i wish the general population never learned the word "triggered" because as someone who actually gets triggered and needs to communicate that, it's been watered down and almost sounds like edgelord nonsense now even when i have to use it.

let this be a psa to stop using that term unless you are actually talking about having a trauma response. i hate it and when people use it jokingly i feel uncomfortable around them

similarly "i was traumatized" or "i still have ptsd from that" when talking about a mildly inconvenient ordeal. please stop.
just like being organized or particular are not OCD, an unpleasant experience you don't want to repeat does not make PTSD

being triggered is like stepping through a trap door in my head and being rushed away to another place where i am in danger. i can feel in danger even when i am talking to a loved one who has always been safe, feel in my body through adrenaline and other body processes like i am in place and time where some event occurred, often like i'm a kid with no power.

getting triggered is almost always unexpected, sometimes i don't realize that's what's happening at first. it can ruin big chunks of time, sometimes even days of my life. i can say things i regret. it has strained and even ruined some of my relationships. i often need to apologize later. some people will never trust me again. even if it's mild i almost always need to try to explain what happened or excuse myself.

and "i was triggered" has become a joke that means "i was being an unreasonable snowflake about something"

"lol triggered" is usually around something the joker thinks people shouldn't be upset about. actual triggers can be so incredibly varied and can seem weird or silly to an outside observer because they might remind the triggered person somehow of some previous event or pattern of events. hell, often when /i/ get triggered i am also going "why am i getting triggered about this? this is ridiculous" and attacking myself on top of the triggered feeling. as if i need that too.

people with trauma need kindness, nonjudgement, and patience around the topics that trigger them.

i have heard people say they had ptsd from a challenging soldering project, or from waiting in line for concert tickets, or from watching a sub par movie. aaghhhh no. no you don't.
to be clear something in those three examples could be triggering of a previous experience, but just being mildly inconvenienced or uncomfortable does not cause ptsd and it's not funny

adding this to the end which i said in the comments but a few people have suggested other terms instead, but the thing is

1. disabled people shouldn't have to keep dancing around people who want to dehumanize us every time our words get misused

2. if we come up with a new word, they'll turn that one into a joke, too

just going to boost some of this thread in relation to someone on here diagnosing *a company* with ADHD which is a few steps beyond when people go "i'm SOOO ADHD" when they get a little distracted etc. this all sucks, don't do it
don't do this with personality disorders or other mental illnesses either please
in noah samsen's latest video i watched yesterday he says "i still have ptsd from [sports team losing]"

@forestine some people around me use schizophrenia as the joke word when like a message app mistakenly shows someone having read a message twice or if someone uses multiple accounts in the same chat room. aka if there are multiple "instances of the same person"

as a person living with schizophrenia, I tried explaining that schizophrenia isn't about DID but they just repeat this joke next time

@wonderfox ughhh i'm sorry. i hate this.

@forestine it's an endlessly repeating pattern. they do it every time and of course they would, but then everyone else has to go and adopt their usage of the word. doesn't matter if those people use the right wing appropriated version sincerely or ironically, it normalizes it either way

i expect the scorpion to sting me. it's what it does. i'm all the more exhausted by supposed allies who enable it again and again, never learning, never caring

@forestine the nasty people out there will happily take and devalue any word or symbol out there, just like they often want to take control of everything else

@forestine

like people have ocd when they like their toilets to be reasonably clean.

@forestine I'm experimenting with replacing "I'm triggered" with "I'm in a trigger state", mainly because it's similar but different enough but also to indicate that it's a different mode of operation of my traumatized brain that I have little control over once I'm in that state.
@forestine ugh the fucking OCD thing bothers me the most bcs its so normalized and is absolutely infuriating how others use it

like no you arent OCD for wanting a tidy fucking work space like everyone else, please can we just stop it

-carrie

@aperture @forestine yeah >->

its bad enough that doll gets unsure if it should say it might have ocd because its scared of being like them
..even when for it its stuff like morality trauma and contamination hell and it just isnt sure if its constant enough to be ocd actually there arent really any conpulsions that clear it up, itd probably just be obsessions if anything

