For those who participate in online discussion forums, you have doubtless encountered what are termed “trigger warnings.” There seem to be two schools of thought about them. One school says they are necessary to protect individuals in discussions from the emotional distress of reliving past traumatic events. Another school says that everything’s becoming a trigger warning, that they aren’t necessary or effective, and that we’ve become too sensitive, too easily traumatized.
Let’s talk about trigger warnings. First, what are they?
Trigger warnings are meant to give people with post-traumatic stress disorder, and others who have experienced trauma, an idea of the content they’re about to encounter. This is supposed to prepare those readers or viewers to cope with a significant, possibly debilitating, emotional reaction.
Online discussion forums are just one place trigger warnings happen. An article in vox explains the impact that trigger warnings are having in academia. The article presents a helpful case study for how trigger warnings alter the conversations we have. While they may reduce trauma, they also heighten awareness sensitive subjects, and that heightened awareness can reduce willingness to speak freely when dealing with challenging subjects.
Is all this avoidance worth it? Do trigger warnings even protect people? Are they effective? From the vox article:
avoiding triggers isn’t considered a healthy coping mechanism for people with PTSD; in fact, it’s a symptom of the disorder. A core purpose of therapy is making it possible for individuals to reduce their sensitivity to triggers. And there’s no scientific evidence that trigger warnings help people avoid panic attacks or flashbacks in the short term
Some feel that the notion that these discussions can cause PTSD is an exaggeration. And yet, that could easily be the same routine minimization of trauma that has prevailed in society since time immemorial. We minimize pain that doesn’t affect us. We ignore trauma that can’t touch us. And we justify the impacts we have on others when we offend or wound them through our ignorance of their circumstances and pain. Particularly as relates to sexual trauma, ignoring or minimizing the pain of victims is a long-standing tradition whether it’s blaming the victim or turning a blind eye to the prevalence of sexual assault in society.
A 2007 study in Virginia found women who had been sexually assaulted were nearly four times more likely to develop PTSD than those who had not; more than 30 percent of women who had been assaulted as adults met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD.
Studies estimate that about 20 percent of women experience sexual assault on campus. Those numbers are disputed, and not everyone who experiences trauma will go on to get PTSD. But it still suggests that college students are far more traumatized than many people might think.
What about inoculation? Isn’t it better to expose trauma victims to these thorny topics without protecting them so that they can deal with their issues head on? While it may be true that confronting one’s demons is better than avoiding the source of one’s trauma indefinitely, a trigger warning allows readers to be prepared for the content they are about to read, so that they can engage with these topics or choose not to do so.
As I think back to my own college days, it seems to me that about 75% of the literature I read toward my English degree would have to come with a trigger warning. D.H. Lawrence. James Joyce. Thomas Pyncheon. Even Chaucer and Shakespeare. It’s hard for me to think of literature that wouldn’t require a trigger warning. The vox article points out this problem and that it signals a change in how students are perceived and in how they perceive themselves.
Trigger warnings, in other words, aren’t uncommon for two groups of people: paying customers and children. This is doubly true when the paying customers are children.
And the other risk with trigger warnings is that in addition to protecting people from trauma, they also create unintended consequences. The most obvious unintended consequence seems to be that insistence on trigger warnings fuels the drama triangle. The Karpman drama triangle is a psychological pattern in which individuals see others in primarily three roles: persecutor, victim or rescuer. There are psychological rewards with casting oneself in the role of either victim or rescuer and painting others as persecutor, but those short-term rewards come at the price of human relationships and productive interactions. They also make it easier to avoid dealing with challenging opinions or difficult topics. Those cast as persecutors often feel misunderstood or misrepresented; they begin to see themselves as victims, and thus the drama continues.
“The presumption that students need to be protected rather than challenged in a classroom is at once infantilizing and anti-intellectual,” the American Association of University Professors wrote in August 2014. “It makes comfort a higher priority than intellectual engagement”
And yet, it seems like good old Christian virtue to put others’ needs first and to do something so simple as to care about their pain and to try to avoid triggering their disorders? Do we need people to be challenged in discussion forums full of amateurs where they have less access to support? If we are going to inoculate people and challenge them, shouldn’t it be in a more supportive environment like therapy, not discussions with random strangers on the internet?
