had millions of comments; it had social justice warriors on YouTube posting video responses and Tweeters tweeting about how sad it is that people think it's funny to intentionally trigger people when they themselves didn’t understand that largely no one was triggered by this trend and that what people were doing on social media wasn't actually a 'triggering'.
Every single day in the United States, vegans see other people eating meat. Most of them have probably lived their entire lives around meat-eaters without ever once falling into a panic attack or having a violent flashback to that one terrifying time they accidentally ate meat that was supposed to be tofu. For a vegan, it’s probably just uncomfortable or strange to see other people eating meat. They might even see it as immoral, but they get on with their lives. After all, it’s not in their authority to dictate what other people cannot eat. Could you imagine how terrible it would be if the millions of vegans in the United States were actually triggered by other people eating meat? Think about the chaos that would ensue when you order a burger and your vegan friend begins hyperventilating in the middle of the restaurant, crying, in a serious state of distress at the thought of you eating an animal as a food source.
If you don’t like something, or something simply makes you uncomfortable it doesn’t mean that that particular thing is triggering you. People are confusing a negative emotional response with the idea of being triggered. Being triggered is much more than a negative emotional response. Exposure to your triggers is usually deeply frightening and involves serious anxiety/panic attacks. Triggers will sometimes trigger (hence the name) memory flashbacks to traumatic events the individual endured that gave them the psychological trauma to begin with. These memory flashbacks can be as intense as the initial experience. Many people have been in minor car accidents, they can often vividly remember the experience in near-perfect detail. They find themselves afraid to enter cars, shaking and panicking with raw emotion similar to what they experienced in the initial accident.
Exposure to triggers is alarming and incapacitating to the individual. It’s usually pretty obvious when someone is being triggered. Even when it’s not obvious, the effects persist and can make getting through life a daily challenge.
If people on social media were actually trying to trigger people during #TheTriggering, it would almost certainly have to involve posting gruesome videos/content intended to remind the traumatized individual of their own experiences. Common sources of trauma include all types of abuse, violence towards others, natural disasters, catastrophes, medical procedures or accidents, rape, the list goes on. So unless people posted videos of, or related to, these actual traumas, it’s unlikely that many people was actually triggered by #TheTriggering.
Getting back to the root of the problem, what I see are people claiming to be triggered by everyday inconveniences and discomforts. Things that aren’t taken seriously and result in outside groups not taking triggers/trigger warnings seriously. If you doubt me, then I feel a need to tell you that there’s a meme for triggers, the triggered meme, and almost anything that enters the memedom is virtually stripped of its seriousness by the public, or at least social media. The blame lies on those people misusing this word and phrase and diminishing its power.
If you claim to have triggers, then you should self-evaluate, decide if you’re actually triggered according to modern definitions of what being triggered actually is, and either maintain or change your claim. Claiming that you deal with triggers and have these problems is similar to self-diagnosing a mental illness.By doing this, you’re taking real problems people face and turning it into a meme people post on social media.
This is for the people dealing with actual psychological trauma. For the accident survivors who cannot enter their vehicles without crippling anxiety, for the combat veteran who struggles in crowds, for the victim of abuse who cannot look people in the eye without feeling attacked and all the people out there dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.
