Research findings might surprise you. Do we need community consensus on adding tags to content, or do trauma survivors need to accept that the media landscape is an emotional minefield?
Many of my thoughts have been well articulated by others in terms of agency and informed consent. Giving choice doesn’t feel like censorship to me. Those who refuse to use them may also be folks who believe that desensitization (through exposure) is the solution to so many of the mental health experiences that leave folks in a state of needing to avoid something. And in many cases, exposure can be more harmful.
Speaking from my own experience, a CW can allow me to choose which day or the time of day I engage with specific content. I’m pretty connected to the fluctuations within my own nervous system and regulatory capacity, and there are times when a certain type of content will take me out of commission for hours, a day, more. So I choose regulated moments to engage in the things I find triggering. And sometimes, I have to choose to disengage. I also think about some of my most traumatized friends who are engaged in healing, and yet their sensitized nervous systems really can’t take specific content. It makes me sad to think they could basically be shamed for not being healed ‘yet’ and somehow assumed to be fully responsible for their reactions to content.
SO MUCH to think about with this in my own writing experience. Thank you!!
Such a tough question, and a good one to ask! Trigger warnings are used in so many situations now. I was in a Facebook group for an eating plan that involved avoiding sugar and flour, and you weren't even supposed to mention the word "sugar" (or "cake," "cookies," etc) because it might be too triggering and the group was supposed to be a safe space. Seemed a bit exaggerated; if you're trying to avoid sugar, you can't leave the house or watch TV without seeing it so you'd better get used to that. On the other hand, many years ago I saw some PBS show with a live crucifixion reenactment, which I hadn't even known was a thing, and I would have appreciated a warning even though I'm lucky not to have any history of trauma (other than the trauma of being human ;-). It really freaked me out! Perhaps we can use trigger warnings in a more general way, like movie ratings: just say "this piece contains mention of XX," without mentioning triggers, so people know what they're getting into? But it seems that the larger problem, which you touch on, is how do we help people heal from trauma? Simply shielding people from unpleasant stuff isn't the ultimate answer.
Ingredients lists are like trigger warnings, when you think about it. I was guiding a group meditation and envisioning a toasty campfire with good friends... and a burn victim later told me he'd been triggered. Intention goes a long way. We don't mean to trigger PTSD sufferers. I am afraid to mention fire in a guided meditation now. I had been doing a series of art therapy sessions as a client, and enjoyed her ring-of-fire visualization (I was inside, protected). Violence is disturbing, naturally. If we are never triggered, perhaps we are callous. It is indeed a gray area...
Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts here.
Interesting. I have been writing about trigger warnings on my Substack lately. In the past, I had a negative attitude toward trigger warnings because I thought they were one and the same as literary cancel culture, which I had a bad experience with. I have since come to realize that trigger warnings are actually a potential antidote to literary cancel culture -- like food allergy labels, they help individuals avoid content that isn't right for them without restricting everyone else's access to that content.
I view using trigger warnings as giving traumatized people more power over what they consume. Judith Herman argues in Trauma and Recovery that a key aspect of healing is returning power to trauma victims after they were so dramatically disempowered during the traumatic event. People may be compelled to avoid my content or be more tempted to read because of my trigger warnings, but that it not something over which I have control, and that is the point. I am giving my readers a more informed choice. It would be arrogant and dangerous for me to assume that reading my triggering content would help any and all traumatized people when I am not a mental health professional and know nothing about the individual who comes upon my post.
As a trauma survivor myself, I appreciate trigger warnings giving me more power over what I myself consume. The world is less a minefield, and it's up to me whether I want to push myself or give myself a break on any given day. Learning to trust my instincts and understand that I know myself best and I can make my own decisions has been a key part of my healing.
I don't personally consider feeling vulnerable or becoming aware of people's vulnerability to be a negative. We are all emotionally vulnerable and denial of that fact helps nobody.
Whether any of that means we should ever require trigger warnings is something I am on the fence about, but I regard people who refuse to use them out of supposed principle with suspicion. I'm not sure they understand the nature of trauma, and I am always wary of those who act as though they know what's best for everyone else as a broad stroke.