From the perspective of the universities, though, avoiding triggering topics significantly lessens the ability to discuss academic topics like history, literature and art. But trigger warnings don’t really avoid those topics. They just frame them as potentially dangerous to those who have been traumatized.
College students, particularly those who are in their late teens and early 20s, are expected to act like adults while being supervised like children; as the price of college goes up, they’re also increasingly seen as paying customers, and they’re starting to act like it.
The argument about trigger warnings isn’t just about trauma and mental health. It’s about the demands students increasingly feel empowered to make and the confusion universities are facing in responding.
Unfortunately, those who have not been traumatized are often the least able to identify what topics might cause another pain. Mormons in particular have a very ham-fisted view of offense, blaming those who take offense rather than seeking to avoid giving offense. Taking offense in and of itself seems to be a personal indictment in our culture, a character weakness. Being tactless or rude is often mistaken for a strength. Certainly we could all try just a little more to be aware of others and to be patient of both those who have been traumatized as well as those who mistakenly give offense.
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
I do think trigger warnings are overdone. First off, I don’t think the term itself is helpful. Perhaps better would be a simple introductory statement describing the content for everything, similar to the brief descriptions on the back of DVDs, if that’s what folk want, so they can choose to avoid it or not. They may have other reasons for wanting to avoid particular topics not necessarily for reasons of PTSD.
I certainly get the academic angle. All the material I studied in German Lit. for A level could have been viewed as triggering one way or another today – we read works by Frank Wedekind, Heinrich Böll, Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Max Frisch.
I liked the “trigger warning or spoiler” meme.
When the deaths of our children was much fresher we ended up in a Robin Williams comedy where for added dramatic punch they killed off the kid at the end.
Had I known I wouldn’t have gotten close to the movie. But any sort of warning would have also spoiled the sucker punch they wanted to throw.
For the most part I think the drama causes more harm than the warnings avoid.
We recently got a new system at work and every time certain changes are made to the system it sends me an email that is titled “Trigger Alert.” Every time I see that email my first reaction is wondering why someone is sending me an email (to my work account) about sexual assault.
“Mormons in particular have a very ham-fisted view of offense, blaming those who take offense rather than seeking to avoid giving offense.”
This statement should have come with a trigger warning: “Caution. Unsubstantiated generalization ahead. Install BS guards before proceeding.”
I thought “trigger warnings” were becoming a thing of the past. They’re mostly an advertisement now. It’d be interesting to find out what percentage of PTSD-suffering rape survivors actually change their reading/viewing behavior based on trigger warnings, or if it’s just an appreciated acknowledgement of their pain.
Only English majors need TWs for Shakespeare. The rest of us, not so much.
“But I might see Cupid’s fiery shaft
Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon” –A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene 1
Whether you TW or not, somebody’s always gonna start something.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Mark, it was a generalization, but you imply the generalization is false. Can you back up your claim that in Mormon culture we tend to fault the person giving offense more often than the person taking offense?
I think there is middle ground to be found with trigger warnings while still having intellectually engaging conversations. (And I think this is a perfect post in light of last week.)
I think that just like w the polarization in our country, there’s a polarization re TW. I think there’s truth to the critique of the stretching of the definitions of triggers/microagressions. But that doesn’t mean they can’t work to produce a better result than ignoring the issue.
This piece by a Princeton professor who teaches greek tragedies that are laden with rape culture and rape jokes is great, How to Teach A Rape Joke. I loved this comment at the end
“There’s so much hand-wringing about trigger warnings and censorship and people yelling about how “being offended doesn’t make you right,” and I think it’s all kind of a red herring. Of course students should be challenged, of course professors shouldn’t be constrained—nobody’s asking for a protective bubble. What people are asking for, though, is that subject material be taught in a way that recognizes the reality that the students learning the material are likely to have first-hand experience with sexual assault (and racism, and classism, and homophobia, and so on). That rape and other serious subjects aren’t treated lightly and dismissively, but with the gravity and respect that they require. That is not too much to ask.”
I think what TWs should do is train us to try to see through other people’s lenses — in academia it’s largely been a white male lens (big surprise) teaching problematic things and they can be very dismissive of it being a big deal. We should try to be more aware ourselves of how what we do affects other people.
What this caused me to think of was the SSM deal we had. I have a daughter who lives in Minneapolis with her husband and child. She called us one day about a month ago and said that a large group of members of the Church had all together left and withdrew their membership from the Church. My first and last reaction was ‘stupid fools’.
