Trigger Happy Media Minimizes Gravity

The media’s use of certain words is absolutely maddening. Calling the election traumatic, for example minimizes gravity of terms so that they lose impact. College students need safe rooms because they might get triggered by someone mentioning that Trump won the election for President? This is insanity.

The media minimizes gravity

Using such terms degrades their meaning. September 11th was sincerely traumatic for the nation. Thousands of people were killed on American soil, the fires burned for weeks, transit was shut down, all planes were grounded. The events were the whole of the news for weeks. We watched as people threw themselves from the towers. People couldn’t get home to loved ones. Truly, it was awful.

So too, trauma is real for those who experience war, severe environmental disaster, abuse, rape, trafficking, car accidents, mugging, or other sudden extreme loss of dignity or liberty. A diagnosis of cancer or similar can cause some anxiety, even fear, and a few would call it trauma. These are sudden significant life changing events.

The election of a presidential candidate isn’t. The president-elect doesn’t even take office until January 20th. Even if he hits the ground running with policy changes and executive orders, there simply isn’t enough power in the office to change the whole country in a moment. The wheels of change take time to turn.

What happened?

Adults are acting like the world has come to an end. What has the education system wrought? How did we get here? I am connected with numerous child sexual abuse survivors, sex trafficking survivors, PTSD groups, and I know people who are gay or advocate for unfettered sexual exploration. They are acting like someone is going to line them up and shoot them. This is insanity.

Donald Trump isn’t even a conservative. For all we know he used ‘Christianese’ to get elected. Look at his life. There is no evidence, except his undisciplined words, to believe anything, good or bad will come about.

We all need to wait and see.

The media has so diluted the meaning of words that I want to shake my head at practically everything!

Actual triggers

Trigger has no meaning in many of the media posts I see. The meaning should express a stimuli that causes a sudden and unpredicted response, eliciting a physiological and emotional reaction produced from a past trauma that may or may not be known.

  • The smell of a certain tobacco may cause a man to crumble into a pile of torment, because he was a prisoner of war, severely beaten and caged. His body remembers and responds with physical reactions he may barely control.
  • A Woman might find herself holding her arms up in a defensive posture when she hears a certain sound, because her rapist attacked her when she last heard the same sound. Her response is from a deep body memory of trauma.
  • A child may cry out in anguish at the feeling of water, because the fear of drowning is a real body memory of a cousin who held him under until he came up not breathing. The abuse, actually relived by the trigger of the sensation of water.

 

These are triggers. For an event that is really a non-event to be called a trigger and feed into the emotional firestorm we have in our country is telling. We are a nation unthoughtful, undisciplined in our minds, uneducated to our detriment. One young child was forcibly thrown out of his home by his mom because he voted for Trump at school. This insanity begets cruelty.

Have dignity

You and I can choose how we respond to events like an election. It is a shame that the media minimizes the gravity and meaning of the words they use. We can choose to fear or we can choose to hope. The mayhem that is going on in our country is in anticipation of things that may or may never happen. This is insane.

I hope you’ll join me in prayerfully waiting to see what happens.

 

6 Comments
  • I agree with this article, up to a point. But these people who are being trashed as “crybabies,” “spoiled children” and “hate” are usually people who are marginalized and often are forgotten by society. These are people with disabilities, people of color, Muslims, Latinos, and others. These people aren’t upset because their candidate lost. They are upset because they feel that an individual who has trashed and
    denigrated them now is has the highest office in the land.

    November 11, 2016 at 6:44 pm
      • I wasn’t talking about you using the quoted expressions that I mentioned in my comment. I agree with personal responsibility. But this has been an election unlike any other in American history. Bullying has increased in schools, hate crimes are increasing, and Muslim women wearing hijabs are being punched and spit in the face. Many disabled people now have to look at the face of the man who mocked a disabled reporter during his campaign. Many of us truly feel angst at this man’s election victory. The President-Elect must reach out to these people, this other America. He must work to earn trust and respect.

        November 12, 2016 at 11:58 am
  • Cory Medilo
    Reply

    They are indeed crybabies and spoilt children. When they don’t get what they want they throw a tantrum – a violent tantrum at that. Just look at their behaviour.

    November 13, 2016 at 5:05 am

Post a Comment