Does "*Trigger*" actually help?

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this but I couldn't think of anywhere else to put it so I apologize if this is the wrong place.

Does having the word *trigger* next to something actually help you? Does it make you stop reading it or stop watching it? How do you tell you'll find it triggering until you've viewed it's content? And even when you do, do you stop viewing it?

I understand the concept of it but it doesn't really do anything for me. I have to view it first to see if it's triggering and often even if it is, I wont close it. It's like one of those situations where you want to turn away but you just can't. This happens fairly often in this forum actually.

Trigger warnings are designed to keep people safe. Trigger warnings do help people, provided that they have an understanding of the type of issues which trigger them. It sounds as if currently, you are not in that place of understanding to be able to know what type of things trigger you and to be able to control yourself from reading past the trigger warnings in those cases.

Often you can make an educated assumption about what the trigger warning is about. For example, if the trigger warning is located in a thread in the Cutting and Self Injury forum, you can make the reasonable assumption that the post contains something graphic to do with cutting and self injury. Therefore if you were reading that post and you had a problem with hearing details about self injury because it made you want to self injure (in other words, become triggered), you would know not to read past that warning.

Similarly, if the trigger warning was in a post in the Sexual Abuse forum, you can know that what is written is something containing details of abuse. If you happen to be a person triggered by reading about specifics of abuse (for example clues to feeling triggered could be that you start feeling really sick or maybe you start to feel really angry and irritated) then you should not read past the trigger warning and you will therefore not experience the negative consequences that come along with being triggered.

If you feel that a trigger warning is too general and doesn't give you enough information about what type of trigger it may be, please contact a moderator so that they can read the post in question and help to clarify the trigger warning. The moderator may be able to write a small amount of additional information to help people decide if they can handle reading past the trigger.

Trigger warnings really help me

I guess if you had really broad triggers I could understand it helping. Like if any conversation about self injury triggered you I could see why you want to stay away from said section of the forums. My triggers are much more specific than that though. So it's not really that I don't know what they are, it's more that *trigger* at the start of a thread title can't warn me that the thread contains the content that would trigger me. I'm glad it does help people though and it's nice to get someone else's perspective on it. It makes me appreciate putting *trigger* in the title of a thread more now that I know it's not a lost cause.

No it's definitely not a lost cause, it does help people.

What type of triggers do you have?

Lots of people with specific triggers will stay away from reading the general area that the trigger warning encompasses...

salted lipstick wrote:No it's definitely not a lost cause, it does help people.

What type of triggers do you have?

Lots of people with specific triggers will stay away from reading the general area that the trigger warning encompasses...

Some of them are very specific and can't really be avoided, like when I hear about someone else's problem I'm often triggered and makes me feel like my problems aren't good enough. Or a while ago I was in the self injury forum and someone named Jesse posted. It's not that the name Jesse triggers me, it's that the name Jesse whilst being in a self injury forum was triggering. I can't really avoid that stuff. I can't not hear about peoples problems, especially on a forum like this and I certainly can't avoid running into people with names that remind me of someone else. And as you may remember, the A word with 5 letters in it is triggering. I can't avoid that one either.

Ones I can avoid to some extent is reading or interacting with people who have a temper or are aggressive (so staying out of the ASPD forum is a good idea, despite stupidly going in there and ignoring the warnings before). Cutting, I'm triggered by but that gets complicated. Still, I can technically avoid it if I want, I just don't.

Those are the main ones I think...

Yes those are some fairly specific triggers by the sounds of it. Usually people's triggers are a bit more broad than that and so the trigger warning does make it easier to avoid and stay safe. I'm sorry to hear that you are having trouble with such specific triggers.

It is good to hear that you can avoid some things that trigger you here like people in the ASPD forum with a temper or aggressive.

What is complicated about you being triggered by cutting? Is there a reason why you don't avoid reading those ones?

It can take a lot of self discipline to ensure that you take heed of trigger warnings when you need. It took me some practise because I think it is natural to have a curiosity to read what is written. Once I got the hang of heeding the trigger warnings I started to realize how much better I was feeling though and so it began to be worth it.

Well...just in case: *triggers below*

A girl I used to know cut me. Not like a lot, the first two times were consensual but the last time she was angry and had backed me into a corner. She still only cut me maybe 8-12 times but one of them was very deep and the experience was very traumatizing(though I'm proud I recognize that =D). After that, she told me I needed to cut and would give me glass and told me how to do it and check up on them. So now it's kind of like when I cut I'm doing what she told me to do. Even if it is nearly 8 years after all that happened. She said the cuts needed to be as deep as the big cut she did to me (it probably needed stitches but I never got any) so that's how deep I used to try for. I've never been about to cut that deep, which brings up counter productive feels when I cut because then I feel like I'm weak or displeasing her or not good enough. But at the same time I'm still doing what she told me to do. Plus there's the release of endorphins which keeps me cutting.

I don't read too much in the self injury forum but I'm not usually triggered by it. Usually. Once I'm triggered though I don't stop reading it. It's like once I've started I have to finish.