Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mom and Me a podcast. Mama
Speaker 1: Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that
Speaker 1: this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 2: So let me get this straight. You, as a very
Speaker 2: privileged person who have got two healthy children as far
Speaker 2: as you know, want me, someone who is experiencing trauma
Speaker 2: and pain to put a trigger warning on my child's
Speaker 2: life to make you feel more comfortable.
Speaker 1: From I'm Meya Friedman. And you're listening to No Filter
Speaker 1: at a recent performance of Macbeth by a Melbourne theater company. Recently,
Speaker 1: the program included a content warning. It's something that's become
Speaker 1: quite common, not just in the theater, but in podcasts,
Speaker 1: on websites and blogs on social media, and even in books.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen them. They're sometimes called trigger warnings,
Speaker 1: and the idea behind them is that before you consume
Speaker 1: a piece of content, you know what you're getting in
Speaker 1: case the subject matter is upsetting to you, so that
Speaker 1: way you can prepare yourself somehow or avoid it altogether.
Speaker 1: I'll read you the content warning for this Macbeth performance.
Speaker 1: It's quite long, so i'll only read part of it.
Speaker 1: It said this production contains coarse language explicit depiction of
Speaker 1: violence and blood, sexual references, discussion of warfare, discussion of infanticide, misogyny,
Speaker 1: occasional drinking and smoking, references to death or dying, references
Speaker 1: to mental illness, and depictions of ableism, occasional use of
Speaker 1: prop weapons, loud and dynamic sound and smoke effects. That's
Speaker 1: just the start, though. It actually goes on for about
Speaker 1: another five hundred words or so, and under each of
Speaker 1: those topics it lists a lot of detail about how
Speaker 1: they're used in the performance. For example, it lists the
Speaker 1: number of times certain swear words are used. It notes
Speaker 1: that there are themes of misogyny and ableism, and under
Speaker 1: each of those examples it gets very specific. For example,
Speaker 1: under the subheading of infanticide, it says, in the closing
Speaker 1: scenes of the work, Macduff accuses Lady Macbeth of ordering
Speaker 1: the murder of Lady Macduff's infant. This case of infanticide
Speaker 1: is only spoken about, not enacted on stage. Good to know.
Speaker 1: It's not just this theater company, though, and I'm not
Speaker 1: naming them because I don't want anyone to be attacking
Speaker 1: them or piling onto them. You might have noticed something
Speaker 1: called trigger creep. It's a proliferation of warnings and an
Speaker 1: expansion of those warnings about all sorts of things that
Speaker 1: are popping up in all sorts of places. In the
Speaker 1: past few months, I've been keeping some notes, and I've
Speaker 1: seen trigger warnings for some of the following things. Anxiety, depression, suicide, blood, hospitals,
Speaker 1: self harm, sexual abuse, cancer, domestic violence, exercise, grief, racism,
Speaker 1: mental health, war, eating disorders, transphobia, homophobia, alcohol, poverty, ableism, childlessness,
Speaker 1: emotional abuse, divorce, diet culture, miscarriage, self harm, infertility, car accidents, meat,
Speaker 1: sexist language, menstruation, and menopause. And that's an exhausting list,
Speaker 1: but it's by no means exhaustive. There were many other
Speaker 1: things as well. And look, it would be really easy
Speaker 1: to have a rant at this point and talk about
Speaker 1: the world going mad and people being snowflakes. But that's
Speaker 1: not what No Filter is about. It's not a runty show,
Speaker 1: and I'm not a rounty person. No Filter is fundamentally
Speaker 1: a show about people and their stories, and many of
Speaker 1: those stories cover those kinds of topics because No Filter
Speaker 1: is about what it means to be human. And I
Speaker 1: think that everybody involved in this debate really does come
Speaker 1: from a good place, I do. Those in favor of
Speaker 1: content warnings insist that it's basic decency to warn people
Speaker 1: before they hear or read something that might upset them,
Speaker 1: which sounds very reasonable. Those against trigger warnings insist that
Speaker 1: it is a ridiculous form of pandering and that it's
Speaker 1: actually counter productive, which is another interesting perspective and probably
Speaker 1: the one that I share. But what does the science say?
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what I think. What are medical professionals
Speaker 1: who work with traumatized people advise? What a traumatized people
Speaker 1: themselves actually say? Are trigger warnings actually helpful? Well, spoiler no,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, But we will get to that.
Speaker 1: What I want to explore today is what's going on?
