first off, let’s clarify something

being triggered =/= being uncomfortable

triggers may make you feel uncomfortable, but something making you uncomfortable does not equal to something triggering you.

to put it in simple words, triggers are things/moments/pictures/etc that your brain associates with a traumatic event, and when a person that has a trigger sees it or interacts with it in some way, it leads the brain to believe thst they’re experiencing that traumatic event all over again, causing the person to have either a psychological/physical reaction resulting in either a trauma response (like a flashback), or the relapse into certain behaviours that a person may have (eg. self harm, the use of alcohol/drugs).

an important thing to remember is that triggers are personal, not everyone’s going to have the same triggers and if they do, this does not mean they’re gonna react in the same way.

what are trigger warnings and why they’re important

a statement cautioning that content (as in a text, video, or class) may be disturbing or upsetting (merriam webster)

a stated warning that the content of a text, video, etc., may upset or offend some people, especially those who have previously experienced a related trauma (dictionary .com)

basically, trigger warnings are just a way to alert someone of potentially triggering content that may be in the following video/text.

trigger warnings are important since they may either allow a person to (a) mute a word — this is only in social media of course — (b) exit the lecture or classroom they’re in (c) stop reading or watching the content they’re reading/watching (d) prepare themselves for seeing the trigger in question.

trigger warnings are quite easy to use and once you start it becomes a habit, it really only takes less than a minute to put a tw and you could be helping a lot of people by simply putting one.

thanks to twitter’s muting system, trigger warning is quite simple since most people have their triggers muted, although there is still a proper way to do it.

what to do:

(where it says ^trigger^ is where you should put the trigger in question btw)
tw ^trigger^
tw // ^trigger^

what NOT to do:

tw//^trigger^ (even if someone has the word muted it’ll show up on their tl)
tw ^tr*gger^ (do NOT censor the trigger, if someone has it muted it’ll show up on their tl)
tw (if you only put tw and not explain what the tw is for, it’ll still show on everyone’s timelines)

finally, here’s a list of common triggers:

physical violence
sexual violence
abuse (including emotional abuse)
slurs
drug or alcohol abuse
eating disorders
suicide
self harm
food
homophobia
transphobia

although these are not the only triggers that exist, these are usually pretty common.