The Rise of the Trauma Essay in College Applications

[MacMadame]

I posted this in PI but I think it fits better here:

âLaboratories of successâ: why HBCUs are the best models for race-blind admissions

Post-affirmative action, Black schools show why cultivating diverse campuses should extend beyond the application process

www.theguardian.com

 

[PRlady]

Another, more recent Atlantic piece on the damage done by trigger warnings: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...ngs-feminism-teen-girls-mental-health/674759/

 

[VGThuy]

Another, more recent Atlantic piece on the damage done by trigger warnings: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...ngs-feminism-teen-girls-mental-health/674759/

I read another piece by Jill Filopivoc years ago on this topic, and I thought it was also a good read. I think it's a good companion piece as she wrote this piece more than nine years ago. (I CAN'T BELIEVE 2014 is almost ten years ago!)

We've gone too far with 'trigger warnings' | Jill Filipovic

Jill Filipovic: Universities and blogs do students no favors by pretending that every piece of offensive content comes with a warning sign

www.theguardian.com

I think it's one of those things where we don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water, but many people are almost weaponizing it just to shut anything a person may subjectively won't want to hear. Many have also twisted to where it's a tool to allow them to be highly performative.

It also does something very bad... I've noticed online a tendency for some to dismiss those who may hold a different opinion from them regarding whether certain topics should be discussed or whether certain words should be used that don't shock most people's consciences... by making a judgment on the other person and automatically adopting an attitude that the other person has had an "easier" life than them. It's an easy way to not validate a person or what they're saying and it works very well as a personal insult as well. People are way too comfortable doing that... as if they don't already know that they have no idea who that other person is or what the other person has gone through in their lives.

Spoiler

Which doesn't mean that individual students should not be given mental health accommodations. It's perfectly reasonable for a survivor of violence to ask a professor for a heads up if the reading list includes a piece with graphic descriptions of rape or violence, for example. But generalized trigger warnings aren't so much about helping people with PTSD as they are about a certain kind of performative feminism: they're a low-stakes way to use the right language to identify yourself as conscious of social justice issues. Even better is demanding a trigger warning – that identifies you as even more aware, even more feminist, even more solicitous than the person who failed to adequately provide such a warning.

I do think trigger warnings have a consequence when it comes to discussing literature, important topics, etc. in that it paints the work as "problematic" from the get-go, and it will chill speech from students or others who may want to express that they may disagree slapping a certain trigger warning label on a work but won't because they fear they may either be invalidating another person who finds topics "triggering" or just don't think the "fight" that may ensue would be worth it and then they'll get slapped with an unshakeable label themselves.

Which also brings up another thing... protective spaces should not bleed into common forums where people should feel free to express themselves, and where the bar for "respect" and "cordiality" should be basic and not overbearing and incredibly subjective. We need protective spaces to give people a reprieve and a break to speak to others who understand your perspective, where you can vent, and even rant, but ultimately serves as a place where you can go through all your feelings in that space and then be at a place where you can "recalibrate" and feel "right" again to face the non-protected space.

Spoiler

But the space between comfort and freedom is not actually where universities should seek to situate college students. Students should be pushed to defend their ideas and to see the world from a variety of perspectives. Trigger warnings don't just warn students of potentially triggering material; they effectively shut down particular lines of discussion with "that's triggering". Students should – and do – have the right to walk out of any classroom. But students should also accept the challenge of exploring their own beliefs and responding to disagreement. Trigger warnings, of course, don't always shut down that kind of interrogation, but if feminist blogs are any example, they quickly become a way to short-circuit uncomfortable, unpopular or offensive arguments.

It would seem obvious that not every discomfort, even big ones, rise to the level of irreparable harm. I think the balance is going to be swung back to where people will start arguing that it's okay to be uncomfortable and even feel negative feelings, and the focus will be on how to deal with it in a functional way while also keeping an eye on ensuring speakers more aware of what they're saying and better explain why they are mentioning certain topics or words that can make some squirm.

I think in our age of instant gratification and people chasing comfort and pleasing sensations, we're forgetting that it's important to expose ourselves to situations to where we may to face discomfort and displeasure, even if we grew up in environments where we had more than our "fair share" of pain... we're not alone in that.