Speaker 1: Why do we suddenly feel that we need to warn
Speaker 1: people about everything? And then you can decide for yourself
Speaker 1: whether they're a good idea or not. This is a
Speaker 1: special episode of No Filter because today I'm bringing you
Speaker 1: two guests. In a little bit you're going to meet
Speaker 1: Victoria Bridgeland. She's a researcher here in Australia who has
Speaker 1: actually done the definitive global study on trigger warnings and
Speaker 1: what she found may surprise you, but First, you're going
Speaker 1: to meet Rachel Cassella. You may remember Rachel if you
Speaker 1: are a p particular longtime listener of No Filter. She's
Speaker 1: been on a previous episode of No Filter, and she's
Speaker 1: written quite a lot on Muma Maya and she's also
Speaker 1: a big advocate on social media. She's amazing. She's a
Speaker 1: detective sergeant in the AFP, and she's a fearless advocate
Speaker 1: for the memory of her little girl, Mackenzie. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to say more now because nobody can talk
Speaker 1: about McKenzie like Rachel does. And importantly, there is no
Speaker 1: trigger warning or content warning on what you're about to hear,
Speaker 1: and that's very deliberate. Here's Rachel Cassella. Rach, I want
Speaker 1: to start by asking you about McKenzie. Tell me about her.
Speaker 2: The love of my life, which now I feel guilty
Speaker 2: about seeing because you know, I've got other children, but
Speaker 2: she just changed everything for me. McKenzie's my first born.
Speaker 2: I did have pregnancies before her, but she was my
Speaker 2: first born, little girl. She was born eleventh of March
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen and she was just magic, pure perfection.
Speaker 1: Did you always know you wanted to be a mum?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. I was listening to your episode about
Speaker 2: people not knowing, and I've always thought that would be
Speaker 2: sort of the hardest part is in the space of
Speaker 2: not knowing, because I've always known deepen my soul and
Speaker 2: that puzzle piece when she arrived just clicked into place.
Speaker 1: Was it hard to get pregnant with her.
Speaker 2: No, it took a couple of months, but when I
Speaker 2: actually knew what my ovulation window is, because I think
Speaker 2: we spent so much time in schools turning to lessons
Speaker 2: about how not to get pregnant that a lot of people,
Speaker 2: including me, didn't actually know my fertile window or my
Speaker 2: ovulation day. So once we got that, we did have
Speaker 2: a miscarriage before McKenzie at six and a half weeks,
Speaker 2: which was devastating at the time, but unfortunately that's now
Speaker 2: been buried for one of a better term under a
Speaker 2: lot of other trauma that's piled on top of it,
Speaker 2: because when Mackenzie was ten weeks old, she was diagnosed
Speaker 2: with a terminal condition, a genetic terminal conditioner called spinal
Speaker 2: muscular atrophy. We lost her when she was seven months
Speaker 2: and eleven days old.
Speaker 1: Those first ten weeks before you knew what were.
Speaker 2: They like like I had one lolotto. I literally remember
Speaker 2: strutting down the street like I had this. I don't know,
Speaker 2: A new world had been open to me. I felt
Speaker 2: like I was getting beautiful attention, My baby was getting
Speaker 2: beautiful attention. I felt special. This just love. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was just pure magic.
Speaker 1: How was she diagnosed? Because there were no genetic tests
Speaker 1: back then, you and your husband were both carriers of
Speaker 1: a genetic condition that you had not been told about
Speaker 1: or tested for. How did you find out?
Speaker 2: Very quickly, very abruptly. She had a lactation consultant appointment.
Speaker 2: They said that she wasn't moving the way that she should.
Speaker 2: I quickly rushed her to a local GP who very
Speaker 2: scarily sort of said, you need to go to see
Speaker 2: a pediatrician. Immediately got into a pediatrician appointment two days later,
Speaker 2: and within five minutes of being a that appointment, he
Speaker 2: diagnosed her and said it was terminal. So it went
Speaker 2: from thinking that I was on cloud nine to just
Speaker 2: wondering how I was supposed to actually survive to the
Speaker 2: next day. How did he deliver that news really abruptly?
Speaker 2: I would say that there's no good way to say
Speaker 2: that news. But I think there's a better way to
Speaker 2: say that news. Our later interactions with who would become
Speaker 2: McKenzie's neurologists were much more pleasant, despite the situation. But
Speaker 2: he just said, I'm pretty sure it's spinne, a muscular atrophy,
Speaker 2: and we went, well, what is that? And he said
Speaker 2: it's terminal. I froze and shut down initially, and then
Speaker 2: after a couple of minutes, I started like sort of
Speaker 2: getting really upset and he told me to calm down, missy,
Speaker 2: and that's just burnt in my head, all right. We
Speaker 2: were made to pay a big bill as we were
Speaker 2: leaving his office, and we left back home. It wasn't
Speaker 2: until later that we sort of knew we should have
Speaker 2: been taken straight down to Sydney Children's Hospital to meet
Speaker 2: with the neurologists, to not have been left to leave
Speaker 2: that appointment that way.
