there's lots of unnecessary competitiveness, loads of misunderstanding around trying to use similar scales for suffering (death vs. Oxford, for example) Gosh yes, and it is hard to not get into these arguments. I hesitated to make this post in the first place, because it was precisely not what I was after. I have no interest in competing with anyone, and in fact often avoid making mention of my own experiences with this stuff because I'm sure there are people who are/have been worse off than myself. I should add that the ex-partner in the 'oxford' anecdote is still someone I care about, and I had no wish to see that innocence taken away (still don't) - only for him to understand that he *was*, in many ways, an innocent. I'm aware, constantly, that there are plenty of things I haven't experienced, and I try to respect that in my dealings with other people.
I'm aware that people react in a diverse range of ways to the same events, and that people genuinely can feel triggered by things others find perfectly innocuous (the reason I included the toiletry bag story as an illustration of this), and indeed will almost certainly draw different lines as to what constitutes 'triggered' and what doesn't. What bugs me isn't that, but people who are using the term in contexts where they themselves make it clear that they weren't in fact overwhelmed in any way, which I feel is unfair to everyone - maybe someday they will genuinely have a reaction that overwhelms them completely, and there will be no word left to describe it because they've overused that one so much.
no subject
Gosh yes, and it is hard to not get into these arguments. I hesitated to make this post in the first place, because it was precisely not what I was after. I have no interest in competing with anyone, and in fact often avoid making mention of my own experiences with this stuff because I'm sure there are people who are/have been worse off than myself. I should add that the ex-partner in the 'oxford' anecdote is still someone I care about, and I had no wish to see that innocence taken away (still don't) - only for him to understand that he *was*, in many ways, an innocent. I'm aware, constantly, that there are plenty of things I haven't experienced, and I try to respect that in my dealings with other people.
I'm aware that people react in a diverse range of ways to the same events, and that people genuinely can feel triggered by things others find perfectly innocuous (the reason I included the toiletry bag story as an illustration of this), and indeed will almost certainly draw different lines as to what constitutes 'triggered' and what doesn't. What bugs me isn't that, but people who are using the term in contexts where they themselves make it clear that they weren't in fact overwhelmed in any way, which I feel is unfair to everyone - maybe someday they will genuinely have a reaction that overwhelms them completely, and there will be no word left to describe it because they've overused that one so much.