Trigger Warning
I had a conversation recently in which someone said “don’t be triggered (about the topic), just listen to what the other person has to say.”
In my grown-up job I work with therapists. In another life, I worked with therapy clients, medical, and mental health patients.
I have seen people be triggered.
I have been triggered.
In this instance, this person was misusing the word to mean “annoyed” or “irritated.” In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya:
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
The term “triggered” is misused and I’m here to help you with Don’t Be an Asshole 101: Trigger Warning.
In medical and mental health practices, the term means:
“An external events or circumstances that may produce very uncomfortable emotional or psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety, panic, discouragement, despair, or negative self-talk.” You can find the rest of the article here.
The medical definition is:
“something (as a specific act or stimulus) that in interaction with the body constitutes a physiological trigger.”
You can read that definition here.
Triggered does not mean “ irrationally annoyed” or “butthurt for attention”. If you’re having a conversation in which you know the topics are going to annoy or upset someone on purpose, you’re a giant gaping butthole and you should work on yourself. I’m not going to discuss the myriad of ways and reasons people can be triggered and reminded of their trauma, but I deeply hope if one of your friends was mugged, you wouldn’t talk about mugging in front of them every time you see them, ask them about it, or deliberately wear the same cologne as their mugger or whatever. It’s upsetting; it triggers memories of a chemical response/fight or flight and puts their body back in that chemical response. It stands to reason they’d be hurt, scared, or upset by being reminded of a traumatic event.
Colloquially, we like to misuse mental health terms all the time:
“She’s so OCD.”
“Ugh, my new boss is bipolar.”
“This chick is a total psycho.”
OCD is a difficult and life-altering behavioral disorder, so is bipolar disorder, and having seen several psychotic episodes myself, it’s not funny or interesting. It’s terrifying for the person experiencing it.
Misusing “triggered” to mean annoyed or irritated is like saying “oh my god, she was so dilated after that conversation.”
Uncomfortable and weird, yes?
If you’re not sure you should use the word “triggered”, replace it with another very specific medical or clinical term and if it makes you squick out, stop using any of those words in that context.
Examples:
Wow, he’s being totally prolapsed about this.
Don’t talk about that around Jane, she’ll go totally engorged on you and make it about her.
Gross. Weird. Uncomfortable.
To sum up:
Stop using a valid clinical/medical term to justify treating someone badly or being rude in conversation.
Don't Ask Me if I Want A Cupcake
I was at a wedding a few years ago where a four year old laid down in front of the cupcake table and, with her wrist flung over her eyes with dramatic flair, her hair trailing behind her on the floor -a tiny Ophelia in a flower girl dress- said to any adult who came near her in a beleaguered voice, “I’m too tired, don’t ask me if I want a cupcake. I’m too tired for cupcakes. I do not want a cupcake.”
You know she wanted the shit out of some cupcakes.
This comes to mind when, at least once a week, someone on my Facebook feed says they’re thinking of leaving Facebook. I picture them sprawled on the floor in front of a digital cupcake in the shape of Mark Zuckerberg, arms flung dramatically over their eyes, telling the whole digital world that they emphatically do not want a cupcake. On one hand, fuck yeah. I’m really sick of Facebook, too. Go. Fly. Be free. Get out while you can.
On the other hand, do you want a medal? Are you expecting Saint Peter to put you at the front of the line for heaven? Can you take a poop without taking out a front page add?
I know. Ring the hypocrite alarm. I shared this on Facebook.
Social media has a specifically weird hold on my generation which has produced really weird results. Physically, emotionally, we can tell when something is bad for us and studies show that social media has a lot of negative effects. I think it speaks to how intense social media has become that we feel the need to take a social measurement from the echo chamber before pulling away. It’s weird and annoying.
But it also addresses something that needs to be talked about among older millennials, those of us who straddled the I drank from the hose and didn’t die! generation but also live that #blessed life. Social media has impacted our generation in an intense way.
I didn’t feel the effects of social media until I was in my mid-twenties. During my Freshman year of college the internet was still this gauzy thing that other people spent a lot of time on and wasn’t a necessity for daily life. By the time I graduated college, I was intensely curating my social media pages, both Facebook and MySpace, my AIM profile, and my OpenDiary. By the time I finished grad school, I spent a majority of my time on social media looking for answers to things I wasn’t handling well in the adult world. I combed through the profiles of people who treated me badly and then sent me friend requests five years later like they didn’t still owe me $150, of people I had treated badly and wanted to stalk, hoping to rekindle that fight to get one more final word in. It played a role in warping my perception of friendship and happiness and of life.
And every step of the way, I had the option to not participate.
The memories section of my Facebook isn’t a happy place. It’s not photos of stuff I did or people I hung out with. It’s just regurgitating to me cringe-worthy shit I said from three years ago, six years ago, ten years ago.
It’s a depression scrapbook. It’s a toxic relationship archive.
But like anything that’s a huge grey area, without Facebook I wouldn’t have reconnected with amazing people that I almost lost to time or childhood misconceptions. I wouldn’t have gone down the clickhole that lead me to the job I currently have now and adore. I wouldn’t have my first book coming out soon, I’m pretty sure, if it weren’t for Facebook.
But Facebook is also where I found out someone close to me thinks David Hogg and Adam Lanza are the same person. It’s where I found out an entire relationship can be blown out of the water over the order in which your post shows up in someone’s feed.
Especially now, when the world feels like it’s on fire and the news every day brings one more blow; school shootings, anti-vaxers, climate change, police brutality, student debt, and so so so much more, we get to find out via the comment section what our 500 nearest and dearest think about things that hold our society in a tipping point. We get to find out the hard things about ourselves and the people we love via social media. Misinformation shared under the guise of heroism can spread like wildfire and put people at risk. It’s literally putting our country at risk, and our mental health.
So what do we do?
Do we all unplug?
Do we all lay in front of the cupcake table to make a point?
Because I don’t have an answer. But what I can say, is like…
You guys.
I think….
I don’t want a cupcake. Don’t ask me if I want a cupcake.