 

[MacMadame]

I watch a lot of videos where people say "I'm going to talk about ____ so if you don't want to hear that, feel free to not watch this video" when otherwise it wouldn't be obvious that such a subject would come up and I think there is nothing wrong with that.

(The Atlantic article is behind a semi-paywall so if there is some science to say doing that is bad, I didn't see it.)

 

[On My Own]

So what would be a more productive way to approach adversity? Friedman, the former medical director of the Cornell mental-health program, compares building resilience to physical exercise. “It’s like any form of strength training,” he told me. “People have no hesitation about going to the gym and suffering, you know, muscle pain in the service of being stronger and looking a way that they want to look. And they wake up the next day and they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s so painful. I’m so achy.’ That’s not traumatic. And yet when you bring that to the emotional world, it’s suddenly very adverse.”

The problem is that this idea—that to develop resilience, we must tough out hard situations—places a heavier burden on some people than others. Friedman pointed out that people who grew up under constant stress, perhaps owing to abuse, poverty, or food insecurity, may find that this stress is “erosive” to their ability to use those resilience muscles. The exercise metaphor rankled Michael Ungar, the director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Canada. “Chronic exposure to a stressor like racism, misogyny, being constantly stigmatized or excluded, ableism—all of those factors do wear us down; they make us more susceptible to feelings that will be very overwhelming,” he told me. There are, after all, only so many times a person can convince themselves that they can persevere when it feels like everyone around them is telling them the opposite.

Tyffani Monford Dent, a clinical psychologist and an author whose work focuses on sexual violence and racial trauma, calls this “the resiliency trap.” Black women in particular, she told me, have long been praised for their toughness and perseverance, but individual resiliency can’t solve structural problems. From Dent’s perspective, young people aren’t rejecting the concept of inner strength; they are rejecting the demand that they navigate systemic injustice with individual grit alone. When they talk about harm and trauma, they aren’t exhibiting weakness; they’re saying, Yes, I am vulnerable, and that’s human. These days, patients are being more “transparent about what they need to feel comfortable, to feel safe, to feel valued in this world,” she said. “Is that a bad thing?”

Most of the experts I spoke with were careful to distinguish between an individual student asking a professor for a specific accommodation to help them manage a past trauma, and a cultural inclination to avoid challenging or upsetting situations entirely. Thriving requires working through discomfort and hardship. But creating the conditions where that kind of resilience is possible is as much a collective responsibility as an individual one.

If we want to replace our culture of trauma with a culture of resilience, we’ll have to relearn how to support one another—something we’ve lost as our society has moved toward viewing “wellness” as an individual pursuit, a state of mind accessed via self-work. Retreating inward, and tying our identities to all of the ways in which we’ve been hurt, may actually make our inner worlds harder places to inhabit.

“If everything is traumatic and we have no capacity to cope with these moments, what does that say about our capacity to cope when something more extreme happens?” Ungar said. “Resilience is partly about putting in place the resources for the next stressor.” Those resources have to be both internal and external. Social change is necessary if we want to improve well-being, but social change becomes possible only if our movements are made up of people who believe that the adversities they have faced are surmountable, that injustice does not have to be permanent, that the world can change for the better, and that they have the ability to make that change.

To help people build resilience, we need to provide material aid to meet basic needs. We need to repair broken community ties so fewer among us feel like they’re struggling alone. And we need to encourage the cultivation of a sense of purpose beyond the self. We also know what stands in the way of resilience: avoiding difficult ideas and imperfect people, catastrophizing, isolating ourselves inside our own heads.

In my interviews with women who have experienced sexual violence, I try not to put the traumatic event at the center of our conversations. My aim instead is to learn as much as I can about them as people—their families, their work, their interests, what makes them happy, and where they feel the most themselves. And I always end our conversations by asking them to reflect on how far they’ve come, and what they are proudest of.

That last question often elicits a powerful response. I started asking it because I hoped to let the women I met feel seen in full, beyond the worst things that had happened to them.

 

[VGThuy]

I watch a lot of videos where people say "I'm going to talk about ____ so if you don't want to hear that, feel free to not watch this video" when otherwise it wouldn't be obvious that such a subject would come up and I think there is nothing wrong with that.

(The Atlantic article is behind a semi-paywall so if there is some science to say doing that is bad, I didn't see it.)