Speaker 1: Was anyone able to tell you what the future held
Speaker 1: for McKenzie.
Speaker 2: The neurologist was able to talk to us. We had
Speaker 2: the first initial discussion as to whether to put her
Speaker 2: on an experimental trial drug, and then we were told,
Speaker 2: once we made the decision, that that was not the
Speaker 2: right way for us and for her, based on a
Speaker 2: whole number of levels. We were told she would likely
Speaker 2: either get a cold and go in and out of
Speaker 2: hospital for a lot of her life until she just
Speaker 2: got so weak she couldn't fight it. Or we got
Speaker 2: told that we would wake up one morning and she
Speaker 2: would just die in her bascinet when we looked in there.
Speaker 1: How long did you have with her?
Speaker 2: So we had seven months and eleven days, I mean
Speaker 2: obviously a near a few months after her diagnosis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Rach, I can't even begin. And now everyone
Speaker 1: says to you, I know, how do you get out
Speaker 1: of bed? How do you do it? How do you live?
Speaker 1: Do you have an answer to that?
Speaker 2: You've got no choice? I mean, I suppose you do
Speaker 2: have a choice. There are some people who don't come
Speaker 2: through it, and they do take their own life. There
Speaker 2: were certainly times where I wished myself to not be here.
Speaker 2: After she was diagnosed, we knew that we had to
Speaker 2: give her everything. So she was our reason of continuing
Speaker 2: and getting out of bed every day until she passed away.
Speaker 2: And then after that all of the days sort of
Speaker 2: become a blur of pain, and then it became what
Speaker 2: are we going to do for her to celebrate her life?
Speaker 2: To help others not go through the same thing. Then
Speaker 2: it was how we're going to get her siblings, and
Speaker 2: so there was always something to fight for, and I
Speaker 2: put everything I had into those Whether that was healthy always,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it was my way of coping.
Speaker 1: In terms of trauma, it's hard to think of something
Speaker 1: more traumatic and ongoing than what you experienced. Are there
Speaker 1: certain things that trigger a response in your body, certain
Speaker 1: things that abruptly distress you?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean there's some kind of obvious ones. I
Speaker 2: don't think when it comes to triggers, they're not usually
Speaker 2: obvious for people, even though society wants to assume that
Speaker 2: they are. They're not. They're very specific and personalized. I mean,
Speaker 2: my most generic, I suppose, was the sound of ambulances
Speaker 2: because McKenzie stopped breathing at home in my arms, and
Speaker 2: we rush our lights and sirens in an ambulance to
Speaker 2: Sidney Children's Hospital and I just under in my lap
Speaker 2: and I was just singing Twinkle Twinkle Star in her
Speaker 2: ear as we drove. And so the sound of ambulances
Speaker 2: it's not as prevalent a trigger anymore because I have
Speaker 2: been exposed to it. You don't get a warning the
Speaker 2: ambulances are around. I still have a little bit of
Speaker 2: a because I know that on the end of that
Speaker 2: ambulance is a family like mine. But my triggers are
Speaker 2: for a while, obviously it was pregnancy announcements. I still
Speaker 2: get triggered by large families. She is strange. I get
Speaker 2: really triggered by positive thinking or magical thinking or manifestation.
Speaker 2: I had a trigger the other day, which is quite
Speaker 2: strange by Courtney Kardashian.
Speaker 1: What did she do?
Speaker 2: So she had her recent son had surgery in utero,
Speaker 2: and the conversation with her was it was scary, but
Speaker 2: I knew that if I just thought positively and if
Speaker 2: I prayed to God, then everything would be okay. And
Speaker 2: once I started thinking positively, the lung stopped filling up
Speaker 2: with fluids. So that's really triggering for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: especially in the baby loss community, because it's like or
Speaker 2: any type of brief or losses like I did positive thinking.
Speaker 2: I did everything you could possibly imagine for McKenzie to
Speaker 2: wish and pray and positively make her better. But then
Speaker 2: I did nine rounds of IVF. I lost another two
Speaker 2: babies at sixteen weeks pregnant, that I had to walk
Speaker 2: into the hospital and say goodbye to And I did everything.
Speaker 2: I have done, soul work, inesiology, I have done negative
Speaker 2: thinking in the hope that it would stop me from falling.
Speaker 2: So far, I've written lists, I've done research. There is
Speaker 2: not anything that I haven't done. And to hear someone say, well,
Speaker 2: I prayed right or I did the right positive thinking,
Speaker 2: and that's what happens, like, I understand the space for it,
Speaker 2: but I find it really triggering.
Speaker 1: When you say triggering, can you explain what happens in
Speaker 1: your body and in your mind?