How many of them had gotten up and bore their fervent testimonies of the truthfulness of the Church? Lying fools.
If any of them are reading this I hope they are getting some spastic trigger warnings sending them rolling around their back yards convulsing and vomiting. If they do then I would think that trigger warnings can be good for people who have denied something from God that they knew to be true, but I suppose they never knew it and never will so they will probably go on being stupid fools like they have always been.
I just have one question. Has this incident caused me to have PTSD or tigger warnings? Have a nice evening.
I am in favor of Hedgehog’s content warning idea. The next challenge will be to get teachers and professors to respect students’ choices to read or not to read.
Two examples:
1. I have a young friend who, at 13, was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a cousin over months before she was able to find the courage to tell her parents and get it stopped. A little over a year later, when she was a sophomore in high school, her blithe, young English teacher assigned a book that described a sexual assault. It was terrifically difficult and a serious setback in my young friend’s healing process. The timing was terrible and she certainly was not old enough or healed enough to voice her objection to her teacher.
2. A young college freshman I know approached his English professor to request some alternative reading when assigned a book that described graphic rape scenes. The professor refused, was dismissive, and responded by accusing the student of being closed minded and weak.
And it is not just a white male mentality at work here. Both the teacher and the professor I’ve referred to were women, and only one of them was white.
So, my take: disclosure of content is helpful and, combined with respect for choices to read it not to read, will do far more to help those who are healing than will brief trgger warnings. But warnings are better than nothing.
Mary Ann, I agree with Mark for two reasons.
First, I would like to point out that NO proof was given to back up the statement about “Mormons in particular have a very ham-fisted view of offense, blaming those who take offense rather than seeking to avoid giving offense.” I don’t believe in holding individuals or communities to a “guilty until proven innocent” standard. It seems more fair to me that if a person or community is going to be condemned, rather than “prove to me they aren’t as bad as they say” should be replaced with a skepticism that asks “prove to me they are as bad as they say, otherwise, I will continue to believe the best about them.
Second, their is some proof that this stereotype is not true. There is an entire Broadway Musical dedicated to just how gosh darn nice (yet niave and stupid) Mormon’s are. Donald Trump is going to LOSE BIG in Utah, in large part because Mormon’s don’t like Trump’s bombastic style. I live outside Utah and in my interactions with my co-workers who are not LDS there are routine mentions of how nice Mormon’s are.
A third thing to consider: is this phrase even that common in Mormon discourse, even among general authorities? I know Elder Bednar gave a (in)famous (depending on who you are) talk about a decade ago about not letting people offend you. But has anyone else given a talk on this point? I can’t remember a talk that anyone in the First Presidency has given that would insinuate that you choose to be offended. But that said, I haven’t checked and maybe someone will surprise me. But this all goes back to my first point. Why is the burden on going back and showing through general conference talks/themes and other sources of evidence and data to prove that Mormon’s aren’t a bunch of uncivilized broots who just do what they want with no thought to anyone’s feelings?
Mark B and Jason: Wow, if you don’t hear this from your ward nearly every week, we attend a very different church. I believe the mantra mostly originates with the BY quote: “He that takes offense when offense is not intended is a fool, and he that takes offense when offense IS intended is also a fool.” Add to that the scores of talks that state that the main reason people fall away from the church is taking offense – not that we who remain are tactless or give offense, but that they possess the flaw of being too sensitive or easily offended.
There’s also the scripture of “making an offender for a word,” again putting the blame on the offended person rather than on the one who is tactless. That scripture gets more air time in Mormonism because it’s in Isaiah 29: 21 which is where we find the Professor Anton story being foretold about a sealed book that cannot be read.
Other LDS talks on this topic (just a handful):
-Perry M. Christensen, 1992 “That Ye Be Not Offended.”
-Neal A Maxwell, 1982 “He Offended Me!”
-David A Bednar, 2006 “And Nothing Shall Offend Them”
-Neil Anderson, 2010 “Never Leave Him” includes the injunction to choose not to be offended.
-Gordon B. Hinckley, 1994, “And Peter Went Out and Wept Bitterly”
-Several Gospel Doctrine manuals include the connection that being offended equals apostasy. Leaving the church is almost always equated with the initial problem of “being offended,” but little to no mention of the one who offended being at fault.