Here's a free-to-read copy published on MSN:

MSN

 

[MacMadame]

Here's a free-to-read copy published on MSN:

MSN

So, in fact, there is no scientific evidence about trigger warnings -- whether they are good or bad -- cited in that article at all.

 

[PRlady]

So, in fact, there is no scientific evidence about trigger warnings -- whether they are good or bad -- cited in that article at all.

She cites at least three mental health experts explaining why overuse is problematic. I would assume a large-scale quant study would be hard to construct and fund.

 

[MacMadame]

She cites at least three mental health experts explaining why overuse is problematic. I would assume a large-scale quant study would be hard to construct and fund.

But many of them weren't even talking about trigger warnings. They were talking about responding to trauma. The author is extrapolating.

So we don't know if trigger warnings help, hurt, or are neutral (my vote).

 

[manhn]

I prefer trigger warnings over the movie ratings boards.

 

[On My Own]

She cites at least three mental health experts explaining why overuse is problematic. I would assume a large-scale quant study would be hard to construct and fund.

I can't read this, it's behind a paywall. But this seems to suggest there's indeed a study: https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-trigger-warnings-help-or-hurt-students-e6eb0471

Giving young people advance notice of disturbing material is meant to protect them, but new research says it may only increase anxiety​

I agree with the author you linked. Further, if we go to the clinical psychologists' pages, maybe we can find some papers - because if the author cited them in an article about trigger warnings, then it's possible they've done research. Not to mention, what she says just makes sense, and the topics are correlated.

On a personal level, I kind of just laugh at the phrase "trigger warning". The real world has no trigger warnings. Not sure why some random school setting should.

 

[skatingguy]

On a personal level, I kind of just laugh at the phrase "trigger warning". The real world has no trigger warnings. Not sure why some random school setting should.

Trigger warnings aren't just about schools, and the fact that real life doesn't give trigger warnings is exactly the reason to do so in settings where they are possible. This reminds me of a roommate of mine who witnessed a man being hit, and killed by a city bus, and a few months later we went to see Final Destination. My roommate was enjoying the movie until the scene where one character steps in the street, and is hit by a bus, and then my roommate started screaming, and we had to stop watching the movie. If we'd known about that scene we probably would have watched something else because the imagery of the movie was just too soon after the trauma of the incident.

 

[On My Own]

This reminds me of a roommate of mine who witnessed a man being hit, and killed by a city bus, and a few months later we went to see Final Destination.

Things like "graphic violence" or "adult content" on movies aren't trigger warnings to me, nor are the warnings about photoepilepsy, nor are ratings like "rated R". Those have existed as long as I can remember. This article talks about the kind of trigger warnings that have leaked to colleges from feminist blogs, which is exactly why I mentioned classrooms in my post.

Beyond that, you cannot avoid "traumatic" stress anywhere, and I disagree with "trigger warnings" on art. Should a fictional work come with "trigger warning - car crash" or "trigger warning - rape"? It will give away a plot point.

 

[PRlady]

You can always put down a book or walk out of a movie, I’ve done both. But classroom discussions affect one’s grade and being sensitive to certain traumas is kind. I don’t think every sad thing needs to come with a trigger warning but sexual assault and violence probably do in some contexts.

 

[kwanfan1818]

Real life does come with trigger warnings when humans decide to add them. Just because you don't consider "graphic violence" a trigger warning because it's been there your whole life and you're used to it, but everything additional you consider a bit much, doesn't mean they existed for many, if not most, members of this board's entire life.

The ones we take for granted, though, have been mostly created for societal and parental control and censorship, including self-censorship by industries to avoid sanctions or money-losing labels, rather than in consideration of the person watching or reading the material, so perhaps that's why newer ones are easy punching bags.

 

[On My Own]

You can always put down a book or walk out of a movie, I’ve done both. But classroom discussions affect one’s grade and being sensitive to certain traumas is kind.

So what is the point of a trigger warning in class, if it's not to allow someone to walk out of it?

but everything additional you consider a bit much,

On this page of the thread, it doesn't seem like I'm the only one considering everything additional a bit much.

I've given an article, that seemingly cites some research that suggests there's some evidence that it's indeed a bit much. Would say that also have some value.

Real life does come with trigger warnings when humans decide to add them.

Disagree.

Just because you don't consider "graphic violence"

The article was about classrooms - not movies. Why is this relevant at all?

 

[kwanfan1818]

So civilizations aren't real life? Got it.

