Hi, I saw your post about unreality trigger warnings, and I was wondering if you could give some pointers on what sort of things should be tagged as such. I'd like to help anyway, but having an unfortunately severe dissociative disorder myself, I take the importance of avoiding triggers very seriously. Sorry if you receive this question a lot, and thanks for the answer in advance.
i haven't received this question before, and don't worry, i love getting asks! it's really nice of you to take the time to ask me a question /gen. dissociative disorders can be really hard,
/warning in advance that this will explain some unreality triggers/
some of the main ones are things that you would see on blogs like posts-from-a-funnier-timeline, which, btw, does a great job at tagging unreality. so posts that are completely made up but presented as if they were a truth are usually something that should be tagged. for example, a false announcement like "i cant believe [person/group] said that [false statement]" or "so sad that [person/group] did [something they didnt do]". this is because ppl with dissociative disorders and psychosis already can have a hard time being able to tell the difference between what is reality and whats not, and this makes it more confusing.
- any posts that are like "you're in a coma" or "this is a dream". this is triggering mainly for derealization.
- posts where the OP claims they have gotten this post specifically to the reader, ie "we are trying to reach you through this meme". often related to derealization and persecutory delusions.
- posts claiming that an event didnt happen, especially ones like "the world ended in [insert year], everything after has been imaginary". most recently, the "2020 was fake" meme.
- false confirmation of conspiracy theories like "cant believe that the government just told us [insert something here]". this usually can trigger persecutory delusions.
- the "you're finally awake, that fall looked really bad" meme.
- claims that things like thought projection is real, such as the meme that goes like "i'm psychic blogginf about [x], so if you're thinking of [x], that was me"
- posts that claim the OP and/or the reader have some sort of ability, relatiosnhip, etc.
- memes about like "the fbi agent reading my ao3 history", things suggesting that OP or the reader is specifically being targeted.
im not saying these memes cant be funny to many ppl without mental illness - i like some of them when im in a good headspace too! but it's necessary to tag as a trigger, thats all. yeah, it might make them less funny to your mentally well neurotypical audience or whatever, but please consider those with these more stigmatised disorders.
some things you probably dont have to tag with unreality are things like sarcasm (maybe use tone tags if you're concerned!), posts discussing mental health issues like psychosis or dissociation (the disorders arent unreal!), the fact someone was lying if you're just talking about someone lying, etc.
if you wish to tag a post like this one here which is not unreal itself but instead discusses unreality, think of using "tw unreality mentions", "delusion tw" or "derealization tw", so that people can still filter out these posts and also know that the post itself is not unreal if they come across it.
this list is by no means exhaustive, but hopefully will give a bit of an idea of what to tag as unreality. hope this helps!
