I was triggered when I went to college. It was a big assignment and accounted for 1/4 of my grade. I slogged through it.

I had to put together a scrapbook of my life focusing on my early childhood to share with my future elementary school students.

I had a horrible childhood and I had to revisit it. Not only that, but I had to try to scrounge up pictures which was not an easy task. Families in turmoil often lose or destroy photographs. I had to contact all sorts of unpleasant people and beg them for pictures. They all lived 500 plus miles from my location, so I was pretty much at their mercy.

I did find out that my sister stole most of the family pictures (so that she could keep them "safely" in her garage because she didn't think anyone else would take care of them.) Said sister would not release any pictures to me. Finally, my other sister was able to convince the first sister to give her a few pictures. That sister scanned two pictures for me so at least I had two pictures.

I had to contact Aunts and Uncles trying to get some damn pictures. It took hours and hours with few results.

It hurt to see all of the other student's idyllic pictures with fancy clothes, happy families, and cute hair while I looked so tense and unkempt.

No this wasn't a "typical" trigger, but really, how many are?

Triggers are personal and can be as innocuous as a cologne or facial hair. Perhaps it could be an accent or a color. There is no way to prepare.

I just wish 1/4 of my grade wasn't based upon something that I don't have total control over. It's not my fault I have few childhood relics while others seem to have boatloads.

Jen, I also have very few relics and souvenirs from my childhood, to the point where during my teenage and young-adult years, I often questioned myself as to whether any of those things actually happened. Fortunately, I did manage to get my head straight on that eventually, and the Internet has been a huge help in finding reminders and documentation of the places I lived, even if the material doesn't pertain to me directly. I hope your assigment results were a lesson to your classmates.

But yes, in general, the faculty here are absolutely right: you never know what will cause a reaction in someone, and most of us are not trainined trauma doctors. And there is such a thing as people who are so tramuatized from a past incident that they really aren't ready to function on their own in open society. Just tossing those people out there is not likely to be productive, either for them or for the people who have to deal with them.

(I won't even get into students who want to exploit the whole "trigger warning" thing as just an excuse to get out of assignments.)

(I also won't even get into the fact that the students, in insisting on these warnings and removal of controversial material, are just advancing further along the curve with the philosophy that much of the faculty has long supported.)

Jan, So sorry for what you had to go through; but,that wasn't so much an example of a need for trigger warnings as it was an example of an idiot professor who thought he had a right to examine his students' personal lives/history.

This fool professor was oblivious to the fact that not everyone had an idyllic childhood. Sounds like he grew up in a bubble and still lives there through the coddling protection of the academic environment.

I'm trying to imagine what the trigger warnings would be for my classes.

"Warning: stellar destruction will be discussed in the lecture on supernovae."

"Warning: discussing the wave nature of light and the properties of diffraction gratings may cause confusion and frustration."

Actually, here in Texas the one thing we do run into teaching astronomy are creationists: "Warning: material in this class will provide observational evidence that the universe is more than 6000 years old."

I just wish 1/4 of my grade wasn't based upon something that I don't have total control over. It's not my fault I have few childhood relics while others seem to have boatloads.

Posted by: Jen at June 4, 2014 5:30 AM

Sure you did. If I had been in your position, I would have de-stressed myself, by creating a fake happy family in my scrapbook, to ace the assignment.

If this assignment was post computer days, Photoshop is your friend.

And when professors require banal shit like this, for a supposed college class, no less, they deserve to be lied to. It is none of their damn business.

Jen, I agree with Isab on this. You have no idea what their lives were really like while growing up. For example, I had a friend who would had a pretty strange childhood and had little to no contact with parents and siblings for the last 25 years or so. Well she looked everyone up on Facebook and then became depressed because their lives looked so much better than hers. I told her, stop worrying about it, you're only seeing what they choose to show the outside world. You have no idea what their lives are like behind closed doors.

"And when professors require banal shit like this, for a supposed college class, no less, they deserve to be lied to. It is none of their damn business. "

I am declaring a thread winner right here. Nothing is going to top this piece of common sense.

Astra,

Warning: This class can cause irreparable brain damage. Common symptoms are increase in rational thought and deductive reasoning.