Well put. Giving others a sense of agency is excellent reason for offering CW.
I sense a pendulum swinging from over-the-top political correctness of a bygone decade to new media saturated with brutish, raunchy, violent content. It’s hard to avoid triggering content.
I once threw up in my kitchen bin thanks to a scene in Outlander... I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt this way about that content, maybe if I'd read the books I would have expected it but I think it was probably the way things were represented on television rather than how they would have been contextualized in a book made it way too confronting. I'm not sure if a trigger warning would have made me feel better, at the time I definitely thought it should have been considered and I'd have felt more respected if there had been something although I don't think it would have changed my reaction. To me a trigger warning can be to show respect to people's pain and that a scene that might be 'OK' to someone coming from a neutral place might not be the same if they're coming from a charged place. I don't think they change anything about how violent/disturbing the image is, but they DO show that someone gave a damn and realized that setting people off is not nice or 'entertainment'. They show an understanding of the seriousness of issues rather than a desire to make light or use things for 'shock value'
I have an upcoming post where I briefly mention my grandfather's suicide, and I added a "trigger warning" at the top, because the way I've headlined the piece, you'd not know that the story was going to take a dark turn. I mean, you would if you're a regular reader -- but newbies might be traumatized? Still, it feels a little unnecessary because it's a brief mention, not the full story.
I also have mixed feelings about the media adding closing statements about how people can get help if they are in crisis and/or having suicidal thoughts. It's been a few years since I last checked the research, but for a long time, the only actual proven method of preventing suicide was physical harm reduction measures like nets under bridges and locked gun safes. All the other stuff -- including suicide hotlines -- had no proven evidence they worked, and experts in this area worried it might actually be wasted money/effort, and desperately needed clinical trial data. I'm betting that since then, no one has done a clinical trial to test this.
I’m so surprised by the data!!
Many of my thoughts have been well articulated by others in terms of agency and informed consent. Giving choice doesn’t feel like censorship to me. Those who refuse to use them may also be folks who believe that desensitization (through exposure) is the solution to so many of the mental health experiences that leave folks in a state of needing to avoid something. And in many cases, exposure can be more harmful.
Speaking from my own experience, a CW can allow me to choose which day or the time of day I engage with specific content. I’m pretty connected to the fluctuations within my own nervous system and regulatory capacity, and there are times when a certain type of content will take me out of commission for hours, a day, more. So I choose regulated moments to engage in the things I find triggering. And sometimes, I have to choose to disengage. I also think about some of my most traumatized friends who are engaged in healing, and yet their sensitized nervous systems really can’t take specific content. It makes me sad to think they could basically be shamed for not being healed ‘yet’ and somehow assumed to be fully responsible for their reactions to content.
SO MUCH to think about with this in my own writing experience. Thank you!!
Such a tough question, and a good one to ask! Trigger warnings are used in so many situations now. I was in a Facebook group for an eating plan that involved avoiding sugar and flour, and you weren't even supposed to mention the word "sugar" (or "cake," "cookies," etc) because it might be too triggering and the group was supposed to be a safe space. Seemed a bit exaggerated; if you're trying to avoid sugar, you can't leave the house or watch TV without seeing it so you'd better get used to that. On the other hand, many years ago I saw some PBS show with a live crucifixion reenactment, which I hadn't even known was a thing, and I would have appreciated a warning even though I'm lucky not to have any history of trauma (other than the trauma of being human ;-). It really freaked me out! Perhaps we can use trigger warnings in a more general way, like movie ratings: just say "this piece contains mention of XX," without mentioning triggers, so people know what they're getting into? But it seems that the larger problem, which you touch on, is how do we help people heal from trauma? Simply shielding people from unpleasant stuff isn't the ultimate answer.
