29 January 2013 
There’s been an interesting online debate today about the value of trigger warnings. As with many mental health websites, this site routinely gives trigger warnings before discussing topics such as suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, abuse and so on. I’ve never really heard much debate whether these should or shouldn’t be used. They’re just generally assumed to be A Good Thing.
Today there was an article on the New Statesman website by feminist author Rhiannon Lucy Coslett. She argues that trigger warnings have been unhelpful in her recovery from PTSD. Her argument gets a bit jumbled in places, and at times seems to have more to do with recent online debates among feminists than about trauma. But the gist of it seems to be that shielding people from triggers encourages avoidance rather than recovery.
I do not doubt that they are of enormous service to survivors with specific triggers likely to reoccur on feminist websites, but it has got to a point now where I feel women I have never met are trying to wrap me in cotton wool, and I detest that. PTSD can make you hypersensitive and hyper-aware – not qualities I see as desirable in a writer or an editor whose job is to produce words for the general population. Whether a survivor personally feels ready to stop toppling the boxes is their choice and only their choice. Some never will; the trauma is too profound to ever process. But there are some survivors who are trying to open their boxes, and a trigger warning can serve as an admonition to stay in our shells. I wanted out of mine.
There’s been a swift reply from another feminist writer, Zoe Stavri, defending the use of trigger warnings.
And it’s these people who I’m thinking about when I put trigger warnings at the top of things I have written. If I’ve helped even one person avoid pain, then I am glad. It’s a little thing for me to do, which can make the all the difference for some people.
Trigger warnings are not for yourself; they’re for others. And if Rhiannon from Vagenda prefers not to avoid things, she can use the trigger warnings to seek out content to expose herself to as part of her own personal healing.
On one level I can see what Coslett is trying to say. After all, treatments for PTSD, such as trauma-focused CBT and EMDR, do involve facing the trauma and avoiding shutting it away to cause all sorts of havoc within the walls of your psyche. One could argue that she’s putting herself through a self-directed piece of exposure therapy.
However, it should be pointed out that in trauma-focused CBT and EMDR, it’s being done in a controlled way in a supportive environment. It also – and on this Stavri makes some very important points – is being done with people who have given informed consent. It hasn’t just been left on the internet to pop up unexpectedly at unwary readers.
As an aside, I know some psychiatrists who are quite nervous about PTSD therapies, particularly when it involves talking directly about the trauma. They’re concerned about the risk of stirring up memories, and possibly doing more harm than good by doing so. Personally when I’m working with a child who’s experienced traumatic events, I tend to wait to see whether they choose to talk about the trauma, rather than initiating it myself.
I was curious to see if there’s much academic research on the value or otherwise of trigger warnings, so I did a few searches on Google Scholar. I didn’t find much, though that might be down to me not searching in a particularly systematic way rather than the research not being out there. I did find this journal article, which has the advantage of not being behind a paywall. It discusses triggers in relation to self-harm.
In a content analysis of personal [Non-Suicidal Self-Injury] websites, several individuals reported on their website that they experienced NSSI urges and even self-injured pursuant to seeing NSSI imagery or reading graphic NSSI descriptions [9]. In another study examining users’ responses to NSSI photographs shared within an e-forum, some individuals reported that seeing NSSI images triggered them and/or would trigger others to self-injure whereas others reported that the images were not triggering [32]. Thus, although online activities as a whole have not been proven to result in self-injury for all viewers, collectively, these findings provide preliminary support for the widespread clinical assumption that some people are triggered by graphic NSSI material.
All of which would make intuitive sense to have trigger warnings, so people can make their own decisions about what they want to look at.
I think I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on trigger warnings. In particular I’d like to hear how people tend to react when they see them. Do you tend to stop reading if you see a relevant warning? If not, have you ever ignored the warning and then wished you hadn’t? Alternatively, have you ever ignored a warning and then been glad you kept reading? Do you find them helpful in enabling you to safely browse online? Over to you guys.