@azalea @forestine oh yeah i have/used to have some obsessions that would absolutely not clear up no matter what

couldnt get a ritual to fix them just had to wait till i forgot basically

idk its kinda up to that one if it does think it has ocd proper, i can only share my experiences but obviously every OCD is different

i was hesitant for a while but at this point i think ive destroyed my hands enough because of inane bullshit that shouldnt matter that i can say i have it albjgdsgkjbsdg

-carrie
@azalea @aperture i'm sorry. it's okay to look for resources on something even if unsure about a label, if that helps. books or websites for example
@forestine like ok that was a poor example since i dont really have the kind of OCD that requires a tidy space to exist, i just have contaminyation OCD so an example closer to my home is people equating needing to wash their hands because they touched something gross as being OCD whereas i have literally watched them pick things up off the floor, use the buttons everynyan else has used, eat out of the communyal food bucket, shook hands with a rando, handled wet materials, and touched their face after all this and finally then washing their hands and just like

ugh sorry i am so, jealous of people who can live a life that isnt constantly aware of what their hands have touched and how "dirty" they are

i miss before this was an issue i had

obviously my triggers for contaminyation ocd wont be the same for everynyan im just, expressing my experience here and how frustrating it is when non-OCD people use "OCD" as their quirky little joke

-carrie
@aperture yeah it goes to show that the common narrative of what these disorders are is so distorted. i hate if so much
@forestine maybe it's time to coin a new word for it?
@licho there are a couple suggestions in the replies, but i would still like people to stop being ableist. if a new word became popular, people would turn that one into a joke, too

@forestine The damage can't be undone. Twisting words is a long pattern. Every time there is a word for disability, it gets turned into an offensive word. There's like 11 words in English that used to be normal terms that got used as offensive also people had to get a new one, putting a taboo on the previous one, reinforcing the offensiveness. Starting from crippled, through handicapped and so on.

Imo you'd have better results calling PTSD shell shock, after the WWI name
https://youtu.be/oYE_unBFxuU?si=CbFsJ9JWr6auGMdG

George Carlin - PTSD

YouTube
@licho i just don't think it should be on us to use different terms. i have chosen to try and raise awareness instead 🤷
and shell shock doesn't really include complex ptsd from an ongoing event like what i have

@forestine that's a valid strategy too :) way more ambitious though, you'd need an organization. 💪 Best wishes.

After 8 years I'm not getting nightmares anymore, not even triggering although still haven't tried looking at the photos from the summer of 2016. Don't think I ever will. I'm not even thinking of myself as a PTSD person anymore, I'd join an org that would increase the awareness in no time.

@forestine my trauma therapist never liked me using that word…she preferred ‘activated’ which better describes the experience without the person suffering trauma or the ‘recall moment’ becoming like a weapon/dangerous.
@forestine I use the word triggered for my phobias and possible meltdown/shutdown coming in. I hate how this word has been watered down, it's harder to communicate that a specific sensory trigger is serious business and not just a discomfort due to it.
@nate yes! the immediacy it conjures is helpful, like a switch has been flipped and i'm having a Very Bad Time
@forestine yeah, not sure if I have PTSD but this has been a very helpful term for an autistic guy who struggles to talk when this happens, 
@forestine it'd be really nice if the general population's use of "triggered" was swapped with "squicked" 
@forestine fair point. I recently used this term in a post and have since changed it to something else.
@forestine As a victim of child and domestic abuse, I concur 100%.
@forestine I suffer from RTS, when it's triggered, I disappear for days and fight the urge to kms. 😥

@forestine People ruin nearly everything. "Meme" is misused. "Narcissist" has come to mean "person who didn't do what I wanted". Another one is using "self-". It doesn't mean "me" or "you" or a person. A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prophecy that fulfills itself, not a person's identity. "Self-checkout" makes no sense.

I dislike accepting incompetence and how I'm the bad guy for saying, "You're doing it wrong," when my reason is to preserve utility and value. Neglecting to is a disservice. 🤬

trigger for me is something like:
visceral reaction of instant dread and dark dark thoughts.
instantly not caring to be alive anymore.

I stopped saying "my OCD" because of me having similar thoughts as you about "trigger".

@forestine I just say "ptsd flashback". Normies understand enough, even if they think you were back in Namn for a minute.
@wildrose i've noticed normies misusing that one too. i'm hesitant to switch because that one will become useless too
I stopped using OCD myself because I got the context from not liking when others
say triggered frivolously.
(I don't really have OCD but i really get triggered.)