
Trigger warnings don’t help people cope with distressing material - sillybilly
https://aeon.co/ideas/trigger-warnings-dont-help-people-cope-with-distressing-material
======
lilyball
Yeah, that's because they had to watch the content anyway. Trigger warnings
allow people to avoid triggering content, or to delay consuming the content
until they're in a better frame of mind. If you say "This content has X, Y,
and Z, and you have to consume it right now" the fact that you warned them
isn't going to do much.

~~~
fenwick67
The article does mention...

> Consider a meta-analysis of 39 studies in 2007 by Sam Houston State
> University in Texas that found a ‘clear, consistent association’ between
> using avoidance-based coping strategies (that is, staying away from
> upsetting stressors or avoiding thinking about them) and increased
> psychological distress.

... BUT the operative word is "associated" not "caused"

~~~
lilyball
People who can be expected to experience increased distress from the topic are
much more likely to choose to avoid it, so I'm not surprised in the least by
that association.

Also from the article:

> _critics argue that the avoidance of potentially upsetting material is
> actually a counterproductive approach because it offers no chance to learn
> to manage one’s emotional reactions._

This is wrong. You don't learn to manage emotional reactions by being forced
to consume triggering content. If you have a problem with emotional reactions
that needs adjustment, that's what therapy is for. Or using delaying tactics
such that you don't consume the content until you're more prepared to handle
it. Anyone who thinks springing triggering content on people without warning
is good because it forces them to react to it is literally abusive.

And many times avoiding triggering content forever is _perfectly fine_ and
doesn't need to be managed. Personally, I don't have any trauma around rape
but I would really prefer to avoid reading about it, so I really appreciate
trigger warnings on content that includes it. This isn't something that needs
to be "fixed", there's no reason why I must work towards being indifferent
towards rape.

~~~
ghostpepper
I am no expert but it was my understanding that therapy for trauma often
includes exposure to triggering stimuli precisely because it's not a realistic
option to just hope you don't run into something triggering "in the wild" for
the rest of your life.

~~~
tekproxy
My dog was afraid of taking a bath. I fixed this by rewarding her for coming
into the bathroom. Once she was comfortable, I got her into the tub and
rewarded her. After 15 minutes of "exposure therapy" she loves jumping into
the tub and it's easier for both of us when she's stinky. I'm pretty sure
people work similarly but it's hard to reward them with dog food.

~~~
vincent-toups
People aren't dogs to be trained. To an extent, to be human and to recognize
other people's humanity is to accept and accommodate their irrationality where
doing so isn't particularly onerous to you.

~~~
antepodius
Training works on people; people are animals. To a certain extent, this is
what therapy is: helping people train parts of their brains to behave
differently.

~~~
vincent-toups
My point wasn't about whether or not you _can_ train people. My point is that
you shouldn't, in general, think of human beings as things upon which you
perform training.

There may be certain contexts in which training is an acceptable thing for a
person to do or have done to them, but that typically doesn't apply to normal
interactions between adult human beings.

~~~
filoleg
I don't think OP meant that we are expected to train other people, unless you
are a licensed therapist whose job is to do so.

I believe their implication was that we can and should be training ourselves,
which is something we already do every day.

------
ghusbands
While avoidant behaviours often aren't ideal in isolation, they can still be
part of useful recovery. If you're getting therapy for trauma, the therapy may
expose you to triggers in a controlled fashion to help you reprocess the
relevant trauma and memories (for example, using EMDR [1]). Exposure outside
of the therapy can still be damaging.

Not all avoidance and exposure are equal.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing)

------
hmry
In other news: Epilepsy warnings don't help people cope with flashing images.

------
rdtsc
I remember some discussion here about databases with a link to CMU's Advanced
Database Systems materials. This one perhaps:

[https://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2017/schedule.html#wa...](https://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2017/schedule.html#warning)

It has this warning:

\---

The material presented in this lecture uses explicit language and discusses
certain situations in database management systems that may be triggering to
some students

\---

After browsing some of the literature there, I honestly couldn't decide, and
still can't, if it was meant as a joke or they are being serious. The joke
being something like "this database that doesn't actually run fsync to write
to disk before returning a successful result" or they are genuinely concerned
about students' well-being.

But assuming they are serious, which I hope they are, what can students do
there? Do they have a choice to avoid reading the work. Then if CS requires
trigger warnings, how is history. It would just be full of brutality, abuse
and awfulness.

------
giarc
The best way I've seen it described is in the Coddling of the American Mind
[1] which basically says that trigger warnings aren't a treatment for PTSD,
they are a symptom.

1 [https://www.thecoddling.com/](https://www.thecoddling.com/)

------
thrillgore
TWs are just a CYA for incriminating content. It doesn't change the fact that
people won't be either knowingly or baselessly offended by something.

Then again, I believe discomfort is a human experience and trying to insulate
against it, runs against the human experience and life itself.

~~~
crooked-v
Serious question: Do you also disagree with movie classifications (G, PG,
PG-13, R, etc) being prominently published?

~~~
dokem
Have you ever actually needed to look at a movie rating to know if it was
suitable for a child? No, you can just use basic reason and context.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Have you ever actually needed to look at a movie rating to know if it was
> suitable for a child?

Absolutely, yes.

------
lsiebert
Trigger warnings are incredibly important for PTSD sufferers, and every time
people criticize them or make light of them, they forget about the victims of
CSA, the veterans, the disaster survivors, and others who struggle daily to
manage their mental health.