Speaker 2: My heart starts racing, I get really sweaty hands. My
Speaker 2: brain feels like it's a tornado. I can't catch my thought.
Speaker 2: It just goes around and around, and then the conversation
Speaker 2: that I have in my head won't stop for hours.
Speaker 1: After the break. Why Rachel, who gets triggered all the time,
Speaker 1: still doesn't want trigger warnings? So what have you learned
Speaker 1: is the best way to cope or a way to cope?
Speaker 1: How do you cope with that? Because obviously you want
Speaker 1: to avoid those triggers, but how do you.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't avoid the triggers because they're everywhere, you know,
Speaker 2: hearing about children who have passed away, or any type
Speaker 2: of grief that doesn't trigger me. It makes me feel
Speaker 2: comforted in some ways, and that there are other people
Speaker 2: who are out there who know how I feel. It
Speaker 2: makes me sad that someone else knows that pain. Usually,
Speaker 2: if it's someone on Instagram, for instance, I will usually
Speaker 2: write to them in their DMS and say that I'm
Speaker 2: here if they are new to this world of grief.
Speaker 2: But I don't avoid them because the things that trigger
Speaker 2: me are not things that come with trigger warnings. Sometimes
Speaker 2: I'll read it and I will let my body go
Speaker 2: through what it needs to go through because it's unavoidable.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I will close an article or close something, but
Speaker 2: I know that that means that that's something that I
Speaker 2: need to work on. A trigger is obviously it's like
Speaker 2: a little warning sign of Okay, there's something that's agitated there.
Speaker 2: I'm probably going to have to work on that.
Speaker 1: You wrote a fantastic piece first on your Instagram? What
Speaker 1: led to that post on your Instagram?
Speaker 2: So my Instagram is I created that space as a
Speaker 2: way of sharing Mackenzie. I had no idea that it
Speaker 2: was going to turn into the space that it is now,
Speaker 2: but I have been trying so hard for it to
Speaker 2: still remain in my space. It's my space, whether people
Speaker 2: want to follow me or not. A lot of the
Speaker 2: people who follow me have experienced some kinds of child
Speaker 2: loss or loss, but I'm also really amazed that there's
Speaker 2: also a lot of people who have an experienced loss
Speaker 2: and they're just here to learn, which I love. I
Speaker 2: have a lot of people who reach out to me
Speaker 2: and say, my friend just had a stillborn and thanks
Speaker 2: to you, I knew the right thing or the wrong
Speaker 2: thing to say, so that is amazing. But occasionally someone
Speaker 2: will come across my page, as they do on the internet,
Speaker 2: and will have an opinion, and most of the time
Speaker 2: I can block it out. But I remember I got
Speaker 2: contacted by someone who Instagram had fed me to her
Speaker 2: as a suggested page. She was pregnant with her second,
Speaker 2: and she reached out to me to say, you should
Speaker 2: put a trigger warning on your page. And I engaged
Speaker 2: in conversation with her and I said, can you explain
Speaker 2: to me why you think that, And she said, I'm
Speaker 2: pregnant with my second and hearing about the possibility or
Speaker 2: your life makes me stressed. And I'm like, so, let
Speaker 2: me get this straight. You, as a very privileged person
Speaker 2: who have got two healthy children as far as you know,
Speaker 2: want me, someone who is experiencing trauma and pain, to
Speaker 2: put a trigger warning on my child's life to make
Speaker 2: you feel more comfortable. And that's what kicked off me
Speaker 2: writing that post.
Speaker 1: It's interesting your choice of words there. You say, put
Speaker 1: a trigger warning on my child's life. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: it is, isn't it. It's saying this might be so
Speaker 1: upsetting to you, who never knew McKenzie and who isn't
Speaker 1: her mother or her father, that I need to put
Speaker 1: your feelings before my own and before honoring my daughter.
Speaker 2: It's a way for people to curate their life because
Speaker 2: I would say that ninety ninety percent of the time
Speaker 2: the people who want the trigger warning haven't experienced that trauma,
Speaker 2: because most of the people, at least in the child
Speaker 2: lost community, do not want trigger warnings on their children.
Speaker 2: We didn't get a warning that this was going to
Speaker 2: happen to us, and we want to share our child
Speaker 2: and to say put a trigger warning, it's like you're
Speaker 2: telling me that my life is so bad and it
Speaker 2: makes you uncomfortable that this exists in the world. So
Speaker 2: you want to cover me up so you can curate
Speaker 2: your world on what's positive in your mind, whereas I
Speaker 2: see my daughter as positive, Like, yes, extreme pain, but
Speaker 2: the gifts that she has given me are endless. She's
Speaker 2: changed me for the better.
