Trigger Warning : exploring the popular use of a loaded saying

  "I feel so triggered right now."

This has become an all-too-common saying in our time and place, one that describes a visceral reaction to something or someone. 

While the concept of triggering has therapeutic roots, it has become so popularized in this cultural moment that we have lost the true weight of its origin. It is one of those great American colloquialisms that subtly shapes our ways of thinking and being. It is even used in a derogatory way when people seem too fragile to see or hear something of an extreme nature. You may hear something like, "Trigger warning for snowflakes!" 

While I can appreciate the term, it has become for me, a loaded saying that trivializes real trauma and rationalizes retaliation.  

Sarah Holland, a clinical psychologist with the Viva Center defines the concept of triggerring as follows.  "When we experience a traumatic event, our brains activate the more primal parts of our nervous system. This initiates our “fight, flight, or freeze” reactions, heightening our senses to help us survive; heart rate and breath quicken, the stomach clenches, and the body shakes. This animalistic, emotional part of the brain overrules other brain processes in favor of survival. We stop processing information and storing it in our brains as linear memory. Rational thought halts as the body readies for action."

Think of a veteran who suffers from PTSD hearing an explosion, triggering a reaction where they dive for cover. Consider an abuse survivor who watches a movie depicting similar abuse and experiences flashbacks or dissociation that causes them to relive their trauma. Triggering is real and in this sense the term proves helpful category that creates empathy for people's otherwise inexplicable reactions. 

Trivializing Trauma

More recently though, the common use of triggering has trivialized real trauma, taking on a meaning more akin to being upset, offended or disgusted. I've found it being used so easily by friends, colleagues, and have found myself using it myself from time time, in a way that is not actually true.  

In the situations I'm thinking of, it would have been more true to say, "I found myself reacting more angrily than I expected to your words," instead of, "Your words triggered me."

Or, "That movie scene caused a surprising fear in me," instead of "That movie triggered me." 

Am I being pedantic? In some senses I can understand its common use. The past two years have been traumatic for everyone in a sense. We all feel a bit triggered somehow. But there is a danger in the popularization of feeling triggered. Allow me to explain my caution with the term. 

Weaponized Emotions

In our culture of outrage, we can easily weaponize our emotions when we use the term triggered. By so doing, we rationalize retaliation. I mean, the very nature of the word triggered implies some kind of violent reaction. If a loaded gun is triggered, a bullet flies out of the chamber. To be triggered is not merely to feel something deeply, it is all too often to say or do something in reaction to that feeling. 

An involuntary reaction 

Moreover, because the term triggered is used in the passive form, it implies an involuntary reaction. Rather than say, "I was hurt so I retaliated," which accepts some responsibility, it implies that this reaction was something over which I had no control, much like the reflex of a nerve that has been touched. If I am triggered, I am therefore absolved of responsibility for my reaction, especially if it is retaliation.  

A hall pass from healthy discourse

Beyond retaliation, being triggered can rationalize our desire to take flight from people with ideas that make us feel uncomfortable. In his book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt explores the mental fragility fostered by our education system that has disabled students from interacting with those who hold different ideologies from them. The concept of feeling triggered gives students a hall pass from healthy civil discourse that would otherwise build mental resilience. 

I'm afraid that until we start to take responsibility for our triggers instead of rationalizing them, there are going to be a lot of bullets flying around followed by avid claims of innocence. There may also be a lot of people retreating to hide in their ideological trenches. 

So, perhaps we need to find some practical ways in which to put our triggers on safety? 

This is not to suppress our emotions or ignore unjust treatment towards us. It is to take responsibility for our reactions even while we acknowledge what may have caused them.

 I recommend a few ways to put on our emotional triggers on safety.

• Use the term more sparingly. If everything is a trigger, nothing is a trigger.
• Before you use it, ask whether your motive is to absolve yourself of responsibility for retaliation.
• Be more aware of your levels of emotional resilience. Are you more sensitive to things at some times than others?
• Give a few trusted friends permission to call you out if they see you becoming over-sensitive or reactionary.
• Resolve to sleep on it before responding to a potentially volatile situation. Most things can wait a night.
• Pray through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in which he calls us to turn the other cheek and pray for our enemies. Ask him for Him grace to do be a non-anxious presence.
• Sit with the example of Jesus' betrayal and denial by his friends, His  false accusation at his trial and mockery at his crucifixion and ask for His Spirit to strengthen you in the face of treatment that would tempt you to retaliate.
• Let's be gracious to those who are genuinely suffering from PTSD and triggering experiences.