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> "A trigger warning is advance notice about subject material that may be difficult for certain students to read, hear or see." But that's not what trigger war

• deleted 10y ago
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• xg15 10y ago
  If you have a phobia, one natural reaction is to anticipate in which situations the "trigger" will occur and to actively avoid such situations. It's well-known in psychology however that this behavior actually reinforces the phobia and prevents it from healing. Trigger warnings seem like the same strategy only elevated on an institutional level. So while they do prevent panic attacks, they would actually do the traumatized more harm than good. The other thing is that people can develop phobias against almost everything. So no matter how many trigger warnings the university put up, there could always be one group which finds their particular triggers not marked up well enough.
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• Jeema101 10y ago
  Avoidance in the form of 'trigger warnings' may actually worsen the underlying problem for people with PTSD because avoidance can strengthen the underlying fear. Successful treatment often actually involves confronting the fear, little by little, until it no longer causes discomfort: "Exposure therapy is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy[118] that involves assisting trauma survivors to re-experience distressing trauma-related memories and reminders in order to facilitate habituation and successful emotional processing of the trauma memory. Most exposure therapy programs include both imaginal confrontation with the traumatic memories and real-life exposure to trauma reminders; this therapy modality is well supported by clinical evidence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder#Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder#...
  • ebola1717 10y ago
    Classrooms aren't treatment centers. Regardless, your point is a much fairer one to raise than the "intellectual rigor" argument the University is making.
  • tangent128 10y ago
    Exposure therapy can be effective, but under controlled circumstances as supervised by a professional and prepared for by the patient. Uncontrolled exposure is more likely to worsen the anxiety than extinguish it.
    • aninhumer 10y ago
      I feel like the idea the parent was suggesting is that avoidance behaviour itself can increase anxiety about the topic, and that encouraging it may end up being more harmful than the risk of uncontrolled exposure, especially when the result of such exposure is not necessarily negative.
  • ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    This argument is absurd and yet I see it often enough that I assume it is a standard political talking point. I mean, are you really arguing that the clinical approach to trauma is to surprise the patient with the topic in the middle of important everyday tasks? Obviously, trigger warning provide a useful tool for people to manage their own exposure to these panic attacks. If this was not the case then no-one would ever suffer from PTSD as it would be instantly self-healing!
    • vonmoltke 10y ago
      You glossed over the first sentence: > Avoidance in the form of 'trigger warnings' may actually worsen the underlying problem for people with PTSD because avoidance can strengthen the underlying fear. The argument is that active avoidance is bad because it makes the ensuing panic attacks worse when they do happen and makes it harder for exposure therapy to work. Your post is addressing a strawman.
• zzalpha 10y ago
  But that's not what trigger warnings are for... it's not just about mild discomfort. They're to prevent panic attacks. I'm sure no true Scotsman would have a problem with that definition...
• tomwalker 10y ago
  If someone has an anxiety disorder of this magnitude then their diagnosing physician would provide the student with the paperwork required to delay their course. This would be for however long is needed to seek the treatment to return to a stable enough level of mental health to return to university.
• ralusek 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology) I had a fear of heights that bordered on panic attacks. I worked out of the 29th floor of a building for the first time in my life and felt like half of the day was spent thinking about how high I was. I was looking for housing and every highrise I had to look out the window and feel a wave of intense panic. So I chose a highrise, and made myself look out the window all the time. Took some time, but I definitely don't have the same reaction I used to. I'm actually totally fine.
• weberc2 10y ago
  This is a use case, but it's not the use case for universities. Universities employ trigger warnings for subjects that might offend particular groups.
• deong 10y ago
  > They're to prevent panic attacks. That might have been the original intent of a "trigger warning", but their sheer prevalence today indicates that this is either no longer true or else we have nothing less than a massive public health emergency that we should be dropping everything else to work to address.
  • galdosdi 10y ago
    It does seem that way. It's kind of how a few people have food allergies, but a larger number of people have foods they refuse to eat despite not having allergies. It's not uncommon to find out that someone who merely has a preference to avoid an ingredient has been fibbing and calling it an "allergy" just to smooth things over socially. This is really frustrating for someone with a genuine allergy because you feel drowned out by all the "fake" allergies that are just preferences and as a result sometimes people take allergies less seriously because they assume your "allergy" is just a preference, or just generally take it less seriously. For example, if someone asks you if something contains gluten, knowing nothing else, what would you estimate are the chances they are actually seriously allergic to it? These days, with the popularity of avoiding gluten in the west, maybe below 50%. This is a scary situation for anyone with a genuine allergy. I'm sure it's just as frustrating for people with genuine PTSD or other situations where real mental health trauma could occur, to be drowned out and lumped in with all these folks who merely experience mild discomfort at discussing a topic. So, a plea -- if you don't genuinely suffer from a serious physical or mental health response to a situation, but merely mild discomfort, be honest and just say you don't like something. You're making it worse for people with genuine problems when you lie and call it a genuine medical problem. If you're not sure, a good rule of thumb is if you haven't been to or plan to soon go to a doctor (or really want to, but can't for some reason eg financial) to discuss the problem, it must not be disturbing your life enough to count as a real malady.
