Triggered

Mcumpston, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Nearly two years  ago I was leading a slightly unusual but relatively normal middle class life. I had no inkling that I was going to become a "triggered" person, that I would be discussed as a vulnerable adult, that I would be diminished, demeaned and reduced in so many ways. I had not the faintest idea I would ever refer to myself traumatised, never mind that it seemed to be quite significantly: what I did, and couldn't do, thought about, tried not to think about,

Years ago, when I still went to things without considering the psychological or emotional risk and how it might affect me, I went to a creative writing, poetry-type event, run by a very nice man in a nearby city. People read out work that I didn’t generally appreciate or enjoy so I only went a few times. I remember, on one of those evenings, hearing the word SJW. I had to ask a young person what that meant and despite still being in my forties, felt old and out of touch when they explained.

That same evening, I heard people give “trigger warnings”. What a peculiar expression, I thought, while realising I had become my parents. I wondered who this mass of apparently young people were, who were being triggered and why hadn’t my generation gone through all this triggering?

There are, of course, genuine reasons why many younger people are struggling. They could tell you better than I but some part of that would probably include an overload of everything that isn’t “real” that fills our lives now: pretty much anything on your smartphone. Real, in the sense of doing things with people or things in front of you in the physical world.  TV isn’t really real, but you did at least, used to watch TV on the sofa with your family because even when video tapes were invented, watching what was scheduled was a habit. Many people don’t watch TV as a family now. Certainly my kids never have. I was surprised to learn my friend ten years younger has always done this with her more cohesive family.

All this living-in-the-unreal has created a well-documented set of relational problems for Gen Z+ in social and work life, and, apparently, cognitive differences affecting attention systems, reward circuits, and executive functions. Add to that heavy load the inescapable peer pressure - now online as well as off, cyber-bullying, the COVID legacy, eco-anxiety, job insecurity, the list goes on. 

At the poetry evening, they gave the trigger warning, of course, because there were subjects in the work being read out that might upset people.  Many people are inspired to self expression by the difficult things that have happened to them. People seem to feel it is a form of therapy, of self-help. 

I think "triggered" meant they would feel more than “upset” but I never have found out what the trigger was meant to do, what the effect would be.  Would the person pant silently, be overcome with fear, have to leave or just feel vaguely disturbed?  I had personal “triggers” from decades ago, things that would certainly be considered traumatic today, that I would rather avoid hearing talked about in poetry or any context for that matter, but I wouldn’t have used either T word. They weren't really in our generation's lexicon. Trauma was called shell-shock and you learnt about it in the context of World War One poetry. As the years went by, had anyone asked, I supposed we would have associated trauma with later war veterans, especially after Iraq and Afghanistan, when the subject became more discussed. Eventually you would include childhood sexual abuse survivors, then survivors of rape, other sexual abuse, car crashes, the Magdalen laundries. Over the years, the scope of what was considered trauma in general society, gradually, almost imperceptibly, expanded and by extension, what, I suppose, might be considered triggering, once that term itself became currency.

At that evening, had the themes that I still today can't talk about, come up, I would have stayed silent and distracted myself somehow. I certainly wouldn’t have walked out, drawing attention to my personal triggers. I think most in my generation would have done the same.

I don’t know if it’s knowing that you have been traumatised that makes it easier to be “triggered”. 

I now know that I have been traumatised by still other things, in the distant past and endured a slew of physical symptoms that I managed successfully, to largely separate from what was causing them, although, had you asked me I'd probably have been able to gesture in the right vague direction.  It must have been textbook compartmentalisation.  We just did what we, or certainly I did what I was brought up to do, which was ignore it and get on with things. I say that now with little pride.  I’m not sure that in the long run that approach did me much good. A lot of the Gen Xers, and those before us, and maybe some Millenials, were like that.

