begging ppl to recontextualize their understanding of the word “trauma” because its either “everything is trauma” or “you dont have trauma unless you witness a literal war otherwise its insulting to people with trauma disorders” and neither of those are right
it doesnt take a huge violent event for you to be scarred by something mentally and suffering from it. when people say “triggering content” or put up trigger warnings what they usually mean by that is that the content is “graphic”, “gorey”, “drastic”, and while yes, of course these could be huge triggers for people who have been in direct contact with violence, its a huge misunderstanding of the issue. you have no way to know what triggers someone personally. because trauma occurs when a person doesnt know how to cope with something and resolve it emotionally, what is traumatic depends more on the individual than the stimuli in question. multiple people could experience the same event and only one develop ptsd for example. its an undoing of a persons internal sense of safety and belief system. because of that a trigger can be a sound, sensation, even certain phrases or words. its irresponsible to pretend otherwise.
case in point: complex post traumatic stress disorder, a disorder which is caused by a long lasting trauma due to things like abuse and being held captive. it doesnt take one singular drastic event for it to develop, it just does because youre mentally carrying a sense of danger wherever you go.