I won’t put trigger warnings on my blogposts (not that I write about classically triggery things these days). I have done once or twice in the past I think. But how can I be responsible for determining what people will or will not find triggering? I can’t. The people who read my blog have to be responsible for that themselves and leave if they find something upsetting in any way.
What next? Trigger warnings on Facebook posts? I stumble across crap on Facebook every day that makes me feel bad. Should I tell my friends and family to put trigger warnings on their baby photos? No, what I do instead is hit the hide button. It is up to me to manage my own emotions/instabilities/whatever.
What I have done once, and would do again, is put a blogpost behind a ‘read more’ link so the who,e thing was not on the front page. I was writing a post about very graphic, distressing images in my head and I felt people should be able to choose to read that, thinking more of anyone who may stumble upon the blog rather than regular readers. But I would even make decisions like that rarely.
personally i use them and appreciate them being used, it could just be that someone is having a particularly difficult day and don’t need extra flashbacks or other PTSD symptoms in a given day, they still have a choice after, it they wan to read they can and if they don’t, they don’t have too. i don’t think it’s avoidance, it’s taking care of ourselves and each other.
Although I understand the benefit of putting trigger warnings on sensitive, (and perhaps graphic) content it just isn’t feasible. Certain things ‘trigger’ me but if I’m going to use the internet I have to expect I may end up reading/seeing something that distresses me, as is the nature of the internet.
I also don’t like the assumption that because I have mental health problems I’m a delicate flower and can’t be exposed to things which might ‘upset’ me. When I used to blog I didn’t use them because you can’t trigger warning everything, and how far are you going to go? Also, often you can deduce for yourself beforehand whether something may/may not be triggering and take the appropriate action.
With PTSD I understand things can trigger flashbacks, but people develop PTSD for so many different reasons, even something which may seem relatively innocuous. Where does it end..?
opps, that last bit meant to say ‘even something which may seem relatively innocuous can become a trigger’
I feel quite guilty that I haven’t used them on my blog up until now. I do understand the need for them. I’m now personally thinking of maybe a general warning.
Personally speaking I have some strange triggers which others may not see as triggering, so think maybe a general warning at the top of blog is perhaps best idea for mine. The thing is what some may not see as triggering, others like me may well do, and the same in reverse, which is why I think i’m going to put a general warning.
Whatever we put on the internet could trigger someone. On a bad day for me, a friend saying what a great day they’re having on facebook can ruin my day.
However, forum posts or blogs on specific issues that deal with mental health should contain trigger warnings about content. It’s polite to do so and I know the internet in general is not known for politeness. That said I don’t think the point of trigger warnings is there for the writer. They don’t have to take responsibility for anyone’s mental health but their own. A person is free to ignore a trigger warning and carry on reading.
What we do with our eyes is up to us but trigger warnings are useful to some. It’s not an order to not read this or that.
I read the New Statesman article and was disappointed with how judgmental Rhiannon Lucy Coslett seemed to be to those who find trigger warnings useful (despite her protests in the article that she wasn’t being judgmental). I honestly don’t see what’s wrong with them, though I do think they can be overused. They should, imo, only be for discussions that include graphic or detailed descriptions of abuse, whether that’s physical, mental or sexual.
I don’t always want to read something discussing rape, or abuse in general, and not because of any personal experiences; those subjects can be seriously demoralising if you’re not in a good headspace at the time. The trigger warning is a very useful thing in these instances, as it means I can choose not to read the piece, and come back to it when I’m feeling a bit more ready for it.
It’s not so different to what I do in my day job – I write descriptions for films on an online service, and some of the titles are a bit risque or just plain nasty. I add a line along the lines of “Contains extreme content” so people know what to expect, rather than just starting to watch something and getting a nasty shock. Trigger warnings, as with any other content warning system, is not saying you shouldn’t watch/read the thing, only that you be aware that it contains potentially upsetting or disturbing content. It’s respecting you to make the choice of whether you want to consume that content at that time, or would rather give it a miss.