Speaker 1: You said something really interesting in the piece you wrote
Speaker 1: about this for Mamma Maya. You said, trigger warnings aren't
Speaker 1: for people who've experienced things. They're for people who are
Speaker 1: scared of experiencing those things. Because they're so often claimed
Speaker 1: to be protective of the people who have experienced trauma,
Speaker 1: and maybe in some cases they are. Maybe there are
Speaker 1: some people who don't want to read about a particular
Speaker 1: traumatic experience that they've gone through, but that's pretty subjective,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: I still completely agree that they're not for the people
Speaker 2: who have experienced the trauma for they're for the people
Speaker 2: who are scared to experience the trauma and for those
Speaker 2: who have had the trauma. I do feel bad for
Speaker 2: any triggering moments, but studies have shown that one of
Speaker 2: the best ways to be never going to get over
Speaker 2: but one of the best ways to process what you've
Speaker 2: gone through is to have of exposures. I really worry
Speaker 2: about the curation of life and the feeling that we
Speaker 2: need to start putting triggers on everything because you know,
Speaker 2: where does it end? Because what triggers me is something
Speaker 2: that I would never put someone like in the child
Speaker 2: loss community, a lot of pregnancy announcements are triggering, And
Speaker 2: now I'm starting to see pregnancy announcements with trigger warnings
Speaker 2: for the people who are in the infertility space, and
Speaker 2: it's like, no, I don't agree with trigger warnings on
Speaker 2: that either, because that's someone's joy. You know. I just
Speaker 2: don't believe in trigger warnings at all. I think in
Speaker 2: some cases they might allow someone to avoid an article
Speaker 2: for a short period of time, but in the long term,
Speaker 2: it's not going to do that person any good for
Speaker 2: everyone else. It's going to be negative. It's going to,
Speaker 2: I guess, make us weak. It's not going to prepare
Speaker 2: us for life.
Speaker 1: So your philosophy is that we have responsibility for our
Speaker 1: own emotions and our own mental health and we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be outsourcing that to the Internet to protect us with
Speaker 1: trigger warnings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's very hard. I feel for people
Speaker 2: with mental health issues. I am one of them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I have a lot of diagnoses and on
Speaker 2: the medication, and I do take responsibility for what I consume.
Speaker 2: If I'm not in the right head space, then maybe
Speaker 2: going on the internet's not the place for me. I
Speaker 2: know that that can seem a bit harsh, and I
Speaker 2: really appreciate that society these days are more inclusive of
Speaker 2: people with mental health issues. I really appreciate that. Originally
Speaker 2: the thought behind it was in the right space, but
Speaker 2: the research shows that it doesn't work, and I just
Speaker 2: think that they're doing more harm than goods, So it's
Speaker 2: not for other people to protect me.
Speaker 1: You've also spoken and written about trauma creep, because of course,
Speaker 1: trigger warnings are meant to be for people who have
Speaker 1: experienced trauma to avoid being retraumatized. The question of who's
Speaker 1: trauma tized and what trauma is ties into this, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what trauma creep is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the fact that some of the terminology that
Speaker 2: we use in society is creeping out of the scientific,
Speaker 2: psychological behavioral space and it's coming into everyday language. So
Speaker 2: you know you're wanting something clean. Oh my god, I've
Speaker 2: got OCD or traumatized, I've got PTSD from guy not
Speaker 2: calling me. It's just this language that's so hyperbolic, that's
Speaker 2: coming into our space, and it's using these really big
Speaker 2: words in an everyday capacity. And where do the people
Speaker 2: who actually have OCD PTSD, you know, where do they
Speaker 2: actually sit now? What my trauma of my child passing
Speaker 2: away and losing further children and everything else that I've
Speaker 2: gone through that sits on par in a conversation like
Speaker 2: obviously not when you're going deep, but in a conversation
Speaker 2: with someone who burnt their tongue on a tea because
Speaker 2: it was too hot. Like I just think that we've
Speaker 2: got such a wide vocabulary in the English language that
Speaker 2: we can start using some of the less dramatic words.
Speaker 2: I'm sad, I'm disappointed, I'm upset. I don't like hearing
Speaker 2: that just being careful with your language, So.
Speaker 1: Rach, have you been changing minds? You've been talking about
Speaker 1: this for quite a long time. Now. Have you seen a.
Speaker 2: Shift so my post around trigger warnings? I think I
Speaker 2: was surprised that it actually took off. I saw a
Speaker 2: lot of other fellow lost parents also talking about trigger warnings.
Speaker 2: I saw a really nice rippler, at least within my community.
Speaker 2: I think the conversation is happening I think it is
Speaker 2: developing momentum.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Rate. Thank you so much. And after the
Speaker 1: break you're going to hear from Victoria Bridgeland, the Australian
Speaker 1: academic whose research into trigger warnings has changed the way
Speaker 1: people all over the world are thinking about them. Can
Speaker 1: you give us your working definition of the trigger warning?
