Hadley Freeman on trigger warnings

I disagree with Hadley on this.

A decent society should watch out for the vulnerable. Trigger warnings are there to help people who are traumatised live the least unhappy life.

I have name changed for this because it deals with suicide so I have given a warning. I have given a few details.

My dad killed himself. My mum found him and 999 told her to cut him down and revive him doing cpr. He had been dead for some time but she was told to do this until the paramedics arrived (took about 30 minutes) as their policy is to try and help the patient. I had to go through the police statement with her and there are lots of incredibly horrendous details physical details that I am leaving out. I had to deal with some of the physical cleanup the police didn’t do. Then she had to be investigated to make sure she did not murder him and we couldn’t have a funeral for months. Which added a whole farcical admin level to it.

She came and lived with us for a couple of months. My DSs had to ‘deal’ with her screams in her sleep in the night. They were young but there was no other way. This was 3 years ago.

What we wanted to do is switch off. Impossible at first but then you want to watch something to take your mind off it. We nipped to London to walk along the southbank and my youngest saw the entrance to London Dungeons with a man hanging as an entrance display. He was desperately trying to not let me see it but broke down later. When watching films and tv series I use Common Sense media but stuff got through.

Its wearing. Trigger warnings about suicide before a programme just mean I can chose to decide whether I want to watch something. I feel I deserve to not have my time invested in a programme ruined and have to have memories coming back when I have to switch off. Ironically I can deal with any other type of suicide - I agree the devil is in the specifics - so I have missed out on a lot of such I could cope with. But it’s just too much to watch for us at the moment.

Lots of friends have avoided me. But a couple of strangers who found out how he died have come up to me and given me advice. Always ones who have been through similar. Don’t let it ruin your life. It will get easier but it is not the same as any other ‘normal’ death. When it’s raining, go for a walk as no one can see you crying in the rain. Also I would add don’t let your children give too many details out as bullies will use it against them. My Ds had to read out Noughts and Crosses in school and got upset and were teased.

Also any journalists out there - don’t use this. It’s personal but I am writing it so you see it from the side of someone who is thankful for trigger warnings. Just so I can be. And let my nerves rest for a bit from being on alert.

Well... I had to go out of my biology class at school once for fresh air, as I felt like I was going to faint after reading about blood circulating round the body. (Yes, I'm a wimp!)

Yes smells are a major trigger. Or music.
The way in which some people move or particular aspects of someone’s personality. Triggers for trauma survivors are rarely black and white. Also I don’t need to be protected from details of rape or other upsetting scenes, I’ve already survived that. I already have that resilience or I wouldn’t be alive.
Trigger warnings serve no purpose as far as I’m concerned but I know that I am privileged enough to be in recovery. And I cannot speak for all.

@Chipsahoy I'm sorry to hear about your experience and hope you can continue healing. You make a really good point: lots of things are unpleasant but what really triggers a trauma response for me is a smell. You can't put a trigger warning on smells.

There's a documentary on BBC iPlayer ATM called Paranormal: The Girl, the Ghost and the Gravestone. Now it sounds lame. And to a degree it is.

But there's an section in it where the reporter explores social conditioning and whether this is to blame for people seeing ghosts.

She talks about one known story which has been completely debunked and it a known urban legend about a road being haunted. This primes our minds to literally 'see things' that don't exist and to create our own fear of something that doesn't exist.

Trigger warnings are doing exactly this. Priming responses and reactions.

It was actually interesting in terms of a situation close to me. Someone was told to expect X, y and z reaction from family. They didn't perform to expectations, yet this person still reacted in a certain way because they were so primed for a certain reaction. They were unable to assess the situation by what actually happened because of the priming.

This is why I don't support them on MN. I think they are counter productive and actually often MORE likely to cause distress. It also allows people to avoid reasonable and rational discussion of difficult subject matter, because they are 'switched off' to being open to that discussion BEFORE it even starts.

It removes free thought from debate, because a thought has been imposed over the conversation before it begins and that's the problem. It is a very dark and powerful propaganda technique that has no place in so many of the situations it's being used in.

Im fed up of trigger warnings at each and every turn

Yes mass infantilisation as someone has said its a really good way of describing things.

”As for Hadley Freeman, I don’t believe that she is interested in the world being a better place or she wouldn’t be working for Rupert Murdoch”

Which newspapers are approved acceptable reading? Do they facilitate important topics of conversation such as social contagion. If not, why not?

Why might we need a range of different newspapers with different editorial lines? Do we think a single newspaper can cover all subjects or from all angles? If not, then are we constricting our critical thinking by instantly dismissing anything that comes from the 'wrong' publisher? Surely if you are well educated, you can judge a journalist on merit of an individual story rather than who the journalist is alone or where that article is published?

Or are you incapable of that, and just need to be spoonfed approved ideas by approved publications?

I do wonder about the capacity of some individuals on MN to construct a decent argument.

This is an excellent point, yes. It could be argued to be deliberate psychological manipulation, particularly when used for young people.

The trouble with trigger warnings is that they are 'leading'. As in psychologically they are priming you to 'expect' a certain reaction and therefore behave in a certain way. It means that your reaction isn't normal - it's manufactured and it's constructed.

I don't think they are a good idea for this reason. In pretty much any circumstances.

A prime example is the biology class with the warning about blood. All it does is wind the kids up and leads, particularly the girls, to behave in a stereotyped way which is affected by social contagion. If the warning hadn't been there the kids wouldn't do it so much.

”As for Hadley Freeman, I don’t believe that she is interested in the world being a better place or she wouldn’t be working for Rupert Murdoch”

Because Murdoch is a capitalist? Because Murdoch is what? I have no love for Murdoch, but I suggest if someone is trying to make declarations about his newspapers, they need to look at his original media stable instead of repeating lazy accusations. He has newspapers targeted towards trade Unionist demographics still within his group. It is an inconvenient fact that he is a capitalist but his media holdings cover a wide range of political views.

