Dealing with triggers in the multiplicity community

[pyraxis]

New post, fresh start.

This is to continue the conversations that got started in the last post about how to manage conflict in a community where many of the people and groups involved are dealing with intense reactions.

Comments

[hushpiper.livejournal.com]

[re-posted from my thread in the first post]

The question: Triggers are a common problem within the multiplicity community, and they often can pop up without warning. A turn of phrase within a comment; a picture; the mention of a name. We can't always predict what will set us off, that's simply human nature. How, then, should the community at large deal with a situation in which someone is hurt and triggered and lashing out?

Some views have already been put forward in the comments above [the later comments in the other post]; feel free to reference and compare. It's a complicated issue and I'm very much interested in finding out what others think.

[liedownlovely.livejournal.com]

[re-posted from hushpiper's thread in 1st post!]

jimnightmare and us were discussing creating a community specifically for system members who needed practice communicating and learning how to be part of the community at large. Our questions were how to maintain it (keep it from becoming one of the million dead plural comms), and another question - how do you mod a community for people who have trouble communicating? How would you draw the line on "practicing" talking and being outright mean?

[liedownlovely.livejournal.com]

And really, what would keep group members with no interest in learning to communicate from posting just to start fires? Would it even be possible to weed out the troublemakers from those who really wanted help communicating?

We think pluralanon has made it clear there's tons of aggression flying around. Would it be better to create... a therapy community? Where groups can go settle disagreement and practice speaking to each other? Whoever modded it would need help and time and the will to be a medium between people. Obviously there's always going to be a group who doesn't want to get along, but perhaps there are more out there who'd really want to end conflict.

Just thoughts.

[myorp.livejournal.com]

if such a thing was going we might be willing to try to mod.

we're usually good at staying relatively detached when we need to, but on the other hand, when we get worked up we tend to just disappear and avoid things that stress us out. i dunno if we have enough spoons to deal with the stress that modding someplace like that would require.

i dunno. if something like that happens we'd probably at least join, just to try to facilitate good communication between groups. i was just thinking how it would help the community a lot of people in general were more willing to try to get everyone to calm-down when things get emotional, instead of choosing their side and joining in with the emotionality!

i mean... look at how things went on the earlier posting thread. in at least one instance there was a side-argument about the original argument and the first two people weren't even involved in that sub-thread!

it would definitely be good if people could learn better when it's ok to pursue your point, and when that will just be perceived as being argumentative and/or angry.

so i guess i do like this idea.
maybe i'll say something else about it tomorrow once i finally sleep x_x

~kat

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

Here I'll copy my reply over here:

Making a separate comm is a good idea, but how do we keep it from becoming one of the million dead plural comms on LJ? That's our question... :/ Ideas?

I don't know. Like actually I wasn't thinking separate comm when I wrote that, like maybe the comm we have is going to need to be able to have room for this stuff a bit. Not like letting people break the rules or going easy on banning them if they do or anything like that, but people realizing that not everybody is going to 100% have their shit together and try and find good ways to help and give advice and be a little patient with people sometimes if they need it.

Also some stuff to add: I guess there's the didsupport community which somebody said to us once was a good place to talk about system help stuff, like I kind of think practice and support stuff for even some of the people in my system would be really good and we were looking for something like that a while back, but I never really felt like I wanted to join there because we're not pro-integration and we don't really fit DID stuff so well. :\

And also being patient and giving people room and understanding and all that can be hard if people are getting triggered by stuff and a lot of people everywhere have communication problems and issues and stuff, which I guess goes back to the post thing here more. I don't know answers to it yet.

[liedownlovely.livejournal.com]

Thanks for bringing this over here!

didsupport is very, well, DID oriented. It's a good place for those with DID who are having troubles with it to talk, but we're not sure it's the right place for anything else.

And yeah, it's sort of a vicious cycle - giving people room and understanding, but then being triggered by stuff and bad at communicating makes it difficult at best to give that understanding. It ties back in with personal responsibility we think, and learning with the assistance of friends (and family, etc) how to respond.