Speaker 3: So there's all kinds of warnings you can get for
Speaker 3: different things. Obviously you can get those film warnings. You
Speaker 3: can get warnings for like content containing indigenous persons, So
Speaker 3: we're not talking about any of those kind of warnings,
Speaker 3: although I think film warnings are probably like an early ancestor.
Speaker 3: A true trigger warning is something that warns you about
Speaker 3: something that might be potentially distressing, and that's probably going
Speaker 3: to be potentially distressing because of something that's happened to
Speaker 3: you in the past or present, So maybe a traumatic
Speaker 3: event or like a mental health related issue could be depression,
Speaker 3: anxiety or that kind of So it's really just warning
Speaker 3: you about upcoming negative content that's probably related to you
Speaker 3: in some personal way, rather than just generally negative content.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between a trigger warning and a content warning?
Speaker 3: They're sort of one and the same thing. Every now
Speaker 3: and then trigger warnings will go through a rebrand because
Speaker 3: they are starting to get more heat against them because
Speaker 3: of the evidence coming out and people say, I don't
Speaker 3: think they work, and so people go, oh, we're not
Speaker 3: using a trigger warning, and we'll now we're using a
Speaker 3: content warning. But it's really the same thing repackaged. I've
Speaker 3: even seen people say that the term trigger is too
Speaker 3: triggering because it evokes gun imagery, and so people are
Speaker 3: saying we shouldn't use that term at all because it's violent,
Speaker 3: and so maybe we should use like can notes or
Speaker 3: like I don't know, other counting. But really it's doing
Speaker 3: the same thing. If the purpose of it is to
Speaker 3: warn people about a mental health related thing or a trauma,
Speaker 3: which is what they are for, then it's a triger warning.
Speaker 3: So that's sort of how I define it. It's like
Speaker 3: what they're used for rather than what they are because
Speaker 3: they come in all different forms and shapes and things.
Speaker 1: So what does the science say?
Speaker 3: Pretty extensive number of studies now, I think we've got
Speaker 3: about ten to fifteen. There's probably a few more that
Speaker 3: have come out since WIT did our meta analysis on them. Basically,
Speaker 3: they don't only do much of anything except for me,
Speaker 3: people feel anxious when they first see them. So people
Speaker 3: see a trigger warning, they feel a little bit anxious
Speaker 3: about what's coming up, sort of like apprehension or anticipatory anxiety,
Speaker 3: not very large anxiety, but just like a small amount of,
Speaker 3: you know, something, negatives coming. When people see the content
Speaker 3: after that, it doesn't reduce any negative feelings towards it,
Speaker 3: So it doesn't seem to be doing any of that
Speaker 3: emotional preparation. I can't find any evidence of that at all,
Speaker 3: even for people like in target groups that people would say, Okay,
Speaker 3: well you've just looked at the general population, but we've
Speaker 3: also looked at trauma survivors. We've also looked a people
Speaker 3: with depression. We've also looked to people with anxiety, and
Speaker 3: it doesn't seem to help any of these people. Across
Speaker 3: the board, everyone just feels the same when they see
Speaker 3: the content. And as for avoidance, that is probably more
Speaker 3: of a weird Iceberg scenario where there's so much weird
Speaker 3: stuff going on with avoidance with tree warnings or just
Speaker 3: avoidance of negative stuff in general. So I guess people
Speaker 3: would assume that humans are quite logical beings that if
Speaker 3: you see something negative that you don't want to see,
Speaker 3: you should avoid it. But what we find is humans
Speaker 3: actually have this huge propensity towards small butid curiosity, and
Speaker 3: so even though people probably know something's going to make
Speaker 3: them upset, people want to look at it anyway. And
Speaker 3: so in a lot of my studies, I found like
Speaker 3: such a tiny avoidance rate of anything negative. Even when
Speaker 3: we're like continually exposing people to the nastiest photos in
Speaker 3: our photo sets, which are quite traumatic photos of actual
Speaker 3: like dead bodies and things. You can keep showing people
Speaker 3: them and say to them you don't have to see them,
Speaker 3: because we'll have a screen on them, like those Instagram
Speaker 3: blurred warning screens, and we'll say you don't have to
Speaker 3: uncover this if you don't want to go to the
Speaker 3: next photo. People will just keep uncovering them again and
Speaker 3: again and again. Most of our studies we found like
Speaker 3: fifty percent of people will just uncover every single negative
Speaker 3: photo that we've shown them, which is quite a high number.
Speaker 3: And then as for like the first few photos, about
Speaker 3: eighty to ninety percent of people will instantly cover that photo.
