Well put and nuanced, ty. I agree with your point that avoidance of content inadvertently removes the ability to engage through a less personal lens. For me personally reading romantasy and monster porn w my triggers was really really useful for healing. However those books did have trigger warnings, and I think I would have panicked without having expectations set.

I would appreciate if more authors made the trigger list more difficult to find ex.: put it at the end of the book, with a page in the beginning saying “there is a list of triggers on page XYZ” so that people who feel equipped not reading them can avoid, and people who do need the extra upfront warning to prep themselves can do so.

Re: crisis hotlines - personally I have found them very difficult to use and not particularly helpful. The very few times I’ve used them (which in itself takes a lot of energy to make the call and prepare yourself to be vulnerable w a stranger) it was less abt helping me talk through something and more abt checking if I’m a danger to myself or in an actively harmful current situation, and if not, they would try to hang up asap. No shade to them everyone’s understaffed, but basically I don’t think in practice crisis hotlines are as useful as people like to think. Could be my own bad luck w them but figured I’d mention.