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POOL PARTY
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things i love about Keith
collar popped up to his ears
belt is not attached to his pants at all (itâs on top of his shirt)Â
Emoâ˘
a professional conspiracy theoristÂ
is ready to fight at a moments notice
will fight anything. fight you. fight your mom. fight that guy other there.
jokes have to be explained to him
is just, so damn extra
âItâs been an honor flying with you boysâ *met them 4 hours ago*Â
impatient af
*voice crack*
sits on top of tables like a mannerless goblinÂ
does not listen
cares deeply about his fellow paladins
lays in bed with his shoes on like KEITH NO THATâS NASTY
this screenshot:Â
âThe ocean is a friend of mine.â

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The real irony of the people who make jokes about being triggered is that they tend to idolize the military/veterans as if combat related PTSD isnât a real thing that also has triggers. Yâall make fun of the people you call heroâs when youâre making fun of the teenagers with PTSD from non-combat related issues, you canât separate the two.
Most of the people making fun of triggers are making fun of all the bullshit âââtriggersâââ, as in the people calling a mild uncomfortable feelings triggers.
The problem with making fun of a trigger is you genuinely do not know whether they are âmildly uncomfortableâ or if that is a thing that is genuinely causing severe anxiety, depressive episodes, or stress responses. Most of the âââââbullshitâââââ triggers Iâve seen being made fun of are actual trauma survivors who have their trauma associated with something unusual or strange. Because the thing that triggers their PTSD or panic is odd, people, not unlike yourself, are writing them off as âwhiny babiesâ or âtriggered sjwsâ or call their trigger bullshit because they cannot understand the association.
For examples: Sirens are one of my triggers. When I hear sirens I get an immediate panic response. This was due to being in an active war zone as a child (The response is significantly worse if it is an air raid siren or sounds too similar to an air raid siren.). If you didnât know I was in an active war zone though, it might seem silly to see an adult panic and attempt to get to a safe place because an ambulance, fire truck, or police car went past them.
I have a manager who is triggered by the presence of police. Specifically police, other uniforms are fine (i.e. security in the mall does not set off her panic response). Her trigger is severe, if a police officer talks to her, she starts panicking and sobbing and cannot control it. This is because when she was young, two police officers threatened her repeatedly and psychologically abused her for 6 hours while they tried to find out where her brother was (yes, this was illegal. Her parents were not home at the time, and were unaware she was alone as the brother in question was meant to be watching her). If you didnât know that story though, it might seem silly to see an adult woman burst into tears and have a panic attack because a cop said âhiâ to her.
I have seen posts by an abuse survivor talking about how the sound of a garage door triggered them, due to abuse by a parent. They associated that sound with the abuser returning home and the abuse beginning. The sound became a trigger because their mind associated it to that. I saw another post by a rape survivor talking about how she was triggered by the sight of eggs because she made eggs for her rapist after heâd raped her. Her mind associated eggs with the trauma due to the two being connected at least in her mind.
Brains are weird. Trauma doesnât make sense. The point is, YOU do not know if someone is ââââbullshittingââââ or not. You do not know how someones trauma associated itself with something odd, which is something trauma really does all the time and making fun of trauma survivors because you donât understand the association between their trauma and the item that triggers their ptsd or anxiety is absolutely wrong and absolutely hypocritical if you think any other form of trigger is acceptable or okay. You donât get to decide other peoples trauma triggers. They didnât even get to decide them, and to tell someone that youâre okay to make fun of them because what upsets them doesnât make sense to you is absolutely not okay.
I should note too: Phobiaâs are real triggers too. People have panic attacks when exposed to their phobiaâs in the wrong way. I need certain pictures tagged because I am absolutely terrified of heights, which is a pretty common phobia. People can have serious phobiaâs to everything and anything though, and there are things I am not afraid of that others are that may seem strange to me, but to them are very real and very frightening. Just because it seems odd to you, doesnât mean it isnât still real to the person experiencing it.
This post needs a zillion more notes. As a Complex PTSD sufferer I truly hope that people will someday stop policing othersâ triggers and health problems as if they have a single clue.Â
Just BACK OFF and let people LIVE.
And PTSD has ALWAYS had odd triggers, this isnât just a modern thing. My grandmother couldnât do anything with the reservoir on the back of a toilet because when she was nine, she was gangraped. When her attackers were in their stupor, she took all of their guns and put them in the reservoir of their toilet, and ran through the street naked until someone helped her. Having to put the weapons she KNEW they were going to use on her behind the toilet stuck in her mind, that was what became a trigger for her brain- along with being unable to go outside in her bare feet ever again.Â
One of my closest friends is triggered by someone touching his hair, because one of his stepfathers swung him around by his hair and smashed him into things. Now any time someone touches his hair, he gets so badly panicked he just vomits on the spot.Â
And then you have people with conventional ptsd triggers like me- itâs hard for me to see blood and violence in certain contexts. Oddly, itâs fine in video games, but in movies or TV shows- ESPECIALLY if itâs suicide- it triggers me. Because through my suicide prevention work, Iâve WITNESSED suicides, so as a result it triggers my ptsd.Â
Brains are strange and unpredictable in what they associate a situation to, and what becomes a symbol of trauma. But itâs not anyoneâs job to gatekeep the subject, because it does absolutely no one any good. When someone says something triggers them, you need to respect it. And you also need to respect that triggers can generate different responses. My grandmother would get quiet and skittish when triggers. My friend vomits when triggered. I get enraged and frustrated when triggered- an unconventional response to a conventional trigger.
