Maxine's Journal

Note: The following post is NOT likely to be triggering, at least any more so than a toiletry bag, but may offend/upset a few people. It is not, however, a personal attack on anyone, and the blog I am referring to is not on LJ.

I just came across yet another blog in which someone uses the term 'triggered' to mean 'somewhat upset/annoyed me'. I'm not going to link to it, as it's just one example amongst dozens that I've noticed lately. This is not what 'triggered' means, people.

Triggering is what happens in PTSD and similar anxiety disorders. It refers to an event or object, not always predictable* that causes the person to experience a flood of feelings and/or flashbacks that are incapacitating in nature, and in themselves intensely stressful. Misusing this term to mean 'anything that upsets you a bit' is intensely invalidating towards people who genuinely have experienced this.

I don't like to play the victim card, because I don't see myself as a victim. I went through a bunch of crap**, it left a few scars, physical and mental, I was incapacitated to the point of being unable to leave the house for several months, and I still have the odd recurrent symptom. I learned from it, was changed by it, in some ways for the better, took responsibility for my recovery, working through a long slow process of desensitisation in safe environment with safe people, and then moved on. I'm not interested in sympathy for what I went through. I don't think post traumatic stress is a club to beat people over the head with either, but I want to make it clear that I am coming at this from a position of knowing what I'm talking about. This is my lived experience, and I'm telling some of you - I really hope you know who you are - that your use of this term seriously trivializes my experience, and REALLY PISSES ME OFF.

By all means mark your posts about sensitive topics 'potentially triggering', but be damned sure you know what it means before you claim, yourself, to be 'triggered' by anything. In your parlance, it 'triggers' my urge*** to beat you until you understand both that PTSD (&c.) isn't a political tool, and that comparing your feeling of being a bit shocked/cross/angry (possibly the most intense feeling you've experienced in your sheltered life, but still a manageable sensation) to another person's being completely incapacitated by terror and despair is inconsiderate at best, downright offensive at worst.

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*I was at one point triggered into an unexpected flashback by the sight of a friend's toiletry bag (ironically said friend is a trained psychotherapist, but of course he had no idea that his bag of shampoo etc. looked like the one belonging to my abusive ex-partner, or that hanging it on the door of a hotel bathroom would remind me of a situation in which I nearly died - then again, who better to have a flashback around than a friend who also happens to be a therapist?)

**Referenced lightly in my introductory post

***I am not a violent person, and merely having an urge does not mean I'm going to act on it, but boy have I had to grit my teeth.