The Significance of "Triggered".

originally posted by: angeldoll
Trep, it was a good and informative topic for a thread. It's so wonderful to see you posting and making threads again! Yippee!

(AD out.)

Yes but lets not forget he declared me the winner.

VICTORY!!!

a reply to: Grambler

Some of us value consistency.

It's late, I'm pretty tired after reading this whole thread.

Think I'll go crawl into bed and ask my girl if I can trigger her snowflake and see what happens..

Hope that doesn't offend anyone, it's just for some reason both of these words have kinda taken on whole new meanings for me now. I'm looking forward to experimenting with them...

originally posted by: Gryphon66
Empathy, to me, is either there or it isn't.

It's a spectrum. Believe me. You can be easily paralyzed by empathy ... but its absence is a main indicator of psychosis.

How empathetic are you towards murderers, terrorists, rapists?

a reply to: fiverx313

This gets back to the idea of the "snowflake" as used in Fight Club though.

I am sorry that others are traumatized, but this idea that everything that might possibly be traumatizing to some small degree to a single small subset of people must be guarded against by society as a whole rather than those people taking active control of their own lives and thinking ahead is what people who dislike snowflakism are annoyed by.

I can't see X or Y because it was deemed to be potentially triggering to group Z and the administrators therefore decided not have it available for anyone in order to provide a safe environment.

This sort of things happens more and more.

I can't consume X or Y because someone was busy making sure no one from group Z was too thick to understand that they might find the ideas or content of it offensive/triggering and the people in charge just felt it safer for everyone not to have X or Y available at all.

It's not that we have no sympathy for the potential problems of group Z, but rather than we think group Z ought to be responsible for cultivating an understanding of its own needs and what and where it should and should not go to avoid losing its sh!t.

originally posted by: DBCowboy

originally posted by: Gryphon66
Empathy, to me, is either there or it isn't.

It's a spectrum. Believe me. You can be easily paralyzed by empathy ... but its absence is a main indicator of psychosis.

How empathetic are you towards murderers, terrorists, rapists?

We're not talking abstracts. For the sake of this thread we're talking about autistics and people with PTSD.

originally posted by: DBCowboy

originally posted by: Gryphon66
Empathy, to me, is either there or it isn't.

It's a spectrum. Believe me. You can be easily paralyzed by empathy ... but its absence is a main indicator of psychosis.

How empathetic are you towards murderers, terrorists, rapists?

Not as much as I used to be. That's the funny thing about empathy, in my experience, as I said, it's either there or it isn't.

ETA: Deleted in order to stay in line with the intention of the OP

Empathy vs. Sympathy. Empathy is the ability to experience the feelings of another person. It goes beyond sympathy, which is caring and understanding for the suffering of others. Both words are used similarly and often interchangeably (incorrectly so) but differ subtly in their emotional meaning.

www.diffen.com/difference/Empathy_vs_Sympathy


Just in case anyone needed a refresher.

I agree, If my choice of words offend, Then it's because I meant them to and your reaction is completely up to you.

originally posted by: intrepid

originally posted by: DBCowboy

originally posted by: Gryphon66
Empathy, to me, is either there or it isn't.

It's a spectrum. Believe me. You can be easily paralyzed by empathy ... but its absence is a main indicator of psychosis.

How empathetic are you towards murderers, terrorists, rapists?

We're not talking abstracts. For the sake of this thread we're talking about autistics and people with PTSD.

Then why don't you ask some people with autism and PTSD?

a reply to: Gryphon66

Perhaps in order to get a truer picture of the situation, you should empathize with the abuser while he's in the act and the abuser while they're getting brutalized too. And then empathize like that for a long, long time before you rush to empathize with the abuser getting hacked to death.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Gryphon66

Perhaps in order to get a truer picture of the situation, you should empathize with the abuser while he's in the act and the abuser while they're getting brutalized too. And then empathize like that for a long, long time before you rush to empathize with the abuser getting hacked to death.

Yeah, I deleted the example to stay in line with the OP's stated limits on the topic.

In my experience, however. you're talking about mentation and judgement (my example did too).

I'm saying that empathy is either felt or not felt. It's not always "on." Let's respect the OP though. My bad for going off topic.

a reply to: Dudemo5

Dude, thanks for posting the link to The Oatmeal. I actually took the time to read it, and found it very interesting!

This thread has made me think of the playground retort:

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” Who in the heck thought that one up? Never understood that one, even as a child. Or maybe I’m just thin-skinned?

Trigger events? The trigger of a rifle, the triggers for the bomb?

A world of harm is just behind the slightest pull of a trigger.

a reply to: Lolliek

It's true though.

When you let someone hurt you with words, you give them immense power over you, and most people who attempt to hurt you with words aren't the sort of people you should be giving that much power to.

As someone who spent several years being bullied and some more time with an emotionally abusive boyfriend, I can tell that when you truly internalize that and grasp what it means, it's very freeing.

The only people who really hurt me with words are the ones whose opinions truly do matter to me, and they are generally the people who truly do care - their words should matter.

Getting back to the OPs point ...

The term was initially used regarding autistic children. The phenomenon of them being "triggered" is an automatic response that can range from stressful to unbearable for the kid and their families.

For PTSD victims, we're talking about the description of a process whereby all the trauma they've experienced can come back to them in a second.

Why would any of us want to invoke that kind of pain for nothing more than a verbal slap in the face?

I have also heard it used in MIND CONTROL theory ..he said with nuclear irony...

a reply to: Grambler

Speaking as a person with a measured IQ is 115 without the ability to do advanced math using times tables,If you can tell me a better term for DYSCALCULIA than MATH RETARD for a pissed off BASTARD like myself as I have NO idea of my parentage ,ITS a secret....
I would like an answer from a better educated man...

a reply to: Gryphon66

Again, getting back to my point above:

For an autistic child or person, they may not be in control of knowing for sure what sets them off. It really depends on where on the spectrum they are.

However, for victims of PTSD, isn't part of the process learning what can set you off? Isn't part of regaining control of your life learning the ins of outs of those mental pitfalls?

If you cede that process to society at large, you are leaving control of your life up to others by assuming the world around you is adapting and adjusting to your needs rather than you taking control and adjusting your life to what you need.

a reply to: ketsuko

If you cede that process to society at large, you are leaving control of your life up to others by assuming the world around you is adapting and adjusting to your needs rather than you taking control and adjusting your life to what you need.

Are you unaware that PTSD is a mental illness brought about by severe trauma? What you are saying is akin to telling a person with clinical depression to "snap out of it"! Can you 'get that"? If these patients are victims, it's due to external factors. They don't want it. They didn't ask for it. They don't like it.

What you suggest is a vastly oversimplification.

It varies in endurance. It can last a few weeks, months or a lifetime. And yes, there are management tools, and medications to assist. Anybody reading this who has been diagnosed with it, should know, it can pass, and episodes can be reduced, over time, from maybe one a day, to one a week, to one a year, to even one every few years, to none at all.