Some people cope so well that they only get âuncomfortableâ. Iâve even seen one person who would get a âhighâ because their body would try to release a shitload of dopamine in response to it, and then theyâd crash. Shitâs weird, and all you can do is respect what someone says about their own boundaries.
Also, thereâs a common misconception that trigger warnings are always about avoiding the trigger. Thatâs just not the case. A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare. Iâve heard it compared to the fact that people can get used to and tune out a noise like a smoke detector beeping if it happens in a regular and predictable way. But random, unpredictable beeps cause immense psychological distress to almost anyone if you are forced to listen to them long enough. Letting people know a trigger is coming often helps mitigate the reaction.
This is such excellent commentary.
Two things to add. Â Perhaps @anti-feminism-pro-cats might appreciate this specific thing.
I was once asked to please tag cats.  And I was like âOookay, bud, Iâll try, but like, ž of my life IS cats, so I canât promise anythingâŚ?â  Because that just seemed really weird to me.
And then, even though they didnât have to, they actually wrote back and said, basically, âHey, the reason Iâm asking is because I had to witness people torturing cats in a situation I couldnât escape, and now I just ⌠canât.âÂ
Oh shit.
So I said âHey, holy fuck, Iâm sorry. Do you need me to tag all cats, or just housecats? What about cartoon cats?  I just want to help you out, friend.â
And again, even though they didnât have to, they came back and said âCartoon cats arenât too bad, but what I really canât handle is seeing kittens.â
Fucking ⌠fuck.
And Iâm not gonna lie, that fucking hurt and chilled me to read.  Just ⌠the story there.  I donât want to know it.  It makes me sick just imagining it.  So I now tag for cats.
Itâd be easy to say âItâs stupid to be triggered by kittens.â
But, uhh, I really donât think that situation is âstupidâ at all.  I think itâs fucking tragic.  And that person had the guts to ask, knowing that they might get made fun of for it, and then they were even kind enough to explain, and Iâm grateful to them because it taught me something I intellectually but did not yet viscerally understand.
A healthy person, or even just someone with different triggers, canât understand the significance behind triggers.  And triggers can be really fucking weird or even seemingly inappropriate.
So I got to make a choice.  I could say âIf you canât handle cats, seriously, Iâm not the blog for you.â  Understandable, I suppose.  Or I could say âJFC that sucks, and the rest of the goddamn internet is flooded with untagged cats.  Maybe ⌠maybe I can do this one thing so that they will feel safe reading my blog? Maybe I have the power to actually ⌠help a little?â
And obviously, I made the latter choice.
Hereâs another thing.
Recovery is a process, and eventually a lot of people move away from needing trigger warnings.  They are a helpful tool to protect yourself during a certain stage of healing.  That healing might take a really long time, and it might never be complete ⌠or ⌠it might only be necessary for a few months or years.
So you arenât âcoddlingâ people by tagging for [x thing you think shouldnât be a trigger], youâre enabling them to engage on their terms.  Engaging on your own terms is literally the only way to make progress, therapeutically, so asserting that trigger warnings hinder progress is just not factually a correct statement at all.
You personally may choose not to tag for anything, and thatâs fine.  You are absolutely allowed to run your personal space however you want, and people shouldnât bug you about it.
But what you donât get to do is decide what a âstupidâ trigger is (hint: there isnât one, thereâs only fucked up situations that leave fucked up scars) and whether or not someone is experiencing severe or mild discomfort.  You canât know that.  Their reaction isnât even a good guide to how they are feeling inside.  They may seem only mildly uncomfortable.  You donât see them losing their shit later because something hit them way worse than they thought it would, and they thought they were okay at the time but ⌠hahaha, nope.
I guess ⌠a lot of people seem to think that thereâs this whole category of âspecial snowflakeâ people wandering around saying âI know how to get sympathy and validation: Iâll ask a total stranger to tag for cookware because Iâm âtriggeredâ by spatulas!â  Just as if thatâs liable to elicit the kind of validation truly lonely and desperate people need.
Or maybe ⌠maybe they think thereâs all these people who are so unacquainted with ârealâ pain or fear that they think their mildly uncomfortable feelings about Furbys compare to, and this is so often the example used and I think that is so wrong, combat vets who canât handle fireworks.
