When we hear the word “trigger,” the curved metal finger rest on a gun commonly comes to mind. It’s a mechanism that, with only slight pressure, sets off an explosive and dangerous force. But less thought about is another harmful type of trigger: a situation, object or subject matter that has the potential to cause post-traumatic stress disorder-like symptoms resulting from traumatic experiences. These types of triggers can cause or re-awaken mental and emotional anguish.
Trigger warnings have popped up online over the past few years, especially on social media sites. They warn potential viewers that certain material may be disturbing, and they give people the option of refraining from looking at it. Trigger warnings have even entered the academic arena as many professors across the country put them on syllabi. This is, however, a controversial decision.
The American Association of University Professors released an official statement in August 2014 condemning the use of trigger warnings in classrooms because they believe the warnings are “infantilizing” and “anti-intellectual,” saying that they infringe on academic freedom.
I disagree.
While reading a recent New York Times op-ed by Judith Shulevitz called “In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas,” I found my brow furrowing and my mouth twisting into a frown due to her – at times – condescending tone. A trigger is so much more than a “scary idea.”
The column even condemns the growing use of safe spaces, which are calm, fun rooms filled with stress-relievers like bubbles, coloring books and snacks. More and more student groups are providing these at their universities as an area where students can go after, say, a guest speaker claims that rape culture isn’t as big of an issue as some make it out to be. (For the record, rape culture is very serious and very real).
Shulevitz writes “safe spaces are an expression of the conviction, increasingly prevalent among college students, that their schools should keep them from being ‘bombarded’ by discomfiting or distressing viewpoints.”
I feel her use of quotations around the word “bombarded” downplays the severity of what being triggered feels like. Much like PTSD, triggers can jar people back into the moment of trauma, making it hard to think or cope beyond the memories and emotions they felt during the time. It’s like being stabbed or being winded, an unexpected suckerpunch leaving you reeling.
For someone overcoming a mental illness like depression, having to go through an unexpected trigger can cause a relapse that can last from hours to days.
Some people think a therapeutic space and an intellectual space can’t co-exist, and maybe they’re right. But sometimes, it’s OK for people to opt out of intellectual spaces for the sake of their mental health.
Intellectual debates and discussing controversial material is wonderful if you’re in the right mindset. It can be incredibly enlightening if you are mentally well. However, a person suffering from depression does not want to hear about suicide at length. A survivor of sexual assault does not want to read, watch or discuss material that deals with rape, abuse or molestation. And people who are marginalized because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, race etc. certainly do not want to sit and listen to something that feels like an attack on their very being, something that will make them feel bad about themselves and reinforce the kinds of negativity they’ve likely experienced before.
Mental health is just as important, if not more so, than physical health. If a person were bed-ridden and unable to complete their assignments, would you blame them? No. The same goes for someone who can’t read a book for class that deals with material he or she finds triggering.
When studying genocides or war, students are bound to see photos or even video of disturbing content. People do not fault these students for averting their eyes from corpses and blood on screens, so why would anyone condemn someone for wanting to be excused during a lecture about rape?
It seems to me that what Shulevitz and other critics mostly have a problem with are content warnings and people who demand them or refuse to participate based on them. There’s a big difference between people who want content warnings just for the sake of ideas they don’t like and for trigger warnings, which are crucial to prevent someone from re-experiencing trauma.
Feeling safe and secure is invaluable. You don’t realize how unsettling it is to be without this security until it happens.
Many will continue to argue that trigger warnings and safe spaces infringe on freedom of speech and academic freedom, but I don’t think that freedom is worth causing pain to another person. Trigger warnings do not prevent someone from expressing an opinion or from teaching touchy subject matter, they simply give people the very important choice to look away.
Jamie Bernard can be reached at bern2479@stthomas.edu.
I agree with the author that trigger warnings have their place–as a woman with many mental health difficulties, I am always grateful for trigger warnings when on the internet so I don’t end up down a rabbit hole of destructive feelings and impulses. However, I think the author is overlooking some important things. First, a college campus is NOT inherently a place of mental safety; can there really be true learning or growth without discomfort, or even acute distress? I don’t think there can be. Second, while I support students having safe places to decompress (and safe ways to so as well), Shulevitz has a point: instead of allowing students to sit, process, and learn from difficult (even traumatic!) material, they are being shielded from it entirely, and that is infantilizing, even condescending. Part of the process of maturity is learning how to handle extreme distress–*especially* that which is valid, real, and traumatic–and not allow it to become destructive. That’s a difficult process, but what better environment to approach it in than a college classroom? Many of us have awful things happen in our lives, some far worse than others; is it in any of our best interests, though, to not *just* walk away from discomfort in the classroom, but rule it out entirely? Compassion for those who suffer is necessary on a college campus, but the possibility of mental anguish cannot become the rule by which we learn, but the exception. Otherwise, we collectively cease to grow.