I remember having two, separate, standalone panic attacks at other times entirely.  In one case I had just started a new job and thought I was embarrassingly suffering a heart attack on day one.  I quietly took myself off to A&E, was told it was a panic attack, nothing to worry about and so I didn’t. I just went back to work and didn’t think about it again.  That almost certainly was first day nerves.  Another time I went to A&E with I suppose similar symptoms.  I remember having trouble breathing.  I can't remember the wider context now but I’d been at home one evening and it just started.  But again I felt like I was suddenly dying. I was left in a cubicle on my own, with no real explanation, just given a paper bag. I initially thought it was a sick bag, but someone must have told me to blow into it - the reason for which I didn't understand for decades. I was left there with a chair which I ignored and paced about, which probably didn't help, and this paper bag for an absolute age. That felt like the most worrying part as I had no understanding at all of what was happening to me or why. I don't think people really talked about panic attacks. It certainly wasn't the common, never mind accepted term it seems to be today. Meanwhile the professionals went about presumably saving lives in A&E. Afterwards I just did the same thing again - forgot about it and carried on.

It strikes me as odd now, that we didn’t question these things. At least I didn’t. But I was brought up to do as I was told. The questioning part just seemed to pop up at odd and inconvenient times.

From my late twenties to my early thirties  I did see various people briefly for help with separate issues which I now see were all tied to the same themes. I don't remember any of this talk therapy as being particularly helpful, in fact, it can't have been because the same themes kept expressing themselves in different disorders. When my heart was jumping right under my skin I thought there was a problem with my heart until they made me wear a heart monitor for a week or two and said no, you're heart's fine, it's palpitations. I don't think I'd heard the word palpitations of if I had I probably thought of exercised Edwardian women with over-tight corsets in need of smelling salts, described as "hysterical" by men. It was something from another age. Even then I didn't think of myself as suffering from anxiety. Despite everything it just didn't seem to come up.

Sometime in those ten years I was diagnosed with severe depression but those were different symptoms again. Now, in the "palpitation period" my hands would shake, I couldn't leave home without a hat with a brim, I felt like prey, I wanted to see but not be seen. I felt like I couldn't show emotion, that my skin was like a mask, I would jump if the toast popped up, if I opened the door to a knock and there was someone on the doorstep, things of that sort. I knew something was wrong and I thought it was, in large part, tied to work and particularly my boss, or rather, various bosses, of the more manipulative, bullying and bloodless type you find in global corporations.

I can say today that that there are a lot of things that “trigger” me now, from events of the last two years.  By “triggered” I don’t mean I feel vaguely disturbed, I mean the triggers are disabling: one cannot live a normal life around them or do key things - like safeguard one's interest. One needs help, which may or may not be available. That, along with two other conditions, which I almost certainly still fulfil, in my country puts a person into that legal, statutory group I mentioned earlier.

That designation is apparently supposed to "trigger" extra help. My experience was it just triggers a loss of agency by people with awful power, zero humanity, or empathy, or compassion, monsters really, that I have found to be at the core of causing my particular trauma. I seemed to escape that official designation in the end because of the complexity of the case and the fact that eventually I couldn't engage at all with those causing the trauma, who were also the people, insanely, responsible for, and supposed to help, this vulnerable category.

That those with such power and responsibility wilfully, knowingly cause so much long term damage, affecting whole families, whole networks of people, is so topsy turvy, it beggars belief. It still sends me reeling. Just my mind turning in that direction causes pain in my chest. Evidently, it is still find “triggering” to talk about, meaning, I will probably sleep worse than usual, so I’ll stop there.

Joining this new world feels a bit like being pushed into an unpleasant new country, late in the day, one of the stragglers, ill-prepared, without the education, the concepts, the proper terms.

Then I remember most of the rest of the world suffering violence and natural disaster probably don't have the terms for it either and are just getting on with rebuilding, with little chance of processing or therapy or the questionable luxury of thought.

But then you realise Gen Z in the West who apparently talk about their traumas in the tea-break, very au fait, are like a small, privileged reconnaissance party who can be meta about trauma.

I wonder what their traumas are that they are able to chat, socially about them. Is the difference content or context?