    • armenarmen 10y ago
      very well put
  • scott_s 10y ago
    I don't see a prevalence of trigger warnings. I do see a prevalence of people talking about trigger warnings.
• jotux 10y ago
  I read the wikipedia you linked, specifically about trigger warnings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_trigger#Trigger_warnings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_trigger#Trigger_warning... But your statement: > They're to prevent panic attacks. Seems to counter the arguments in the link: > Richard J. McNally, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, while writing for Pacific Standard,[13] discussed the merit of trigger warnings noting that "Trigger warnings are designed to help survivors avoid reminders of their trauma, thereby preventing emotional discomfort. Yet avoidance reinforces PTSD. Conversely, systematic exposure to triggers and the memories they provoke is the most effective means of overcoming the disorder" while citing several academic studies conducted on PTSD sufferers.
  • artmageddon 10y ago
    > Yet avoidance reinforces PTSD. Conversely, systematic exposure to triggers and the memories they provoke is the most effective means of overcoming the disorder" while citing several academic studies conducted on PTSD sufferers. Right, but I'd assume this is probably done in small increments or doses? A person who's finding themselves exposed to said triggers may not be able to control how much of it they get in certain situations, which could arguably leave them off worse after the event.
  • bmm6o 10y ago
    There's a difference between exposure therapy (conducted with a trained therapist or just in a deliberate self-directed way), and having a panic attack in the middle of your day because of an unexpected stimulus.
  • tedks 10y ago
    That's probably very easy for a rich white man to say. If you have no reason to use a safe space, and are bothered by being considerate to people who have had to live entire lifetimes of oppression for their gender, race, religion, sexuality, etc., it's very easy to be dismissive of basic progressivism in such a way. But it's 2016, and the new generation that is coming to power is going to do away with the concept of universities as institutionalized rub-your-nose-in-it factories of oppression, sexual assault, white supremacy, and similar. You can go kicking and screaming into the future, or you can be on the right side of history. It's only up to you, but there will be consequences, as always, to getting this wrong.
• wfo 10y ago
  If a person cannot read a piece of literature without having a panic attack then perhaps they are not physically able to take a course in, say, English. It is up to the university to decide what it does with this kind of student: do they choose to not admit or graduate students who are incapable of completing the degree requirements? Do they tailor the degrees to students with special needs and make exceptions? Do they insist these students take a leave of absence and receive treatment before they continue? All of these responses seem reasonable. If a student has such a unique life experience that they are not capable of completing standard university coursework, then the onus is on them to make that known to professors or administrators and come to some compromise. It is not the responsibility of the university to label and restructure its courses to acknowledge that there is a tiny fraction of the population that cannot participate in their education without severe distress. Anything could be a trigger. Anything involving criminal justice could be a trigger for someone falsely (or rightfully!) imprisoned. A rape scene could be a trigger for a rape victim. Certain feminist literature could be a trigger for someone whose life was ruined through a false rape accusation. Someone who was recently dumped or cheated on could be triggered by discussing relationships. Perhaps a physics class triggers someone afflicted by severe existential angst -- entropy always increases? Domestic violence, child abuse, war, general violence, bullying, racism, torture -- many of these, things every college student should consider and think about before graduating -- are all triggers for someone. So we should really put a trigger warning on every course. Better, let's make that trigger warning describe roughly what's going to be in the course and what students can expect out of it. Better yet, maybe put the grading scheme, reading list, and the rest of the administrative information about the course in it. We could call it some kind of nonsense word so as not to offend the people who hate trigger warnings or the people who love them. How about "syllabus". Course syllabi already have a generally accurate description of course content so students may choose whether or not to expose themselves to any given material or prepare themselves. The fact that a course is a college course and discusses human interaction at all should serve as enough as a trigger warning for anyone -- there could be triggering material in it. Period. Even if a class is about cold war economics, a student could bring up rape or racism in discussion.
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