Ingredients lists are like trigger warnings, when you think about it. I was guiding a group meditation and envisioning a toasty campfire with good friends... and a burn victim later told me he'd been triggered. Intention goes a long way. We don't mean to trigger PTSD sufferers. I am afraid to mention fire in a guided meditation now. I had been doing a series of art therapy sessions as a client, and enjoyed her ring-of-fire visualization (I was inside, protected). Violence is disturbing, naturally. If we are never triggered, perhaps we are callous. It is indeed a gray area...
Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts here.
Interesting. I have been writing about trigger warnings on my Substack lately. In the past, I had a negative attitude toward trigger warnings because I thought they were one and the same as literary cancel culture, which I had a bad experience with. I have since come to realize that trigger warnings are actually a potential antidote to literary cancel culture -- like food allergy labels, they help individuals avoid content that isn't right for them without restricting everyone else's access to that content.
I view using trigger warnings as giving traumatized people more power over what they consume. Judith Herman argues in Trauma and Recovery that a key aspect of healing is returning power to trauma victims after they were so dramatically disempowered during the traumatic event. People may be compelled to avoid my content or be more tempted to read because of my trigger warnings, but that it not something over which I have control, and that is the point. I am giving my readers a more informed choice. It would be arrogant and dangerous for me to assume that reading my triggering content would help any and all traumatized people when I am not a mental health professional and know nothing about the individual who comes upon my post.
As a trauma survivor myself, I appreciate trigger warnings giving me more power over what I myself consume. The world is less a minefield, and it's up to me whether I want to push myself or give myself a break on any given day. Learning to trust my instincts and understand that I know myself best and I can make my own decisions has been a key part of my healing.
I don't personally consider feeling vulnerable or becoming aware of people's vulnerability to be a negative. We are all emotionally vulnerable and denial of that fact helps nobody.
Whether any of that means we should ever require trigger warnings is something I am on the fence about, but I regard people who refuse to use them out of supposed principle with suspicion. I'm not sure they understand the nature of trauma, and I am always wary of those who act as though they know what's best for everyone else as a broad stroke.
Well put. Giving others a sense of agency is excellent reason for offering CW.
I sense a pendulum swinging from over-the-top political correctness of a bygone decade to new media saturated with brutish, raunchy, violent content. It’s hard to avoid triggering content.
I once threw up in my kitchen bin thanks to a scene in Outlander... I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt this way about that content, maybe if I'd read the books I would have expected it but I think it was probably the way things were represented on television rather than how they would have been contextualized in a book made it way too confronting. I'm not sure if a trigger warning would have made me feel better, at the time I definitely thought it should have been considered and I'd have felt more respected if there had been something although I don't think it would have changed my reaction. To me a trigger warning can be to show respect to people's pain and that a scene that might be 'OK' to someone coming from a neutral place might not be the same if they're coming from a charged place. I don't think they change anything about how violent/disturbing the image is, but they DO show that someone gave a damn and realized that setting people off is not nice or 'entertainment'. They show an understanding of the seriousness of issues rather than a desire to make light or use things for 'shock value'
My children and I were marveling at how murder is fodder for entertainment (and kidnapping, crime, violence…)…
I haven’t seen the show. I didn’t watch Game of Thrones because I heard some scenes featured rape.
CW seems like a kindness in the way you described. Thank you for your thoughtful response.
Great topic. I have mixed feelings.
I have an upcoming post where I briefly mention my grandfather's suicide, and I added a "trigger warning" at the top, because the way I've headlined the piece, you'd not know that the story was going to take a dark turn. I mean, you would if you're a regular reader -- but newbies might be traumatized? Still, it feels a little unnecessary because it's a brief mention, not the full story.
I also have mixed feelings about the media adding closing statements about how people can get help if they are in crisis and/or having suicidal thoughts. It's been a few years since I last checked the research, but for a long time, the only actual proven method of preventing suicide was physical harm reduction measures like nets under bridges and locked gun safes. All the other stuff -- including suicide hotlines -- had no proven evidence they worked, and experts in this area worried it might actually be wasted money/effort, and desperately needed clinical trial data. I'm betting that since then, no one has done a clinical trial to test this.