little-red-riding-huntress:

askura:

I’ve noticed for a long time that people on Tumblr are triggered, so to speak, rather easily. While I’ve always believed that you should always be aware that you don’t know someone’s full story I find it very hard to believe that everyone using them term is a victim of such traumatic events. I have friends with PTSD which has occurred through either severe sexual assault or through military action. They are people who have been emotionally and mentally scarred by events that haunt them. Some of them don’t even associate themselves with having the condition even when they’ve been diagnosed and discharged because of it. Their lives are hard, and it’s difficult for them to relieve these experiences, but they handle it with so much more grace than most of the crowd here do. Grow up. Seeing healthy foods, or someone working out, or a happy cis couple, or any inane typical day to day bullshit cannot possibly compare to real sufferers of PTSD and by being so quick and casual with the term you’re willing undermining their struggles. If you can’t, get help. Because you need someone to teach you the difference between a traumatic experience and being slightly uncomfortable.



I am both a (professionally diagnosed) sufferer of PTSD and in the mental health field myself, and I am here to tell you exactly why this is wrong and harmful.

First of all, there are many overlapping terms in psychology. Trigger is used for things that remind survivors of their trauma, trigger flashbacks, and so forth. The same term is also used when discussing behaviors and cause-and-effect, discussing the triggers for various phobias and phobic reactions (such as emetophobia or arachnophobia). Trigger is not a word reserved solely for those of us with PTSD. It has never been a word solely reserved to describe PTSD. Nor does it ‘lessen’ the impact of the word because it’s fairly clear which meaning of it is being used in different cases.

I’m also seeing an unwillingness to accept that survivors and the mentally ill recover at their own pace, in their own fashion. Some people handle their issues ‘with grace’, meaning, in a socially acceptable fashion. Some are not at a point of being capable of that. These people do not deserve your scorn. Being mentally ill or a trauma survivor is not a choice, and people do not always have the control they would like to have over how they cope. While there are some lines that must be drawn (ie, abusive behavior as a coping mechanism is unacceptable) simply being outspoken or asking for trigger warnings is a very reasonable way to cope.

I’m also unsure if you understand how PTSD triggers work, frankly. I have complex PTSD from a series of unfortunate events (don’t mind the pun) and some of my triggers are weird. This is very typical with PTSD. A specific scent of cologne tends to trigger flashbacks for me. So do those white paper plates with the ridges, because one of those was what I picked to stare at during a traumatic event and it’s now so tightly associated with that event in my mind that I no longer use those. Trauma triggers are often unusual or seemingly unrelated to the traumatic event.

This is because the brain latches on to what is essentially superstition- it wants to avoid the event again so it looks for any markers that it feels heralded the event’s occurrence. However, often this perception is entirely wrong. A woman who was molested as a child may find the floral pattern of her wallpaper that she stared at triggering, rather than her father’s foot steps or the smell of his deodorant. A man who nearly died in a car crash on the way home from McDonald’s may find seeing a Mcdonalds triggering.

It’s not unlike what happens with food poisoning- many forms of food poisoning take 6-12 hours to set in, so the last thing you ate is usually not what poisoned you. It’s whatever you ate several hours before that. However, most people who become ill will find they temporarily or permanently lose their taste for the food they ate most recently before becoming ill, as their body forms a false association. Trauma triggers are the same way. So seeing certain foods or people working out can indeed be a trauma trigger.

They can also be an ED trigger, which I think is what you’re alluding to here (healthy foods and workouts as triggers seems you’re implying ED people). Ironically, the majority of eating disorder sufferers have been through trauma (most commonly sexual abuse). There’s a strong connection between the two, so to disregard the triggers of people with an eating disorder because they aren’t as “real” as those of trauma survivors is completely contradictory and uninformed. Eating disorders are also very serious and often deadly, and reasonable accommodations should indeed be made for people with them because they aren’t ‘faking it’ or just too immature, they have a real and serious mental illness.

I also, frankly, find it rather absurd that you act as though PTSD is a unique experience. It isn’t. PTSD overlaps significantly with Borderline Personality Disorder, to the extent where psychologists are beginning to discuss if BPD is a subset or on a spectrum with or an altered form of PTSD. Nor is the emotional response of flashbacks and PTSD-related fear and anxiety unique. The same regions of the brain are activated in phobias. One could argue that this is an even more maladaptive response on the part of the brain because often phobias are of things that present no actual danger, whereas PTSD triggers are often things falsely connected by the brain to a real previous danger. However, intellectual knowledge of what has stimulated that fear response doesn’t change the outcome. Both phobias and PTSD, and possibly other things as well (research pending), can lead to the same part of the brain being activated and thus the same painful and overwhelming terror.

What I find very disturbing is that this post shows a pseudo-concern for the hypothetical population of PTSD sufferers who feel their struggles are undermined by others discussing their own mental health issues, and then becomes openly hostile at the end. I also don’t appreciate being tokenized and used against other people with mental illness. Their choice to discuss their experiences does not lessen mine in any way or harm me. Your choice to determine who is ‘really’ suffering and who just ‘needs to grow up’, on the other hand, creates an environment of doubt and questioning and makes it worse for all of us. And telling people to ‘seek help’ in an insulting fashion, as if it were shameful to need help, as if you have any knowledge to make you qualified to tell people who needs help or not- that’s unacceptable. It’s particularly offensive that you are writing off people’s mental illnesses as ‘slightly uncomfortable’. This is not a triage situation. We can support and help people with all types of mental and levels of suffering. We do not denigrate those who don’t have the absolute worst case.

Leave mental health discussions and guidelines to the professionals, those who are educated, and those who struggle from mental illness themselves. Because you are clearly extremely ignorant with no desire to learn.