Speaker 3: So there is a drop off of like people that
Speaker 3: do see the negative thing and go okay, maybe I
Speaker 3: don't want to look at anymore, but most people are
Speaker 3: just keep wanting to look at stuff. Victoria.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between that, Because people could argue, well,
Speaker 1: you've given them a choice right, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: physiological reaction of when that image or those words might
Speaker 1: just be put in front of me without you telling
Speaker 1: me that it might distress me or that it's graphic.
Speaker 3: I don't think it would make much of a difference
Speaker 3: because I just don't think unless you're specifically instructing somebody
Speaker 3: on how to reduce that reaction, I don't think the
Speaker 3: Triger warnings doing anything at all. There's no way to
Speaker 3: emotionally inoculate yourself just using a language from trigger warnings,
Speaker 3: unless you're, like maybe if you've been going through like
Speaker 3: years of therapy or you know about certain emotion regulation techniques,
Speaker 3: maybe you can. But it's a really like abstracto morphous
Speaker 3: thing to ask somebody to like stop themselves having a
Speaker 3: reaction towards something, or you don't know the technique. So
Speaker 3: usually when something's negative, it's got something unique and weird
Speaker 3: about it, it's socially devient about it, and so people
Speaker 3: are very attractive to that to gain that information and
Speaker 3: maybe learn something about how to protect themselves, or learn
Speaker 3: something about the world and how to be safe maybe
Speaker 3: or avoid threads. So we do have, I think, this
Speaker 3: sort of thing in us to sort of seek things.
Speaker 3: But what's even more, I guess disturbing about it is
Speaker 3: a lot of disorders as well have this propensity. So
Speaker 3: we would think somebody that's feeling depressed would be motivated
Speaker 3: to repair their mood, But what we actually find is
Speaker 3: that depressed people often because feeling depressed and feeling sad
Speaker 3: is a familiar mood state, they want to stay in
Speaker 3: that mood and they want to like purposely seek content
Speaker 3: that makes them feel even more depressed, and then they
Speaker 3: go down these sort of Internet rabbit holes and the
Speaker 3: algorithm feeds it and all that kind of stuff. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like when you're sad and you listen to
Speaker 3: a sad playlist, it's like that feeling.
Speaker 1: You want to see it mirrored. And that really gets
Speaker 1: to the heart of what this is about, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: It's this dejective nature of how trigger warnings are used
Speaker 1: and what they're meant to do versus what they do
Speaker 1: do and who benefits from them and who suffers because
Speaker 1: of them. That's the point, isn't it That you can't
Speaker 1: take into account how someone will use a piece of information,
Speaker 1: So even warning someone about that information can have a
Speaker 1: detrimental effect on them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so, And I think it's really that
Speaker 3: individual difference thing as well as because no matter how
Speaker 3: much evidence we have that like for most people, they
Speaker 3: don't work. And when I mean most people, I mean
Speaker 3: general population, people with different disorders we've screened for and
Speaker 3: things like that, there'll be that one person that will
Speaker 3: be like, no, but they help me, and then so
Speaker 3: you can. You know, there's always these different arguments that
Speaker 3: will be brought up about how they help will harm.
Speaker 3: But I think the biggest danger though in triger warnings
Speaker 3: is assuming that they're doing great benefit to anybody. No
Speaker 3: matter how you slice it, I just think they're not
Speaker 3: doing much at all of anything. They're not they're definitely
Speaker 3: not helping, and there's some evidence that they're probably doing
Speaker 3: some harm. But it's just really bad to assume that
Speaker 3: as long as you slap a trigger warning on any
Speaker 3: piece of media, you're protecting people. Or you know, if
Speaker 3: a professor just puts a trigger warning on their class material,
Speaker 3: but doesn't think about how the class will receive it
Speaker 3: or for any support, or it's like a band aid
Speaker 3: to sort of slap on things and try and fix
Speaker 3: this mental health crisis that we're always talking about. Because
Speaker 3: it's really easy and it's cheap, you know, for social
Speaker 3: media websites, so I can just put it on there
Speaker 3: and I have to do anything else, I have to
Speaker 3: invest anything in anything. It seems like a really good solution,
Speaker 3: but it just doesn't do anything. It doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 1: One thing I've noticed over the years is that when
Speaker 1: we're criticized at mum and Mea for not putting a
Speaker 1: trigger warning on something, because a while ago I noticed
Speaker 1: that there had been trigger creep on Muma Mea articles
Speaker 1: and Muma Mea podcasts, and I asked the team about
Speaker 1: why that was, and they said that we would often
Speaker 1: get complaints, not from lot of people, but the people
Speaker 1: who did complain would complain very loudly and be very
