Trigger happy: we’re addicted to being traumatised

We’re being asked to “mute” an ever-increasing array of allegedly “traumatising” ideas and words.

Social media is changing the way we write about and respond to trauma, and not for the better. Picture: iStock

Once upon a time, “Trigger” was synonymous with Roy Rogers, the courageous Hollywood cowboy who rode on a horse by that name. These days, less heroically, to be “triggered” is to respond alarmingly to writing, too much of which now comes with warnings more alarming than the content itself.

The rise of the Zoom meeting during the pandemic saw the repeated request for us to “unmute” as we fumbled to connect in a “contactless” world. At the same time, we’re being asked to “mute” an ever-increasing array of allegedly “traumatising” ideas and words. And for writers whose thoughts and phrases are tools of their trade, this has been a particularly troubling development.

This change has been rapid: the mid-1990s saw the growth of the popular literary genre dwelling on trauma, physical abuse and destitution known as “Misery Memoir,” or “Mis-Mem” for short. As readers’ appetites grew and publishers cashed in on high-turnover capital V voyeurism, book titles became more preposterous: Ma, He Sold Me for a Few Cigarettes; Daddy’s Little Earner; Deliver Me from Evil; and Daddy, Please Don’t. (Although the title of British comedian Peter Cook’s 2013 collection of comic writings, Tragically I was an Only Twin, took the mickey out of misery in a way comedians are no longer permitted to do.)

A spoof on the misery memoir by comedian Peter Cook.

Daddy's Little Earner was a No.1 bestseller

According to the Irish Times – and the Irish are undoubtedly the ones to ask – Mis-Mems came to a misfortunate end around 2008 when the market for reading about others’ abuse and abandonment waned in the face of the more concrete concerns of the Global Financial Crisis. But the genre soon morphed into something even more bankable – the “trauma memoir”, accompanied by trigger warnings that render it simultaneously titillating and tempered.

Take, for example, Tara Westover’s 2018 memoir Educated,recounting her traumatic Mormon survivalist childhood, which was recommended by Barack Obama and ranks as number one on a list of Top 100 Triggering Books. Or Sylvia Plath’s classic The Bell Jar,which nowcomes with a caution for “self-harm” and is shelved on Goodreads under the genre “Trigger Warning Books”.

Educated, by Tara Westover.

The Bell Jar is being sold online with a "self-harm trigger warning"

In contemporary publishing, trigger warnings are statements designed to caution the reader that content may be disturbing, but the term derives from the study of post-traumatic stress disorder and refers to people’s physical and psychological symptoms being triggered by certain stimuli in a way that viscerally places them back into an emotionally traumatised state.

In this context, one understands how warnings about sexual or violent content in a book might be beneficial. Yet the terms “trigger” and “trauma” have been watered down to such an extent that what apparently triggers some readers is now so negligible that it not only risks devaluing the existence of genuine suffering, but risks devaluing language itself.

It seems that we’re now “triggered” by more (and less) than ever before. Indeed, even the “trigger warnings” themselves are proving alarming for some. One study found that “among people not currently experiencing trauma, trigger warnings may actually increase the amount of anxiety readers report after reading a piece – but only among those who believe that words can cause psychological harm”.

And nowhere are the concepts of “words as violence” or even “silence as violence” more entrenched than on the micro-publishing platform Twitter. In fact, now that everyone’s a self-published writer and commentator, the Tweet is the new Mis-Mem: a short-form publication constrained not only by its number of characters but by the ever-increasing array of unacceptable and “unsafe” words its authors dare not utter for fear of “triggering” mass moral outrage. Because it’s no longer enough for today’s readers to consume trauma: they’re addicted to being traumatised – and the more vicariously, the better. Take, for example, the recent social media response to the war in Ukraine, with many vying to signal hyperbolic distress from the safety of their loungerooms.

But as London-based psychotherapist Seerut K Chawla advised, “You are not morally obliged to comment on every global crisis. You don’t have to ‘prove’ you care. You don’t have to publicly demonstrate your emotional reactions.”

And yet, as more of us feel the pressure to publicly emote and “virtue signal”, it might be wise to question the outcome of all this “twiggering” on what – and why – we read and write. While research suggests that expressive writing focused on making sense of personal traumatic events might help us work through and even heal physical and psychological “wounds”, much of today’s trauma writing seems to have de-evolved into voyeuristic emotional exhibitionism aimed at eliciting victimhood status, followers and “likes”. Which can translate into serious business for authors and publishers, garnering book deals, sales, festival appearances and hefty grants intended for the betterment of genuinely marginalised writers.

The Twittering Machine, a 1922 illustration by Paul Klee depicting a hand-cranked mechanism generating bird tweets balanced precariously over an open pit designed to lure listeners to their doom, is often remarked upon by social commentators for its prescience. In publishing, it’s perhaps most notable for its pertinence. Both those who crank the machine, and those who produce the most beguiling songs, are richly rewarded – but what of those unable or unwilling to play the prescribed tune?

One thing is obvious: it’s the people experiencing the severest trauma who lack the time, energy, means and support to write about it. And as the language of trauma is devalued, and everything and anything becomes a “trigger”, it will surely be the most abject unfairness and inequality in our world – rather than the minor outrages currently sung loudest – that will continue to go unnoticed and unrectified.

For as author Roxane Gay writes, the sad and “uncomfortable truth” is that life itself “requires a trigger warning”.

Michele Seminara is a poet, writer and managing editor of Verity La. Her latest book is Suburban Fantasy.

Jeanne Ryckmans is a literary agent and the artistic director of the Canberra Writers Festival.