What it comes down to, it seems like, is trying to extrapolate a story from the trigger so that you can say âStop crying, you donât have it that bad!â  Which is ridiculous.  As someone above pointed out, triggers can seem nonsensical even within the context of the instigating trauma. I remember the eggs post.  The things that stick with you about trauma are not always just the things you expect.  You canât actually guess anything about a trauma from a seemingly inexplicable trigger beyond âWow, fear of paintbrushes, plastic cups, and raisins ⌠I bet thatâs a story.â
And if that story that they imagine doesnât match what they think is a âvalidâ trauma narrative, then they feel justified in dismissing it.  Completely missing the fact that thereâs no such thing as a âvalidâ or âinvalidâ trauma narrative, because trauma is a really strange and subjective thing.  Also completely missing the fact that itâs not okay to try to make that judgment to begin with.
A lot of people seem unwilling, for some reason totally alien to me, to make that empathetic leap and say âOkay.  I donât need to know more.  I believe you.â  They want to police other peopleâs experiences.  And thatâs just one of the worst impulses of humanity.  Itâs really nasty, and it gets applied in so many horrible ways to mental illness of all kinds.  It needs to stop.
Ultimately, it costs you nothing to be cool about it.  It costs you nothing to take what people say at face value, or to believe strangers and not comment on their mental health issues.  It costs you nothing to say nothing, even if you donât believe them.  Because you are inevitably going to be wrong, and why risk making yourself look like a clueless, deliberately oafish asshole?
Iâm really confused as to why this is an issue, except certain segments of the online community take great pleasure in being critical of other peopleâs attempts to cope, because they have invested a lot of their self-image in being âsmartâ and âdiscerningâ and âno-nonsenseâ and ânot gonna be fooledâ ⌠and they really enjoy tearing down people who are saying âthese things are unfairâ or âthese things are hard for me.â
âYou arenât really hurt/traumatized/oppressed!â is a truly unpleasantly common thing to hear these people say.  Often they will even say it outright.  Other times, it comes across indirectly.
Itâs not at all surprising for anti-feminists to also be anti-trigger-warning, and I think this is probably why.  I know it was the case for me for a very long time.  Then I kind of ⌠grew up, I guess?  Enough bad shit happened to me and to people I know that I acquired sympathy.  And realized that, actually, my own traumas have left me with some pretty weird issues, things that make me uncomfortable but which other people are unlikely to consider inherently threatening.  So I had no room to judge.
Itâs sad, because itâs actually a whole lot less effort to believe people when they talk about their experiences than it is to sit there, smoldering with disdain and resentment over the person who really canât abide milk, of all things, and asks that it be tagged for.
If youâre angry about trigger warnings and are lashing out about it, just ⌠go ask a mutual friend for a hug or something.  Go do something self-affirming.  Because the trigger warning thing is not about you or for you.  You might as well spend your energy doing something nice for yourself.  Youâre lucky not to have to wrestle with a fear you very well know is ridiculous.  Enjoy that and move on.  Donât waste your time thinking about how many people are wrong to feel the way they feel.  Just let it go.
I also want to emphasize something said above:
A lot of times, a person is able to view a trigger and be perfectly fine if they were warned beforehand and allowed to mentally prepare.
This is huge.
I can engage with my triggers.
I can do it voluntarily on my own terms, and the effects can, depending on circumstance, be pretty minimal.
I can do it with warning on someone elseâs terms, and depending on circumstance I can be mostly okay to messed up but still mostly functional.
Or I can do it without warning at all, and depending on circumstance, fall apart a little, or a lot.
If given control of the situation, I can get away with a âyuckâ feeling and then move on.  If not, I may need medication to bring me down.  It can fuck me up for a couple of days if I was not allowed to choose when/how/whether to engage.  If I am, hey, wow, look at that, Iâm mostly all right.
This is not evidence that itâs not that bad. Â Like with a lot of illness, disability, and mental health stuff, just because I can do it sometimes doesnât mean itâs okay all the time.
This is how these things work. Period. Â This is actually what recovery from trauma looks like, this is how it works, this is what you have to accept if you want to accept that any trauma at all is valid.
It really is a useless endeavor to try to draw conclusions about someoneâs trauma from whether or not they ask for, use, or need trigger warnings.
And tbh, even if they come right out and say âI donât have PTSD, I just hate seeing pictures of dogs, Iâm so triggered lolâ, thatâs them being horrendously disrespectful of mentally ill people.  Itâs not an excuse to then be even more disrespectful by using that to draw conclusions that allow you to dismiss the very concept of trigger warnings as stupid.
There are people who fake entire illnesses, okay? Â Who lie about having cancer or whatever. Â But we donât take those people as evidence that people who have, you know, actual cancer must be lying and pretending to be special snowflakes.
Got some real Cassian vibes or maybe Azriel I canât decide!
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