One thing that did strike me about Cossett’s article was how much of it seemed to be about recent turf wars in the feminist movement rather than about trigger warnings per se.
This bit…
Often, it is coupled with a sense of passive aggressive glee (“um. You should have put a trigger warning on that”)
…left me wondering whether somebody had been using comments about trigger warnings as a way of criticising others, and whether this had influenced her to write the article as a retort back.
I always put trigger warnings on Serial Insomniac despite being cognisant of the fact that – if readers were anything like me – they were likely to read anyway. Bluntly speaking, choosing thus makes any offence or upset caused their fault, not mine. I also gad general trigger warnings on the sidebar, and on the ‘Disclaimer’ and ‘About’ pages, as we have done here.
As it happens, I tend to add them on Twitter and Facebook too, but that’s a less selfish pursuit, because I’m generally tweeting third party links and would like to make potentially vulnerable people aware in advance of the content.
Overall, selfish, altruistic or whatever odd plain lies in-between, my sense is, “why not?” People are free to acknowledge or ignore them as they choose.
I think the “why not?” argument holds a lot of sway with me. Even if they don’t wind up doing any good, they’re unlikely to do any particular harm.
I would have to agree, my blog is private, I only have 12 readers but even so I add warnings–if they don’t wanna read they don’t have to but at least the option is there. I’m not on Twitters but the rare time I link to something sensitive on facebook I do say, that said not everyone else does. But there is no harm in doing so.
I don’t think we need Trigger Warnings and for myself the sort of thing that would distress me are pictures of a certain animal which can appear anywhere and in the least likely places [BBC news webpage sometimes] and there’s no way of protecting myself from that. Even if I look through the TV guide and highlight programme’s which might conceivably contain images of that animal it can still appear in programme’s I would never expect to see it in. This is the only ‘trigger warning’ which would be useful to me. Otherwise I also find holocaust articles/programme’s set off my voices but again I can avoid those as far as possible. When it comes to mental distress, self-harm, suicide, abuse etc I don’t need to be warned and share Narky’s position. I can decide for myself what would distress me, choose not to read etc.
However, images of fresh bleeding wounds, and self-harm “picture galleries”, I view as an unhelpful form of pornography which serves no purpose and gives ammunition to the negative attitudes that many health professionals unfortunately hold. We are responsible for what we put out in the public domain and it’s impact on others in this respect. Frankly I cringe at some of the material on some sites which wouldn’t be seen as ‘triggering’ such as those who think a whole page on masturbation as an alternative to self-harm is actually needed, which fails to recognise the significance of some psychiatric thinking on this very assertion. Or the promotion of distraction [have a bath etc] or crude alternatives [band pinging/ice cubes] as the main approach to self-harm almost to the exclusion to anything else pretty limiting, as the underpinning assumptions here are reductionist.
I never pay much attention to trigger warnings – I am fundamentally too nosy to stop reading! I have never used them on my own blog, either. However, I do pay attention to the way that I write – for example on self harm – to avoid triggering others. I don’t include graphic, pornographic-type descriptions of self harm, because those have triggered me off in the past. Neither do I include photographs of either scars or wounds, because I know those can be unhelpful for some people.
Joanna – I have to say that I included the rubber band whatsits on my blog, because I assume some people find it helpful. I myself only self harm when very depressed, and not otherwise, so I found a “recovery” bit hard to write.
Emma I’ve got nothing against anyone finding band pinging helpful, I just resent professionals trotting that out as an ‘intervention’ without even bothering to ascertain whether the person ‘needs’ to feel pain, whether the sting of a band would in anyway compare to their self-harm and therefore be a viable ‘alternative’, it makes a few assumptions and bands, ice cubes, hot baths, walks and paint your nails can be given as a list instead of actually talking with people. I just struggle when someone with a severed tendon which means a months of painful physio after surgery and uncertain movement potential being given a list such as that when they have more pressing issues such as how do they do everyday things with one arm. I think self-harm sites [not individual blogs] have become really conservative in their outlook over the last few years, to some degree parroting what mental health services offer at their mediocre best.