ETA:If you walk out of a class when a film is being shown -- and I remember a borderline graphically violent anti-drunk driving film in high school -- or don't hand in the assignment for the book being taught, you lose automatically. If there's a warning, you have a negotiation point for an accommodation, including an alternative book, or a written alternative to a film. Of course, the teacher can just tell you to suck it up.

 

[MacMadame]

So what is the point of a trigger warning in class, if it's not to allow someone to walk out of it?

It's about giving people choices and it's about giving them a chance to "gird their loins" so to speak.

I don't think there should be a trigger warning on a horror film, for example. Everyone knows there will be graphic violence and death. If you don't enjoy that, you don't watch. But if you are watching a video on "Am I the Asshole" Reddit stories, saying ahead of time that a particular story has mentions of suicide ideation could help someone in fragile mental health to avoid watching. Because you are watching to laugh at how dumb people are not to grapple with serious mental health issues and most of the stories aren't like that.

On this page of the thread, it doesn't seem like I'm the only one considering everything additional a bit much.

Other people agree with me!!

I don't understand this argument. People think the world is flat. That doesn't make it flat. Some people think trigger warnings are a bit much and some people think they are kind and/or necessary. Stating either of those things doesn't prove anything one way or another. Make an actual argument.

 

[kwanfan1818]

When movie ratings and warnings about a film/video containing "sexual content" or "graphic violence" were added, it's not like everyone started singing the Hallelujah Chorus. People agreed and disagreed with them. Some thought they were stupid, "politically correct", coddling, evidence of the Nanny State, etc. Some of the warnings and their ilk were changed after launch, re-introduced later under other packaging, or dropped altogether, albeit probably not as much as they might have been if it wasn't considered a potential liability for doing so.

Change is hard, because it's almost always work that few want to even consider, let alone do.

 

[Prancer]

Of course, the teacher can just tell you to suck it up.

If you teach at an institution that offers trigger warnings, it's doubtful that you could just tell a student to suck it up. You would be expected to accommodate that student. After all, if you offer a trigger warning, you are acknowledging right up front that some material could be upsetting and potentially harmful to students. If you do that, it's hard to argue that students should just suck it up.

People have been saying the same things about trigger warnings for years

What if Trigger Warnings Don’t Work? (three years ago)
The Trouble with Trigger Warnings (seven years ago)

Are trigger warnings still a big thing in academia? They haven't been for me and I haven't read anything about them in actual academic news in years, but I don't get out much. But even at their peak, trigger warnings were controversial and I would say uncommon if you look at college across the board. The students most likely to be interested in pursuing the topics that inspire trigger warnings are most likely the ones personally affected--recovering drug addicts want to study addiction, rape and assault victims want to study sociology, and so on.

My experience is very limited, so take it for the non-evidence it is, but I have had exactly one student complain about being triggered (over a discussion about fake service dogs at least 10 years ago) in all these years and I deal with controversial stuff all the time. Of course, students don't always speak up (I once skipped a class because the subject of discussion was upsetting to me and I knew the professor would try to make me participate in the discussion), but still--how often do trigger warnings actually come into play in classrooms? Does the mere fact that they are, say, posted somewhere really have a powerful affect on people's psyches?

I would be interested in knowing that before we get all bent out of shape about how trigger warnings are the cause of mass mental health issues.

 

[PRlady]

to be clear, I think trigger warnings make sense in academic contexts about very difficult topics. In general I agree that we are over-clinical-izing many things that just make people sad or afraid and that learning to handle those emotions is part of growing up.

That said, I have a massive inability to watch bad things happen to animals. There are whole movies I haven’t seen for that reason. Had I read the reviews on Guardians of the Galaxy 3 I would never have watched it, but that’s on me.

 

[kwanfan1818]

If you teach at an institution that offers trigger warnings, it's doubtful that you could just tell a student to suck it up. You would be expected to accommodate that student. After all, if you offer a trigger warning, you are acknowledging right up front that some material could be upsetting and potentially harmful to students. If you do that, it's hard to argue that students should just suck it up.

It's remarkable about what teachers do and don't do, especially with younger children, despite obligations, including legal obligations. Telling a student to suck it up has many indirect flavors, like disappointed face, sighs, making students jump through hoops, making them feel like they are troublemakers, withholding attention, warnings that this could affect their GPA, etc. etc.