Astra, your comments reminded me of the Total Perspective Vortex from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was a torture device that worked by showing you the entire universe, and your exact place and importance in it.

Astra, your comments reminded me of the Total Perspective Vortex from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was a torture device that worked by showing you the entire universe, and your exact place and importance in it.

Like this image released from Hubble yesterday:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/27/image/a/

Frankly, I think the human brain can't comprehend that level of immensity anyway. Straight into denial we go.

The only people I worry about "triggering" are those with PTSD who experience flashbacks.

As for everyone else, well, they can just grow the hell up.

> I just wish 1/4 of my grade wasn't
> based upon something that I don't
> have total control over.

Jeezuz.

Look, I think you'd agree that what Amy's done with this blog over the years is extraordinary. She's built this forum into a psychologically sustaining shelter using the Safe Place™ principles elucidated in T.J. Singh's seminal 1987 article in Psychology Today magazine. All of us, her blog visitors, have learned to welcome each other's sincerest expressions without bitterness, or criticism, or disruptive counterpoint.

OK, that didn't happen... Such a blog (and such a planet) would be worthless.

Seekers, I'm sorry that bad things have happened to you in the most intimate realms, but your personal problems got nothing to do with what's happening to others. You shouldn't let your resentment convince you that have rest of us, or even just the successful ones, have "total control" over anything at all. Doing so makes you look like a either a simpleton child or a psychopath who doesn't understand that other people are real.

Nobody gets anything done without immersive hard work, the kind that engages the world as one finds it— With a (very) few resources under our command, but with most forces giving us no heed whatsoever.



"So Cridmo!," I hear you asking, "What two stories did you read all the way through before coming to the blog this morning?" Well, Pilgrim, I'll tell ya.

First was this article in the WSJ, sent by a friend. The guy makes all the right points, but the deepest one is merely implicit. It's not just that the vast majority of pivotally important lives will be lived by unremarkable people; the most rewarding lives will be lived by them, as well. A deeply imperfect life is the signal of humanity: That's everyone you'll ever meet.

Secondly, here's a picture of a beautiful young woman dancing in 1989. She's only a few years younger than I am, and I remember what was going on in my life in that month. In the 25 years since, I've had a few crawlingly low moments, but some stunning successes as well, times of wealth and comfort and elegance that I'd never dreamt possible. Those moments have come because others let me find my own path, leveraging my own strengths and weaknesses as I saw fit.

The beautiful girl is from today's annivarsary photo essay on the Tiananmen Square massacre at Mother Jones dot com. China, our most populous country, is full of idiot hillbillies who think others shouldn't be allowed to do what they want. When they accede "total control" to government, they are not kidding.

Look at the body language and facial expressions of the others in that photo. That week, late May 1989, is as free-minded as China ever got to be. She's not dancing anymore. I wonder if she survived, or whether she got crushed under a tank.

Those of us who've struggled for our achievements resent the implication that we're lucky.

The problem is not that your grade is based on things that are out of your control.

"Although many of us include analyses of the cultural logics and legacies of trauma and/or perpetration in our courses [...]"

I wonder if they could translate that into plain English for me - because what I suspect it translates to is a giant waste of everyone's time, and a pile of stinking cant.

(Perpetration? Of what? Icky-badness?)

I just wish 1/4 of my grade wasn't based upon something that I don't have total control over. It's not my fault I have few childhood relics while others seem to have boatloads. ~ Posted by: Jen at June 4, 2014 5:30 AM

The problem is not that your grade is based on things that are out of your control. ~ Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at June 4, 2014 11:51 AM

If you let your unhappy childhood turn you dark and sit in that darkness resenting other for their fond memories and plentiful memorabilia, that's your call. It seems like a waste of a good adulthood, however.

Some advice I once received/read/heard: "You don't get to choose what happens to you in life, but you do get to choose how you react to it." Choose wisely.

I'm not a psych expert, but I know enough about PTSD to know that anything can be a trigger for someone. Every single class would have to carry a trigger warning. It doesn't necessarily have to be a topic of discussion. It could be any sound, sight, taste, smell or tactile sensation if it has an association with a traumatic event in someone's life.

