修行会

Ellis Amdur, hmm lots to think about and work through, but here goes.

I’ve met entire groups of people healed by groking “trigger” because they put sincere effort into examining it phenomenologically. They were exposed to it, wore it, overextended it, underextended it, defined it, operationalized measuring it in flight, studied it in their experiences, accepted its reality, worked to temporarily minimize triggers in their environments to have a safe space to slow down high densities of triggering exhausting mental resources leading to decrease of health and wellbeing during continued stressors, then after having done that, they reintroduce themselves to more and more triggers like systematic desensitization to reduce the “triggered” responses, and for some this inclusive of many aspects of behavior modification. It does seem that triggering is either lending to or interchangeable with the phobic and compulsive.

Ellis, it’s ok to recognize fragility. Homo sapiens are both fragile and powerful, I think there is something here worth investigating. Besides in times of the most fragile oft is powerful glory, and I’ve seen that in the U.S. Army and in the streets of Washington DC when walking around its neighborhoods and transit systems into the wee hours of morning during the decades living in a dojo.

I think Ellis, the position that had been presented is more about identifying with triggering, yet, as discussed, there are entire communities that have benefitted from a new and novel word that has more salience and primes thoughts about awareness of phobic/compulsive responses and much needed self-care that otherwise would have been overshadowed by a plethora of stories, themes, films, stigma, courtesy stigma etc. around phobias etc. in the courts of public opinion. “Trigger” is accessible and it’s also a gentler way of destigmatizing a phobic response, though recently has been stigmatized quite harshly (one could conjecture as to why, but studies are more valid and reliable)—this entire conversation evidenced new stigma. It’s ok, it’s only society doing what it does to words, where words over time carry more and more negative valence (one could argue that positive words trigger ascription of negative valence, yet this conjecture would be rendered invalid by studies on the amplified proportionality of negative to positive valence, so it’s just psychoeducation at work illuminating motivational aspects of naturally selected evolved psychology).

Language use and communities of practice of variations in language use are interesting, and it’s interesting to see a sign triggering a phobic response to overestimating the impact of a word (and not seeing its confounds) such to invite an ascent to “word burning”, which seems as a moral ascent toward a behavior to book banning and eventual burning; horrific. The euphemistic language seems evident of moral disengagement (Bandura, 2016).

So in review, it would seem that arguing against the usage of a word seems entirely representative of “being triggered”. The thing is, when it comes down to it, a parapraxis had been revealed in the words “when people gain power through being regarded/regarding themselves as fragile.” Ellis, it’s called martial arts. It’s ok to be fragile, and also… powerful. Besides like Watson, Skinner, and Bandura learned about phobias, the phobia’s explanation reveals its confounds, and it is in the confounds of triggering that might beg exploration; an exploration limited by worlds of Fleckian thought styles triggered in personality at the intersections of groups—the result of both nature, and nurture, powerful and weak, selectively identified with in individual to social construction.

Nice discussion. Discussion—a word that quite literally in the majority of Homo sapiens language use meaning, “to shake out”, also known as… triggered. Yeah, how about them apples?