Two more talks defend “giving offense”:
-James E. Faust, 2003 “A Child and a Disciple” equates fear of rejection and fear of giving offense with unwillingness to stand up for what’s right.
-Lynn G Robinson, 2014 “Which Way Do You Face?” likewise decries the tendency for the sinful to make church members feel guilty for giving offense when they are just defending the church standards.
-But I will concede that the missionary manuals warn young people entering the mission field not to give offense to non-members, and that the BYU handbooks on lds.org likewise talk about trying not to offend non-members. Once they become members all bets are off, or so it would seem.
I’ll add one more that was recent; when E. Oaks claimed in 2015 that the church neither seeks nor gives apologies. He didn’t say being offended is a weakness with so many words, but that’s exactly what that means.
I’m willing to concede that not everyone’s personal experience is the same, but I’m quite surprised this is not a universal experience within the church.
I am hesitant to distract from the main point of the post, but I am with Jason on this one. It is not something that I hear, and I do see people going out of their way to try not to give offense (which sometimes backfires but oh well, they were trying).
Thanks for the references, but considering that they go back more than 20 years, what sort of percent of General Conference talks is that?
And how many talks have encouraged us to be kind and not offend others?
I was horrified at Miriam’s 11. Teachers have great power over their students and should always be sensitive to expressed needs.
And of course there is a tendency to make judgments about what is worthy of a trigger or not. I wince every time a parent at home fulltime is referred to as “not working.” The hardest job I ever had (and I’m an Army veteran and completed a demanding graduate program) was being a mother at home, running a busy house and having to deal with the physical demands of pregnancy and lactation. To refer to that as “not working” is incredibly insulting and has all kinds of repercussions. Yet my pain is not recognized or appreciated.
Psychological dysfunction and psychological defense are nearly synonymous, defense(s) generally cause far more trouble in the present than the original trauma does.
If material is truly strong enough to create legitimate trigger worry a trigger warning is a nice courtesy because it offers a choice. Triggering material should not be required work. Beyond that the path to healing is not pain avoidance, it is pain resolution and you cannot resolve it without feeling it first. So triggering one’s psychological pain becomes a door opening opportunity to begin to heal.
In addition there is a very big difference between being triggered and taking offense, they are not synonymous nor should they be conflated. Being triggered is an inward breach or end run of one’s defenses. Taking offense is simultaneously a psychological defense and a manipulative offense. It turns the table while changing the subject. It is an outward pointing psychological defense.
Trauma caused by LDS material is different than re-triggering past trauma, At lease part of the LDS narrative is demonstratively false and other portions are logically improbable. Uncovering this surprise too quickly can be traumatizing (especially to those who completely bought into their early indoctrination) via feeling betrayed. In this case the potential (new) trauma can be mitigated via innoculation and/or slowing one’s exposure to the truth.
“Wow, if you don’t hear this from your ward nearly every week, we attend a very different church.”
If your church is the bloggernacle then yes, you will hear this nearly every week, and yes, you do attend a very different church. But in my real church with real people, no, I don’t hear this nearly every week.
“Mark B and Jason: Wow, if you don’t hear this from your ward nearly every week, we attend a very different church.”
While “nearly every week” was meant to be humorously hyperbolic, I completely agree with its core point. In my adult life I have been in about 2,000 bishopric or ward council meetings. I would guess that inactive members were discussed in at least 20% of them (none of these meetings were in Utah where the sin of inactivity is seemingly non-existent). An overwhelming proportion of the time these members’ having taken offense at something, or been offended by someone was mentioned in the discussion.
In my experience this concept/notion/teaching of too easily taking offense is very common.
It is impossible but that offense will come, but woe …
Sound familiar?
“In addition there is a very big difference between being triggered and taking offense, they are not synonymous nor should they be conflated.” I’m so glad you brought this point up. In the discussions about trigger warnings, those who oppose them frequently dismiss them on the grounds that people shouldn’t be so sensitive or easily offended, but truly being triggered isn’t the same thing as being offended. It’s like saying “boys will be boys” when talking about sexual assault. Rape isn’t normal boy behavior. Not being triggered by things is a privileged position, so that’s why we should be sensitive to it, but have I failed to provide a trigger warning? Yeah. have I made an offensive comment online? Yeah.
