Why I Don’t Like Trigger Warnings

A large part of the campaigning seen on social media sites such as Instagram, is highlighting discussion on difficult topics. However, something I always found quite odd, was that these same people were also the ones putting tens of trigger warnings at the beginning of their posts, the people who were warning people to turn away from the content.
For certain conversations, it is only natural that people will be upset or uncomfortable. Using these emotions is often important when having those conversations; after all, no reaction – no change. These words will be left unsaid or made smaller by censoring them. How are we meant to make positive changes when we are told that we simply can’t say things?
There is a significant difference between people feeling uncomfortable and upset by things and being triggered to a point of mental collapse from content that they have read. Yet the words ‘triggering’ and ‘upsetting’ are almost used interchangeably. When a person is triggered, it is not simply upset. Trigger warnings were initially used for safety purposes, as the topics may be so distressing that a person may be at risk of mental harm from consuming that content.
I believe that trigger warnings for things that are naturally upsetting, is perpetuating an ideology that they’re topics we must stay away from.

Using trigger warnings in excess is a problem in censoring content. It is understandable that a creator would wish to protect a mass amount of their audience. Providing warnings for a barrage of topics may make a person feel more comfortable in posting.
However, this also gives connotations of certain things being triggering, when they may have not been thought to be so. By using trigger warnings in excess, we are making many increasingly sensitive towards topics. Rather than normalising the conversations – which is often an intention of these posts on social media – we are censoring them still. In real life we often don’t get this same warning as we do in the online world, therefore an increased sensitivity to seeing things may escalate anxieties that would have never been there had we not seen how we are meant to react online.

Triggers are a very individual thing, meaning that we can never censor everyone from content that would cause severe distress.
I have seen posts online condemning those who say a person is responsible for their own triggers – on the whole, I actually agree with this statement. How else are we meant to learn to live with the things that we are triggered by? There are things that people find upsetting that are so specific that people would not find any requirement to warn their audience about them. We can’t protect people from everything! Unfortunately, the world can be a terrible place and things that cause distress are unavoidable. We are not responsible for anyone else’s actions or emotions; it is for them to deal with.
If we wrap everyone in cotton wool, we increase their sensitivity to those things. To increase our immunity to illness, our bodies need to be exposed to bacteria and viruses, to prepare our body to fight infection should we be exposed again; to increase our ability to respond to difficult scenarios, we need to have more knowledge of them and exposure to them, otherwise we will have a much stronger adverse reaction to it.

Often, a majority of people will proceed to look at the content, regardless of a warning. How much of an impact is it having? Are we just drawing attention to the fact that those things are seen as triggers (and subsequently should avoid them), rather than shielding the vulnerable from them?

Old scars should not be censored. Completely healed scars convey recovery. They show that it does get better and reinforces using positive coping strategies. Healed scars are a massive positive and we need to start changing the narrative that scars show pain, they don’t. They show that we can get through our toughest times and still emerge stronger. Nobody should feel as though they must hide their bodies, because they survived their hardest times. Every single person has vices and times that we choose to cope in a destructive and unhelpful way, but other such negative coping strategies are not censored as heavily.
If we keep writing things like ‘TW: razor blades’, we will have to cater our content to suit every single type of item that can be used for self harm. Being in hospital I have learned that every item in the world could be in some way used to hurt yourself. If you are having these thoughts, you would have them regardless of an item you’ve seen on a breadmaking TikTok!

If I want to be honest about something, I shouldn’t be fearful that my only response will be ‘can you put a TW on that next time?’. Having this in place may make many people feel they can’t share whatever they want, because they fear that they will trigger and hurt people, when usually people are simply not comfortable with it.
I have intense anxiety around a lot of strange things, they are extremely obscure, but can send my spiralling into a lot of harmful thought processes. I do not expect content creators to put trigger warnings in place; I will take active steps to avoid them and if I ever do come across those things, I will deal with my emotions that come up – or possible urges – accordingly.

Saying that I don’t agree with the use of trigger warnings is a controversial statement in many cases, but those people may not understand. I think warnings for extremely distressing content is hugely important. I do not, however, agree with the excessive use of trigger warnings. I do not agree with the way the word ‘trigger’ and trigger warnings are used on social media. In ways, I think that this can cause more harm than good, with sensitivity and extreme distress being more prominent than a trigger warning not being there, as the negative anticipation has already been established by the audience.