It's completely unrealistic to protect everyone from triggers.

Warning

I'm tired of psychology in public affairs. It's been getting bigger and louder across my whole life, improving neither the care of the afflicted nor our common realm with them.

I don't want to deal with cute new ideas and terms like "trigger."

"Trauma" describes physical injury; Policy has little to do with it nowadays. Distant strangers need not concern themselves with the 'cultural logic of your PTSD revisitations.'

Wow! Professors that have grasp of the real world.

I wonder what all these coddled college students will do once they hit the real world and actually suffer rejection, insults, and start to realize that the world isn't centered on them?

This is going to sound harsh, I'm sure, and I don't care. If you're such a special snowflake that you have to have the world bubble wrapped for you, stay the fuck home. Otherwise, get over it. If you need professional help to do that, get it.

"Triggers" belong on things that shoot. Period.

My point was that Anything could be a trigger.

I'm sorry if that point was lost.

We love you, Jen.

But there are far too many people in America, in government and elsewhere, who think the problem is not that things go badly for some, but that things go so well for others.

Or that the problem isn't single motherhood, the problem is all those other children with a loving mother and a loving father who are so well-adjusted by comparison.

Or that Americans are too safe and rich, any they won't be truly enlightened until they're as malnourished as a nomad in the desert.

I think Jen's real problem is that it was a douchebaggy assignment to begin with. First of all, it's a third-grade thing: "Here, kids, cut up these pictures and make a collage! Don't eat the glue!" It's in line with what I've said before about ed schools and how many of the students go into elemetary education not because they want to teach second graders, but because they want to be a second grader. Second of all, it's not like anyooe was actually learning anything from this assignment -- it's not like they were being asked to count the galaxies from Astra's Hubble Deep Field image and estimate the universal gravitational constant from it.

Assuming that Jen asked for and didn't receive an alternate assignment (it not being possible for her to complete the one that was given), if I were her I would have been tempted to double down: "Oh yes, kids, let me show you my scrapbook. Here's my dad, who molested me when I was 3. Here's my mom, who beat me into a coma when I was 4. Here's my uncle Joe, who raped me when I was 12. Here's my cousin Jane, who stole my identity when I was 20."

I wonder what all these coddled college students will do once they hit the real world and actually suffer rejection, insults, and start to realize that the world isn't centered on them?

Sue, sue for discrimination. Some kind of discrimination.

I wonder what all these coddled college students will do once they hit the real world and actually suffer rejection, insults, and start to realize that the world isn't centered on them?

Sue, sue for discrimination. Some kind of discrimination.

"Triggers" belong on things that shoot. Period.

So, the horse should have been riding Roy Rogers?

Crid: Look, I think you'd agree that what Amy's done with this blog over the years is extraordinary.

I think Amy's greatest advancement, as far as this blog goes, is the creation of link entries, so now you have a special place to post your consecutive inane tweets. And the rest of us don't have to see them in every thread.

Now if she could just come up with an "Ignore" fuction. (I'd use it.)

As the seven humanities professors and several commenters above have pointed out:

"Flashbacks, panic attacks, and other manifestations of past trauma can be triggered by innocuous things: a smell, a sudden movement, a color."

The professors suggest an insightful approach to dealing with vulnerable students:

"Institutions seriously committed to caring for traumatized students ought to be directing students, from their first days on campus, to a rich array of mental health resources."

Many of the kids on the adolescent unit of the psych hospital where I work have been through some truly traumatic shit. Many are suicidal, some have PTSD, and some of them's brains are just broken.

"Triggers" are a big issue there. Almost anything under the sun can be a trigger for somebody somewhere. Part of the therapy is teaching the kids how to identify their triggers, and some basic "coping skills" they can employ so they don't become dysfunctional when they encounter something that triggers them. They're not taught that they can avoid triggers or to expect other people to shelter them.

Most of the kids really value this information and want to do well. They don't want to live their lives as emotional basket cases that annoy or are pitied by other people.

For "institutions seriously committed to caring for traumatized students" I suggest that traumatized students who identify themselves as susceptible to being triggered be required to take a semester long course: "Trigger Happy: Identifying your triggers and how to cope with them without disrupting the world around you."