Or sometimes it's as direct as the intermission scene in Bergman's Magic Flute movie, where The Queen of the Night is smoking under the "No Smoking" sign.

 

[Prancer]

It's remarkable about what teachers do and don't do, especially with younger children, despite obligations, including legal obligations. Telling a student to suck it up has many indirect flavors, like disappointed face, sighs, making students jump through hoops, making them feel like they are troublemakers, withholding attention, warnings that this could affect their GPA, etc. etc.

Are trigger warnings in use with younger children? I hadn't heard that before.

 

[On My Own]

to be clear, I think trigger warnings make sense in academic contexts about very difficult topics.

Which topics, and what do you expect students to do with them?

But I agree with Prancer that we should actually read and understand the research before coming to the conclusion that this is what is causing mass mental health issues.

 

[kwanfan1818]

Are trigger warnings in use with younger children? I hadn't heard that before.

I have no way of knowing whether this was official or teacher-specific, but my kindergarten, 2nd-, and 3rd-grade teachers gave us oral warnings about the books they were going to read aloud to us: someone's mother died, the children were orphans, there was a war, grampa dies, etc. (We still got all teary when Charlotte died.) So in practice, it's nothing new where I went to school in a generally "suck it up" kind of town.

We also used to have yearly visits from firefighters, who would give out red plastic fire hats and do the Smokey-The-Bear-Only-You-Can-Prevent-Forest-Fires spiel. When I was in 4th or 5th grade, an abandoned bowling alley caught fire near a busy part of one of our neighboring towns, and our Fire Department joined that towns'. Three of our firefighters died, and their children were in lower grades of our school. I didn't know them, but I knew one of their neighbors who told me that the kids were excused from school whenever the presentations happened. I did know we were told to only wear our hats that day and to leave them home after that, so it seemed plausible.

 

[Vagabond]

Spoiler: Trigger Warning

This discussion of trigger warnings has triggered memories of a particularly repulsive short film my sixth-grade teacher showed us without any warning. Innocent kid that I was, I didn't tell my parents. I should have, and I can't now.

 

[PRlady]

Spoiler: Trigger Warning

This discussion of trigger warnings has triggered memories of a particularly repulsive short film my sixth-grade teacher showed us without any warning. Innocent kid that I was, I didn't tell my parents. I should have, and I can't now.

I don’t know if your parents, school or summer camp made you watch Night and Fog at middle school age as I had to. Graphic, horrible footage from the Holocaust. I cannot believe they thought that was appropriate for seventh graders; I had nightmares for months.

Years later I had real issues with some of the things I had to see working at the Holocaust Museum. TBH, as I think about it, it’s strange that I even took that job.

 

[Prancer]

But I agree with Prancer that we should actually read and understand the research before coming to the conclusion that this is what is causing mass mental health issues.

If you're going to read and understand the research (such as it is; social science research is always suspect), then I suggest you don't read an article or two and take what they say about research too much to heart. If you're going to do the research, you need to do the research. I haven't looked, but I bet that I could find research supporting the use of trigger warnings in about two minutes--because if all the research was in agreement, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I have no way of knowing whether this was official or teacher-specific, but my kindergarten, 2nd-, and 3rd-grade teachers gave us oral warnings

I think teaching in K-12, especially in the lower grades, is quite a bit different than teaching in college. One of the major controversial aspects of trigger warnings for college students is that they are adults (or close to it) and should be treated accordingly; trigger warnings are seen as infantilizing. Trigger warnings are also usually voluntary for faculty; if faculty choose to offer trigger warnings, one would hope that said faculty are not going to punish the students who then take advantage of them.

 

[barbk]

Spoiler: Trigger Warning

This discussion of trigger warnings has triggered memories of a particularly repulsive short film my sixth-grade teacher showed us without any warning. Innocent kid that I was, I didn't tell my parents. I should have, and I can't now.

Mine was having to stay after school with the other girls in the class to watch the On Becoming a Woman film and getting my very own sanitary napkin in a box. I was horrified. (Now I'm grateful, because my parents never raised the subject...and the reality of starting my period without knowing what it was would have been far worse.)

I did have nightmares after seeing Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in junior high.

 

[On My Own]

such as it is; social science research is always suspect

See, now when I say this, it's "offensive"