Trigger Warnings Help Me Deal With Trauma In My Own Time
By: Lizzie Bestow
Tags: Health, Trauma, Life, Mental Health, Life Lessons

Trigger Warnings Help Me Deal With Trauma In My Own Time

How one website has helped me process traumatic incidents

Photo by Colby Ray on Unsplash

Trigger warnings have been much maligned as of late. They’ve been described as indicative of a “snowflake generation”, too scared to see anything mildly unpleasant, cocooned in cotton-wool by over-zealous parents. But trigger warnings have really helped me deal with the traumatic thing that happened to me.

A trigger warning (often shortened to ‘TW’) is a kind of advance notice of a potentially traumatic image or phrase occurring in a film or literature. There are varied responses to the idea of a trigger warning. Urban Dictionary (arguably the encyclopedia of the youth) shows a polarization in views between people; the ‘top definition’ at the time of writing applauds trigger warnings, described them as ‘a warning before showing something that could cause a PTSD reaction. Commonly used as a joke, its meaning has unfortunately depreciated, drawing more stigma to mental illness.’

Another, however, takes a wholly negative view of the trigger warning — describing them as ‘a phrase posted at the beginning of various posts, articles, or blogs. Its purpose is to warn weak-minded people who are easily offended that they might find what is being posted offensive in some way due to its content, causing them to overreact […] trigger warnings are unnecessary 100% of the time due to the fact that people who are easily offended have no business randomly browsing the internet anyways. As a result of the phrases irrelevance, most opinions that start out with this phrase tend to be simplistic and dull since they were made by people ridiculous enough to think that the internet is supposed to cater to people who can’t take a joke.’

I don’t see it this way. Trigger warnings have really helped me. I use a site called DoesTheDogDie.com; a place where trigger warnings are given for material that could be sensitive to some eyes. The website scours various forms of media and assesses the content. It’s founded on the goodwill of users. I’ve found it to be a life-saver.

I was in a psychiatric hospital a few years ago after everything with me, mental health-wise, reached a crisis. I had experienced a traumatic sexual assault when I was a teenager, and I had pushed the experience down deep inside me. I had barely thought about it. Then, a similar kind of thing happened again around consent — a male friend was very drunk, and I tried to push him away. He tried to kiss me because he thought I was his girlfriend. I completely broke. I remember crying after it happened, and someone stopping me in the street to ask if I was okay. I wasn’t.

I ended up self-harming voraciously; daily burning myself or cutting the soles of my feet. I was binging and purging sometimes up to six times a day. I had to pour dishwashing liquid over the food I’d thrown out. It was intolerable. I ended up being sectioned under the UK’s Mental Health Act, and I was inside a psychiatric institution for a fortnight. While I was there, a healthcare assistant backed me up against the floor while she screamed at me. I was scrambling around on the floor like a dog. My parents traveled six hours north to visit me, where they would only stay for half-an-hour or so; they said they had to get back on the road, but I knew that they found it too upsetting.

My father, a man who is normally very Stoic by nature, cried when he saw me in the hospital. I’d never seen him cry before, and I’ve never seen him cry since — and I’ll be twenty-five next year. My heart broke a little as I saw his eyes fill and a single, solitary tear trickle down his cheek.

I didn’t magically get better upon leaving the hospital (as some people think), but that’s a story for another time. The important thing is that talking about mental illness became very distressing for me. Watching suicide attempts on screen left me squirming in my seat and sometimes in tears. I also found it hard to see images of psychiatric hospitals. It became incredibly tough to sit down and watch a movie with my family without worrying that there would be a scene that would make me feel distressed in it.

I was already struggling with a Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I struggle with relaxing. When I’m thinking about self-care and what routines to implement in my daily life, there are often suggestions on the internet of ‘doing things to relax you’ — to which I think, “well how am I meant to do that?”

So dealing with relaxation is something I really struggle with. I can’t deal with doing nothing; I start to feel guilty, I start to feel like I need to be doing something productive. Trying to relax and watch a film is stressful enough. But this is where DoesTheDogDie.com comes in; it offers warnings as to the potentially triggering material in over 7,000 movies, TV shows, books, and video games.

The first question on every page is “Does the dog die?” Apparently, that used to be the only question. Creator John Whipple told Lifehacker that the site was originally his sister’s idea, “She found it frustrating to watch a movie with a dog in it because worrying over the survival of the dog made it impossible to enjoy the movie.” Now it’s expanded to cover a wide range of issues, like films with strobe effects, books where a parent dies, violence, self-harm, and torture, to TV shows where Santa is revealed to be a fictional character.

Some questions aren’t covered, like “Is someone sexually assaulted?”, linking to the site Unconsenting Media, which meticulously tracks sexual violence in various media forms. But over 70 categories are covered, and that’s helped me deal with the awkwardness of an unsuspecting scene that could provoke a traumatic response in me and a general awkwardness with my family. Sure, things have got a little better since; I hardly use the site now, as I’m a lot less prone to traumatic responses. But I’m slowly tapering down from my medication, and so I’m aware that I can become triggered a little easier at the moment.

I’ve found trigger warnings to be really helpful when I’m recovering from traumatic past incidents. I understand that some people can find trigger warnings unnecessary. But if that’s you, then — congratulations — you don’t need to use them. Scroll past that TW to your heart’s content. But for those of us who do need trigger warnings, it can save us an unnecessary amount of heartache. It’s not about completely avoiding everything that might upset me or trigger me. It’s about dealing with those trauma-inducing situations safely with a professional, like a therapist. I’m currently doing CBT-E, and I’m addressing some of the traumatic things that happened to be there. For people who really need them, trigger warnings are so important.