Comment by userbinator
6 hours ago
Teaching people to not let emotions get to them, and offending them to build up that immunity, used to be a normal part of life. I wonder what happened.
6 hours ago
Teaching people to not let emotions get to them, and offending them to build up that immunity, used to be a normal part of life. I wonder what happened.
trigger warnings are not there to prevent people from being "offended" or to avoid emotions they may "get to them." trigger warnings are so folks who have experienced traumatic events can avoid having a panic response triggered unexpectedly.
traumatic events are not a normal part of life and fortunately most people are never forced to experience something truly traumatic. Uncontrolled exposure does not build up "immunity" or help individuals work through or process the trauma. if the warnings seem unnecessary to you, then they're probably not for you.
Trigger warnings have been quite heavily researched at this point and at best they seem to have no positive impact to overcoming traumatic events and a some of the studies have shown them to be a negative.
Put 'scientific support for trigger warnings' in your favorite search engine and you'll find meta-analysis, RCTs, other types of studies, reviews, as well as discussions from the APS, other psychology and psychiatry related publications, etc.
This isn't to say removing trigger warnings is a replacement for actual guided therapy, exposure therapy or otherwise, but it doesn't seem like it would be a negative outcome for long term mental health and would be a benefit for anticipatory distress and potentially in combating avoidant behaviors (though not all studies universally found them to increase avoidant behaviors - just some)
This is a separate question than when it comes to general polite society and social expectations and what is and isn't considered a courtesy. The studies also aren't dealing with people that have just gone through the traumatic experience, so you could make a reasonable argument that exposure to something still fresh could have a very different impact.
People gained more exposure to eachother and realized it was kind to warn eachother of things that might bother them a lot.
There’s quite a difference between the popularized image of what trigger warnings are and the common sense use-cases like “this media contains depictions of graphic sexual assault that some viewers may find disturbing”.