Oh, well that does sound idiotic.

The lengthy Covid lockdowns contributed to a massive surge in mental health issues in young people, particularly those in 1st year university when they were suddenly trapped in flats and halls with strangers in a new city, unable to leave except to buy food and unable to attend any lectures in person.

Anyone working in further education will have seen this.

Hadley was making the point that the rise in mental health concerns and trigger warnings predated this.

Sorry for your experience and I echo it.

One of my triggers in fluorsecent lighting. I don't expect the world to exist of trigger warnings about this.

I remember listening to some news about this last year. I think it was ABC radio (Australian ‘ABC’) and it was this paper they were discussing.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366464391_Proceed_with_Caution_The_Trouble_with_Trigger_Warnings

Proceed with Caution: The Trouble with Trigger Warning
Dec 2022*

In looking for it again, there are quite a few papers on the topic.

Here is another.

https://lifeinmind.org.au/a-meta-analysis-of-the-efficacy-of-trigger-warnings-content-warnings-and-content-notes

A Meta-Analysis of the Efficacy of Trigger Warnings, Content Warnings, and Content Notes

By Victoria Bridgland, Payton Jones & Benjamin Bellet

Preprint published August 2022

I found it a really interesting topic.

The slides DD were given weren't warning about a practical lesson (she's in an online school for a start, lol).

It was slides about the white blood cells etc.

I love Hadley and I get what she's saying here but there is another side to this - the adultification of children and destruction of safeguarding - which really needed to be in the article too.

Because society is on the one hand trying to coddle kids so they don't hear things they don't like with trigger warnings etc but also on the other determined more and more to let them make grown up decisions and that is doomed to catastrophe.

Children and teens also now have unfettered access to the most horrendous images online. Some of which are really destructive (e.g. the videos of suicide, the videos of rape that you don't have to dig too deep to find). So if the adults are too scared (because of 'trigger warnings' and talks of 'safe space' and the fear of cancellation I'm assuming) to talk to them about difficult things, they will get a warped and one sided view of those things online.

Gender is a good (but not the only) example of this because it's simultaneously 'this child is so fragile you must change the use of the tiniest words you use unconsciously and reprogram your brain i.e. pronouns' and yet 'They are simultaneously also so mature and capable of making decisions that they can make the decision to do something to their body that may result in sterilisation, serious lifelong side effects and complications and loss of sexual function'. It's totally ridiculous.

Of course the push for drugs and surgery for children is a masterclass in manipulation because it's framed as what you have to accept as the price for saving mental health, though there's no evidence at all this is true - and some evidence to suggest the opposite is true.

However, it doesn't really stack up that children are so lacking in resilience and maturity that normal correct sex pronouns will send them into a tailspin of declining mental health but at the same time they're competent to consent to surgery and drugs which could irreversibly harm them and (in the process) harm their long term mental health. Of course the only reason they're interpreting using normal pronouns as harm is because an adult somewhere along the line has fed them that lie and told them it makes them 'unsafe'.

The two things work in tandem to destroy children - take away honesty about the world and how it works then thrust them into adult decisions they are completely ill equipped to make.

It is a hard thing to do to expose kids to the horrible side of life of course but it is an essential part of parenting and education if you want them to grow up into resilient and competent adults. It's what responsible adults should do in an age appropriate, gradual, nuanced way.

To have a law degree that doesn't teach rape law would fail the students and fail their future clients. I hope and assume that the adults in charge at Harvard law said no to this request.

One thing I can say for certain having volunteered for a while in a legal aid charity in the USA, any students who are avoiding discussing rape law in their degree are completely ill equipped for the clients who will come to them as adults.

I know plenty about trauma, thank you, both personally and professionally so please don't talk down to me.

One of Hadley's important points, it seems to me, is that you can't predict triggers. The things that triggered her as an anorexic probably seemed inconsequential to other people, whereas the things that might be expected to trigger her didn't.

I think trigger warnings are OK up to a point. You just need to know when to stop.

I’ve had extreme trauma. In therapy for over a decade now. Part of therapy is learning to manage and face triggers because you can’t expect the world or people to change for you. Also triggers don’t work like people think. I’ve been through grooming gang type abuse. Rape scenes etc aren’t nice for sure and hearing about it but honestly it doesn’t trigger.
a scene in Paddington triggers. The smell of bonfire triggers. Examples here.
Stuff you wouldn’t expect. so you can’t trigger warning everything.

I’ve chosen a life away from people. I live rurally and interactions with others are when I’m up for it because my nervous system is damaged and I am slowly rebuilding it. Trigger warnings don’t help rebuild it, they keep me stuck.

Yes - there are times when a 'content warning' is appropriate. A school biology lesson noting there may be blood in the next practical class is one - some people are squeamish even apart from trauma-induced 'triggering', the audience are children and they've normally no choice about attending lessons.
But a warning about blood wouldn't be appropriate for anyone in med school, or lectures involving rape and violence in law school. Students surely know what's on the syllabus, what the eventual job may entail?

I regularly present on a topic that includes child sexual abuse - however that isn't obvious from the title of the lecture.

So I include a Content Warning - not a trigger warning- as most people will think they have come to hear one thing and then discover we are talking about paedophiles at some points.

I think this is fair enough as so many in the audience will have had personal experience and not be expecting the subject.

However trigger warnings for anything vaguely upsetting in lectures that are clearly going to cover that topic - no.

@MrsDanversGlidesAgain yes, agree, and “mass infantilism” is an excellent phrase!