Overall, I think we should create a more accepting, understanding and supportive environment, where we can talk openly and honestly about our difficulties without the fear of being censored or shut down by both corporations and people within our own communities. We should be compassionate to each other’s struggles, in the knowledge that sometimes we have to talk about these things to feel better about them.

Mental Illness and Recovery on Social Media

Social media can be an extremely positive things. The modern age has provided voices for the silent or silenced, it has provided comfort for those who once may not have understood themselves and, most importantly, it has provided access to hundreds of communities for people that would have otherwise been suffering alone.
For me, these communities provided comfort, knowing that people were out there suffering and living with the same problems that I do – they made me feel less lonely and finally gave me an opportunity to make friends that I otherwise may not have had (due to my social anxiety). From the disabled community, to the mental health community even stretching to communities of people with particular problems and diagnosis’; it is inclusive and everyone can have a place where they feel like they belong – living in a society that may not be made for people like them.

Being on a section has meant that I have been isolated from the community, especially people my age. Leaving school and entering the confines of a psychiatric unit, meant that I no longer had my friends around me. Even in hospital, I couldn’t fit in with my peers (the patients). There were times of the day when I was allowed to go into a private lounge for a couple of hours just to get away from the bullying and torment of those around me (sometimes including the staff members).
Leaving children’s and adolescent (CAMHS) mental health unit, I didn’t have the majority of the friends I once had, many of which were soon moving to university. However, I did have my social media.
Moving into a locked rehabilitation (mental health rehab), I was allowed a phone (unlike the CAMHS – child and adolescent – unit), which allowed me to keep in contact with some of the friends I left behind and also make new ones. I became obsessed with my Instagram, spending hours upon hours looking at all of the people making such creative things and talking so openly and honestly about their lives and experiences with an array of different issues. I was learning more about things, people and even myself. It gave me a new level of intuition and insight into my own mental and physical wellbeing. Whether it was about the symptoms of my cerebral palsy or my mental health.

However, as with everything, there are negative sides to everything. When it comes to both the mental illness recovery community and the disabled community, these negatives can lead to problems with people’s wellbeing and can do more harm than good.

Sometimes in the mental health community, rather than promoting recovery, some opt to share extremely triggering content that can look like it is promoting the exact opposite – negative coping strategies and even relapse. While it may seem harmless, and a way for someone to express themselves, the more people doing this, the more it can seem that getting better is not the option to take. That accepting negative coping strategies is better than fighting them. Needless to say, that is an extremely dangerous way of viewing self harm.
Others choose to dedicate entire accounts to images of themselves and others (often strangers) promoting extremely ill-looking bodies. In the eating disorder community, this is known as ‘thinspiration’ and can be detrimental to a person’s health. People will use these images as incentive to either continue starving themselves or begin to, to achieve the thin bodies that they see in these images.
Something else that a lot less people talk about in the eating disorder community is ‘body checking’, which is when a person deliberately poses themselves in photos regularly, to check and show how much weight they have lost. Of course, not every slim person with an account full of selfies is doing this, but when it is paired with certain behaviours, a particular mentality and often being self-deprecating, it might be a sign of an eating disorder, or at least negative self image.
Personally, I find that seeing a person relapse far from inspirational. The romanticisation and glamourisation of mental illness and being in a mental health hospital has become more of a problem across bigger social media sites over the years, especially TikTok and Instagram. Honestly, you do not want to be stripped of your right to freedom and you do not want people staring at you in the shower. You are stripped from your dignity, you have a distorted view of what living in the community is like, you become dependent on those around you and you don’t have independence. I have lost my relationship with my family, many friends, while other relationships have become strained or distant. I can safely say that I value my time in nature and outside more so than the ones that I see on a screen.
No amount of attention you get on social media will equate to a fulfilling life outside. You cannot live your life from within the walls from a hospital.
Over the last couple of years on social media, it went from something I started engaging in more often to talk to people to make me less lonely, to something that I was obsessed with back to something that I use for friends and a community feel. I do pace myself a lot more than I used to, though.