KLC: I attend a normal ward every week just like you. Yes, people routinely refer to others as sensitive or too easily offended. Some people do also caution that we shouldn’t give offense, but the pride of being blunt is omnipresent. Perhaps that’s strongest in conservative areas.
For me, trigger warnings (or content notes, or whatever you want to call them) are a way for me to gauge whether or not I have the strength to face a particular issue that day. If I just spent an emotionally exhausting time listening to and comforting a friend who was raped, I probably don’t have the emotional wherewithal to read an article on rape or a book with a graphic rape scene. I will often come back and read it when I feel more able to tackle the subject. It is not completely ignoring a topic, it is engaging with it when I have the ability to do so. I appreciate those who give me that choice, and resent those that think I don’t deserve it, whatever their reason.
I have never understood the vitriol that discussions of trigger warnings seem to generate. Is it so hard for people to take a moment and consider whether something they write could be difficult for someone to read? It feels very similar to people who don’t believe food allergies are real, and so try very hard to sneak an allergen into an allergic person’s food to “prove it.”
On the choosing to be offended issue, count me in the camp of having heard a comment along those lines almost every Sunday since I can remember. It is so universally understood to be true where I live, that I have alienated those I thought were my friends simply by suggesting that we acknowledge the pain our words may have caused, whether intended or not. I am as capable as anyone of putting my foot in my mouth on a regular basis. I just don’t think I should continue gnawing on it while enjoying the look of horror on the face of the person I’m talking to.
Stephen, Luke 17:1 does have Christ rebuking those who would offend his disciples, but he still requires the disciples to forgive the offender if he repents. In the D&C we are obligated to forgive all men their trespasses, regardless of whether or not they repent. People are always accountable to God for their mistakes, but we as humans are expected in many ways to overlook offensive behavior (turn the other cheek, etc.).
When Trump was just barely coming on to the scene, many LDS people I knew were pleased at his remarks, “He’s telling it like it is!” In a recent newspaper article, a couple Mormon supporters of Trump shook off his bombastic statements, “He’s just joking,” or “That’s just how he talks.” These are the same types of statements used to defend bullying.
The quote attributed to Brigham Young (“He who takes offense when no offense was intended is a fool. He who takes offense when offence was intended is a greater fool.”) has come up several times in my new ward’s RS since I moved in last summer. Perhaps it’s the age of the ward (average about 70 yrs old). Regardless, “telling it like it is” is a virtue, and if you’re hurt, maybe it’s because “the guilty taketh the truth to be hard.”
Some sort of content warning like many critics do for movies seems respectful. I do think the trigger warning thing can easily go overboard.
Argghhh. Auto correct.
Kristine:
Thank you for the link.
I’ll get the other comment deleted when I get home.
Stephen, I deleted it for you. And, you’re welcome :). – Kristine A
Ask and ye shall receive! Thank you for the reading list, I’ll have to check it out. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said we must have different church experiences. Certainly the description of “tactless” members is a fairly good description of me. As I’m sure as is evident from my post I don’t have a problem stating my opinion, and sometimes do so in a less than graceful way. However, most people I go to church with are quite generous with me when I approach them and inform them that they had done something hurtful or offensive and reading stereotypes on the bloggernoccle always blows my mind. Of course, reading your response, it sounds like my experience is equally mind blowing to you.
Overall thank you for the article. This is a topic that I’ve heard so much about on Facebook and South Park (both EXCELLENT sources ;), but nothing this in depth in fair, and I do agree with you and others who encourage greater thoughtfulness and civility in discourse, as well as a need to be sensitive to the feelings of others.
My $.02 on what I hear at church regarding being offended:
If I offend someone and they bring it to my attention I feel bad (even if no offense was intended) and try not to repeat the mistake. I think almost everyone I go to church with in my extremely conservative ward feels the same way. They don’t want to offend their ward members and neighbors. They are overall nice people. They would never say to someone who brought an offense to their attention, “You are too sensitive and your taking the truth to be hard.” Well maybe a few of the extremely arrogant people would, but not most of my ward members.
However, I think when we talk about people who aren’t present (often generically about groups of people, not specific people) we are less charitable. All the time at church I hear about how all the people who are inactive are being too sensitive. All of the people who don’t agree with the new policy are taking the truth to be hard. “The World” doesn’t agree with our stance, but we must proclaim it boldly no matter who we hurt on the way.