When people use the term trigger instead to refer to everyday things that incite annoyance or offense, they run the risk of conflating traumatic experiences or mental health struggles with everyday challenges, several experts said.... Using triggered to describe negative everyday experiences may also cause people to misinterpret discomfort as danger. They may start to think that bothersome experiences or everyday challenges are harmful, rather than seeing them as opportunities for learning and growth, Dr. Needle said....
Sometimes, the word trigger can also be used sarcastically or dismissively, Dr. Needle said — as in, “Oh, you’re just triggered” — to minimize someone’s legitimate negative reaction to a comment or action. “It is basically a way of saying your response is a ‘you problem,’ a sign of weakness or oversensitivity, rather than acknowledging that something genuinely hurtful was said or done,” she said.
I love the name Dr. Needle. She's a clinical psychologist, Rachel Needle.
The headline suggests that the word "upset" is a good substitute for "triggered" when you're not talking about having a flashback to a trauma. But isn't "upset" also pretty dramatic, if we take the dying metaphor seriously? Have you been knocked over, capsized, overturned?
I've noticed recently that political writers are turning to the word "unsettling." There was the very conspicuous NYT headline: "Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall 'Unsettling' Behavior."
Remember when "[DC Mayor] Bowser call[ed] Trump’s takeover of D.C. police department ‘unsettling and unprecedented'" (WaPo).
It seems to express the feeling we get around A.I.: "'I love you too!’ My family’s creepy, unsettling week with an AI toy" (Guardian), "Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times: are AIs now, or could they become in the future, sentient?" (Guardian).
Both "upset" and "unsettling" contain the root "set." But "unsettling" seems milder. You're merely uncomfortable in your set position, perhaps squirming or tensing. We're not toppled onto the floor.
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40 comments:
this post has triggered something in me!
I have this argument with my husband all the time. It's futile, but I do it anyway.
I liken it to telling him, "That's not green, it's teal."
The left constantly works to condition us to use or not use various terms in order to control any discussion on their terms. It gives their followers a sense of being in charge, and part of the mainstream. Fortunately, their official vocabulary serves to quickly identify them to any normal person, so one can save time not wasting effort to deal with their conditioned blather.
Well, like the monotonous, paid talking point recordings of IEE.
I see the common use of 'triggered' as the usual reaction to any group that tries to appropriate a useful word for a specialized meaning. The suggestion to use 'upset' instead is kinda darkly humorously ironic to me because it seems more common that telling someone they are 'upset' is usually an effort to minimize their negative reaction to an event, not a more dramatic expression.
An 'unsettled' is a bit milder than 'upset', as in a boat that may be rocking but hasn't overturned. It similarly suggests an external disturbance to the norm rather than an internal reaction. You might be upset by somebody unsettling a situation, or you might find it amusing or even pleasing.
It doesn't matter what euphemism one chooses to describe the unmanly channeling of emotions unnecessarily through your sympathetic nervous system. Chill out, people. It might not help you live longer, although it probably will. The real advantage is that you'll enjoy life in the moment.
Christopher outlines the heart of the problem. Thinking somehow that the norm is some sort of stable even condition. Boats should Rock, just like airliners should experience. Turbulence as the norm. It seems to me that perfectly calm glassy see and smooth air the exceptions.
My daughter and I were having a conversation about this topic the other day. The way she put it as a female millennial biotech executive is that too many people in her field expect life to be frictionless. We both agreed that without friction and conflict, life could not possibly exist and if it could it would be extremely boring.
That reminds me of the fearful pair of folks skulking through the woods at night where one person says boy. It sure is quiet and the other person says yeah, too quiet.
Now that's unsettling, LOL
Deep revulsion over a psycho is not ',triggered'
When did so many people, male and female, turn into a bunch of whiny bitches? Life can be hard sometimes, and then you die.
Keeping people from getting murdered is 'unsettling' the murders are fine
Dr. Needle and the damage done... to the language.
All this talk of triggers is making me feel unsafe
And if I feel unsafe, it is up to you all to do something about it.
John Henry
I’ve already long avoided using the word “trigger.” Along with any other word that rhymes with the word “trigger.”
The words we use to express are feelings are meant to affect or elicit emotions from our listeners. We use them to manipulate as often as we do to describe.
The most misused word today is "expert".
I try hard to only get upset by the little things.
Meade said...
"..I’ve already long avoided using the word “trigger.” Along with any other word that rhymes with the word “trigger.."
bigger?
chigger?
digger?
figure?
gigger?
leaguer?
meager?
...
When the words are being strung together to subliminally influence the behavior of others, and not just to express a genuine reaction, then the choice of words is a systematic one to begin with, not a purely emotional one.
The writer is trying to get us to dislike Platner, which is fairly easy to do, anyway. I doubt the 'unsettled' reaction is a genuine one to begin with - it's performative.
The reverse they tried to down play the revulsion
This kind of silly and aimless piffle is just another reason to avoid the NYT at all costs.
