I'm happy to see that this community includes trigger warnings in thread titles, but I thought they could be used more effectively with a few tips.
As many of you probably already know, trigger warnings are used when the contents of your post may "trigger" significant distress in someone who is struggling with suicidal thoughts, severe dysphoria, an eating disorder, a recent trauma (e.g. sexual abuse), and similar tragedies. It warns these people not to click on the link.
"Significant distress" may mean feeling unwell for the rest of the day, or it may mean having spontaneous self-harming or suicidal desires. Sometimes people act on these desires. You can't avoid every trigger in life, but that's why it's so nice to be part of a community that embraces this concept of trigger warnings.
So here are some personal observations and suggestions:
- When you label your post "trigger warning" or "triggering", but don't give any indication as to what the trigger is, it's not very helpful to someone who is trying to avoid a specific trigger and not others. Saying things like "trigger warning: suicide" or "trigger warning for mentions of violence" are more helpful, because then we know what we're avoiding.
- Warnings are most helpful for posts depicting graphic content, such as: "my friend committed suicide by doing x," "I was assaulted last night, here are the details," etc. It's ok if you forget or it doesn't occur to you right away. If you're not sure if something should have a trigger warning, it doesn't hurt to include it anyway, but it's up to you. Nobody is entitled to trigger warnings; including them is just a way of being considerate to those who may not be of sound mind at any given moment.
That's all. This place is pretty great so I thought it'd be ok if I pointed out a couple of reminders. It took me awhile to figure out trigger warnings (before I needed them) because nobody had ever explained them to me, so I hope some find this helpful.
