There’s something that has irritated me for a while. No it hasn’t triggered me! I get that language evolves over time. I embrace change in various forms and believe change is usually a healthy thing, but perhaps I’m more of a linguistic purist than I like to admit.
It just surprises me sometimes, how certain words or phrases become popularized, are introduced into the vernacular and become commonplace and overused. Often the words or phrases are used incorrectly.
One example I can thing of is the word “surreal”. The term was first used by a poet, Guillaume Apollinaire. He spoke about the concept of an independent reality, underneath our conscious reality. He first spoke of this in the mid-1900’s and a number of years later, the poet, Andre Breton, published the “Manifesto of Surrealism”. He was influenced by Freud and Jung and soon after, visual artists like Picasso embraced Surrealism.
Some of us who studied the Surrealists in school are taken aback to hear conversations peppered with, “Oh wow, it was so surreal”.
There are also many terms or even diagnoses that the average person has taken from the field of psychology and psychiatry and misapplied. Something that truly bugs me and that I hear so often nowadays in discussions, is how easily people get “triggered”. It comes up a lot on the Internet and especially in Grief and Loss groups and other groups too. I find this term so overused and also misused.
People with diagnosed PTSD and with anxiety disorders can be triggered and can experience serious consequences/reactions brought about by the triggering. Triggering may cause people to become physically ill, to act impulsively, to possibly do dangerous, or even violent things, and to put themselves, or others in harm’s way. It may cause people to freeze and to be totally unable to cope with where they are in the moment, because they literally feel themselves to be back in one or more previously experienced traumatic moments. It can almost paralyze some people and impede them from managing tasks of everyday living, and from living a productive life.
I use the word diagnosed, because another popularization nowadays is the almost casual use of the term PTSD. An awful lot of folks have decided on their own that they have PTSD. I am not saying people who apply the diagnosis to themselves haven’t lived through hard stuff. I imagine many have. There are different kinds of PTSD. I’m certainly not an expert on this. I have suffered from it though, and yes, have been professionally diagnosed with it. Thankfully a combination of therapy, time and also my coaching training, have given me good coping tools and it is nowhere as severe as it once was.
I regularly hear the term triggered these days, but triggering doesn’t just happen because you are very sensitive and get easily upset. It isn’t brought about by a word or comment that makes you feel bad, brings up unpleasant memories or makes you cry. Triggered is a mental health term and means something is said, or experienced that causes extreme overwhelm or discomfort.
I’m not talking about a meme on Facebook. It’s also not a political term, or a phrase that’s intended to put someone down when you just don’t like what they’re saying. We often see trigger warnings, but there’s a huge difference between comments or events that make you feel uncomfortable, vs. ones that bring back your massive trauma. I think these trigger warnings are offensive to those with true PTSD or anxiety disorders. They may even give a false impression to some who don’t know better, that people who actually have diagnoses from traumatic experiences are just too sensitive and tend to overreact.
Phew…That rant made me tired. I think I’ll go have a relaxing cup of tea now. I hope it made you think, whether or not you agree with what I’ve said.
Iris J. Arenson-Fuller, PCC, CPC is a Grief and Loss Transformation/Life Reinvention Coach.
Iris helps mid-life and older women and many widowed women of various ages (and sometimes others) though grief and loss, and helps them figure out how to reinvent life, in spite of what they’ve lived through. She also helps people redesign their lives just because they’re ready to be more peaceful, purposeful and successful.
Find Iris on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/visionpoweredcoaching
and https://www.facebook.com/authorpoetirisjarensonfuller
Image above is by Reneé Thompson via Unsplash.