Mary Catharine Hamm could well be triggered by that blowhard Pelley saying being fired was like having his spouse murdered, since her husband was the victim of vehicular manslaughter. I was just upset by such a callous statement.
I prefer disgruntled. Great word.
“I’ve already long avoided using the word “trigger.” Along with any other word that rhymes with the word “trigger.””
I always thought Schwarzenegger was cutting it close.
Trigger is the Trotorious Epithet! CC, JSM
In third grade, I had a lunchbox with a picture of Trigger on it.
bagoh20 said...
The most misused word today is "expert".
I think I have mentioned earlier the old Navy joke about the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale: One starts Once upon a time and the other starts Now this ain't no shit
Tuesday I saw a variation on that. It was something like:
How do you tell the difference between a fairy tale and a govt statement? One starts Once upon a time. The other starts experts say
For those not familiar, "sea stories" are the tales, often improbable, occasionally even true, that sailors tell each other when making conversation.
John Henry
Smilin' Jack said...
I prefer disgruntled. Great word.
Why is gruntled not a word?
As in "I was feeling a bit fey yesterday but a good night's sleep got me fully re-gruntled"
(Apologies to George Carlin)
John Henry
"I love the name Dr. Needle. She's a clinical psychologist, Rachel Needle."
The Needle and the dommage done.
Apologies to Wince, who got the idea first.
Louie the Looper said...
In third grade, I had a lunchbox with a picture of Trigger on it.
I had a dog named Bullet in the 50s.
I even wound up marrying a "Nellie" more than 52 years ago. I once asked if she was named after a jeep. She did not speak to me for a day or two.
Happy trails to you.
John Henry
The writer is trying to get us to dislike Platner, which is fairly easy to do, anyway. I doubt the 'unsettled' reaction is a genuine one to begin with - it's performative.
I'm not so sure of that. The media types are pussyfooting around news that they know they have to report, with euphemisms like "unsettling" to protect Team Blue as much as possible. I think that if it had been a disfavored Republican committing the very same acts, the news media would use words like "abusive" and "misogynist" and "Nazi" in contexts where leftists are favored with an "unsettling" or "problematic".
Jeremy Carl on X: "Stop trying to engage intellectually with doctrinaire libertarians. They will not get any smarter or more connected with reality, and you will waste time that could be used on productive endeavors. https://t.co/fSpXYPUb6X" / X https://share.google/ifk53WBwnyMPmTeSQ
As a recovered Democrat I have deep, abiding disdain for the seditious cretins who destroyed the party in order to destroy the country and the “good Germans” who tag along. But after the likes of Joe Dementia, Mamdani, Newsom, Omar and now Oberleutnant Platner it’s all “dog bites man.” No triggering. Just a sense of the inevitable and a hope that my family will be safe. Trump is an interruption for which we should be grateful, but there is no one else like him.
@ John Henry
On our TV station, Roy and Dale came on at 10:30 Saturday morning. I confess that I regarded it as must viewing for a few youthful years.
I remember being mildly unsettled by Pat Brady. He was kind of a cowboy Jerry Lewis, goofy, loud and annoying. But he drove that cool jeep, NellieBelle, so you just put up with him.
Platner's "unsettling" behavior included pushing a woman into a bedroom and blocking her from leaving for so long that she finally went to sleep. Which is known as "unlawful imprisonment", and is a felony in most states.
They beat the language with a truncheon
Austin Metcalf got triggered. Sorry if spellcheck missed one.
Once you reach a certain age, just finding the word you are trying to say (in conversation) is hard enough. Worrying about whether that word has other shades of meaning? Way too much trouble. (For writing, you want to get it right).
Also at my age--when people talk about "triggers" they are generally talking about what happens to their hands when doing too much yard work.
People have been taking real psychological terminology and watering it down for decades - and the psychologists themselves are the worst offenders, trying to hype their regular work. Schizophrenia, mania, depression, anxiety, personality disorder, trauma...what hasn't been repurposed at a milder level?
A trigger is a mechanism to release powerful forces, which do not have control over the trigger function. If triggered, your response is not your fault, it is the fault of the one doing the triggering (and you get to define what triggers you, removing all self-responsiibility. We used to call a subset of such things "fighting words" and the law did protect the user against a pugnacious response by the recipient of such verbal abuse. Now leftists use "triggered" as an excuse for antisocial behavior of the grossest sort, from inappropriate public noisemaking to shooting political opponents.
Being upset, when objectively viewed from outside the one being knocked over, capsized, overturned, is an external manifestation of an inward state of having no control over oneself. Leftists are upset over any and every non-leftist thing, as redefined every few days to just every Thursday. Trump purposefully posts things to upset the darlings.
To unsettle is to remove a state of settlement, i.e., to decolonialize, hence accepted by leftists to describe the behavior of the antisemitic Nazi-tatooed abuser of women they nominated for a Senate campaign. See the difference?
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