Speaker 1: insistent that trigger warnings were required and that we should
Speaker 1: have put a trigger warning on this podcast or on
Speaker 1: that piece of content. Often when it might just be
Speaker 1: someone mentioning that they had a miscarriage or that they
Speaker 1: had experienced domestic violence and not going into any detail,
Speaker 1: and maybe that in many cases that wasn't even the
Speaker 1: main part of the story. It just happened to be,
Speaker 1: maybe even just those words that they mentioned. And what
Speaker 1: I noticed when talking to the team is that the
Speaker 1: people who complained were almost never the people who'd actually
Speaker 1: experienced those things. It's usually the complainers, and the polices
Speaker 1: of trigger warnings and content warnings are the people who've
Speaker 1: decided it's their job to protect whoever they perceived might
Speaker 1: be well, you know, triggered. And again, I want to
Speaker 1: believe that they are well intentioned, but as you've heard,
Speaker 1: I've always just had a really deep, visceral reaction against
Speaker 1: trigger warnings. And on a show like this on No Filter,
Speaker 1: we hear from people who've lived through some really heavy things,
Speaker 1: from real survivors of abuse and violence, of addiction, of racism,
Speaker 1: and a lot of trauma. People like Rachel, people who've
Speaker 1: suffered unimaginable loss and experience things that most of us
Speaker 1: hopefully will never experience, and they've come out on the
Speaker 1: other side with a really important story to tell. And
Speaker 1: I think, as Rachel does, that putting a trigger warning
Speaker 1: on their stories, I don't know. I think it cheapens
Speaker 1: them in a way, and I think it patronizes you,
Speaker 1: the listener, who I really believe has the resilience and
Speaker 1: the ability to choose what you want to consume and
Speaker 1: avoid what you don't. And I know personally there are
Speaker 1: several things, actually many things that trigger me, and none
Speaker 1: of them would be covered by trigger warnings in the
Speaker 1: way that they're understood. What triggers upsetting or uncomfortable feelings
Speaker 1: is totally unique to each of us, right, and it
Speaker 1: must be the responsibility, in my opinion, of each of
Speaker 1: us to manage because the alternative to that is to
Speaker 1: outsource your mental well being to the internet. And is
Speaker 1: that something that we really want to do rely on
Speaker 1: the outside world to manage our feelings. The outside world
Speaker 1: is not our helicopter, and that sounds like a really
Speaker 1: terrible idea to me. So what Rachel's story and Victoria's
Speaker 1: research really just validate for me is that we have
Speaker 1: to be our own gatekeepers when it comes to how
Speaker 1: we navigate the world, whether it's our screens and our phones,
Speaker 1: or books and movies, or what's taught in a classroom,
Speaker 1: and of course the stories that we bring you here
Speaker 1: at No Filter and at Muma Maya. Now I still
Speaker 1: wrestle with this. Sometimes it's not black and white. If
Speaker 1: you listen to our episode with dassy Erlick a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, she suffered horrendous abuse of a really quite
Speaker 1: graphic nature, and so I did in the end at
Speaker 1: a content warning because you described some of that abuse.
Speaker 1: And sometimes there might be a little ears in the
Speaker 1: car with you, or you might be listening in a
Speaker 1: public place, like in your kitchen while you're cooking, and
Speaker 1: there's other people around. So I think it's important also
Speaker 1: that we provide resources for people who are triggered by
Speaker 1: the content in our stories. And we're very careful to
Speaker 1: always provide links to be on Blue or Lifeline or
Speaker 1: other specialized organizations, and we've done that today for anyone
Speaker 1: who needs a bit of extra support after listening to
Speaker 1: Rachel's story. But a big, bright, flashing red trigger warning
Speaker 1: scaring people away before they can make up their own mind,
Speaker 1: you're not going to find that on No Filter. But
Speaker 1: I want to know what you think. I have strong
Speaker 1: opinions loosely held, and I'm really curious to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You are the ones I'm thinking about when I think
Speaker 1: about trigger warnings on this show, So let me know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll share some of your feedback in one of
Speaker 1: my Insta bubbles on my Instagram account at mea Friedman,
Speaker 1: or in my Babbel newsletter which you have to sign
Speaker 1: up for but it comes free to your inbox. Will
Speaker 1: pop a link to that in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1: So there you are trigger warnings, Love them, payd them,
Speaker 1: have a think. Are you triggered by trigger warnings? Share
Speaker 1: this episode with your friends and have a good old
Speaker 1: fashioned debate and let me know where you land. The
Speaker 1: executive producer of No Filter is Niama Brown. She's not
Speaker 1: a fan of trigger warnings either. Our audio producer is
Speaker 1: Leiah Porges, and she's on the fence. See lots of
Speaker 1: opinions over here at MMA. Miya, I'm mea Friedman. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. That's of laugh