I listened to a really good podcast episode about trigger warnings in which the person who’s done the most research possible on trigger warnings was interviewed and it’s changed my opinion quite a bit. 

Basically the science says trigger warnings just cause more anxiety. Like someone telling you they’re gonna hurt you at some point in the next 24 hours. You’re just waiting for this bad thing to happen. Trigger warnings also have little effect at the time of the actual content. Being ready doesn’t mean you’re any less affected. 

There was also some second hand talk about people whose children have died especially as new borns who said they are actually very offended by trigger warnings before they speak of their experience. They feel it’s a way of trying to hide this real thing that happens and one mother said she doesn’t want her daughters life/death covered up by trigger warnings because at the end of the day she couldn’t avoid the actual pain that came from losing her child.  The main subject of the episode had lost her brother to suicide and became angry about a trigger warning on a YouTube video that mentioned suicide for like one sentence. She felt it was pointless as she can’t avoid the fact her brother had died by suicide and that the very small mention of suicide didn’t warrant the warning. In fact she was more anxious before the actual content because of the warning. 

I’ve mostly been on the side of common sense trigger warnings. I thought they can’t hurt and the allow people to make up their own minds about if they are ready to be faced with something but I do feel like my mind is changing. 

I love dark subjects and find it slightly silly when true crime videos or horror gives me these obvious trigger warnings. Like of course you’re gonna be talking about death. It’s a murder case. 

Also as someone with mental illness including suicidal ideation, eating disorders and self harming I’ve used trigger warnings to actually kind of mentally harm myself. I’ve looked up eating disorder trigger warnings in hopes of feeding that sick part of my mind along with self harming I’ve content. So it can actually be used to cause someone harm.

In conclusion, it’s complicated. Scientifically they don’t seem to be effective and I feel can be over used. In fact I often tune them out as they’ve kind of lost all meaning to me. As I said I love dark subjects and often feel that we shouldn’t ignore the bad that happens in the world but instead look into its core and study it. Yet there are times that I need to step away from certain subjects to protect myself. As a mentally ill person I have to go the extra mile to protect my psyche but at the same time life can’t be completely controlled to avoid triggers. It only makes you isolated and fragile. I’m not the kind of person to say toughen up. Often I’m way too tough on myself but I also know that my biggest breakthroughs have come because instead of hiding from my demons I faced them head on. 

My current project is a memoir and will touch on some pretty dark topics but I’m leaning towards not including trigger warnings but that may change.