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

And yeah, it's sort of a vicious cycle - giving people room and understanding, but then being triggered by stuff and bad at communicating makes it difficult at best to give that understanding. It ties back in with personal responsibility we think, and learning with the assistance of friends (and family, etc) how to respond.

Yes... I suppose there can be another vicious cycle in here as well, the fact that a lot of people here may not have supportive families to be able to learn these skills from, or many opportunities to be openly multiple in social situations (although I suppose this can all vary a lot between systems). So the community may be a place they attempt to turn to for support with some of this, make more friends, etc. But then within the community, there tends to be so many communication and trigger issues all over the place, it may not be so good with providing adequate room and understanding, or enough models of healthy communication and conflict-solving skills for people to learn from. Seems like a very tricky situation overall.

-47

[tigerweave.livejournal.com]

Re DIDsupport, No one over there seems to give a shit about the whole integration thang. We aren't ever gonna bother with integrating and it certainly isn't pushed there and we don't feel uncomfortable that we aren't pro-integration there.

To be honest, I don't know too many systems that are pro-integration.'

Also there seems to be a number of people/systems that have done a lot of therapy over the years and have fairly healthy ways of communicating and advocating healthy reactions and relationships in response to posts about that sort of thing.

So we have found it a good place, within the bounds of its "brief" so to speak.

[nefaz.livejournal.com]

I know I stepped on some toes recently by posting something that triggered reactions, so I wanted to ask how to determine if something is a trigger or not? It might be really small things, like words or phrases, so no matter how much you try and re-read your posts, you could always do something "wrong" (at least in one person's subjective view).

Creating a list of all triggers that people have would be a little difficult, and some people can't really specify their weak spots accurately.

So... any guidelines for that?

*kahoku

[anachronisma.livejournal.com]

Triggers are so arbitrary and random. A headmate who did not previously front very often has a trigger about meat cooked a particular way. I cannot reasonably expect strangers to remember not to talk about their rib dinners. I have a birdcage trigger (this makes being friends with bird owners an interesting experiment). Last night, a friend of mine was triggered by a discussion of grief and the mourning process. There are some triggers that are so uncommon they are hard to predict. Some triggers are completely unavoidable. You cannot avoid triggering everyone all the time, especially strangers.

As a general rule, I find the safest general rule on trigger warnings have to do with anything that could be construed as cruelty. That's how I parse it. Would x be cruel if it happened to a person I care about? Maybe I'll just cut it.

[jimnightmare.livejournal.com]

You cannot avoid triggering everyone all the time, especially strangers.

Yeah I totally agree. That's some of why I don't think we should really have to do trigger warnings here, because there's just like no way to get everything and if we try to get everything and make it a fluffy safe space where nobody gets triggered then that's going to cause other problems. And also probably it's impossible. Like, hell, I didn't get triggered by anything anybody said or the trolls or anything in the latest drama exploding stuff, but then a few days later the whole thing it hit me and I totally flipped out for a couple days because feeling alone like there's no good community place to go to anywhere is kind of a trigger thing for me. And that's not something a trigger warning could really fix. :P So like maybe it's polite and a good idea to cut stuff or do a warning if it's got something that would trigger people you know of but also instead of trying to stop triggers it would help more for people to get a better idea of how to deal when people get triggered so it's not like everything just explodes everywhere?

[myorp.livejournal.com]

i agree, although i also think maybe a general guideline of people using trigger cuts when it's something that they themselves find triggering would probably be reasonable.

if i go to post about being triggered, i think it would just be polite to assume that if i got triggered somebody else very likely would.

i'm not saying it should be a moderated thing unless it's something extreme, but i do think maybe a general guideline saying something along the lines of "please consider other's feelings and if posting material that would be triggering to you, put it behind a cut". that way it leaves it up to the individual but still comes off as encouraging people to think about it.

~O

[pyraxis]

Well, I'd be willing to host said mediation ground, if other systems were willing to give it a try. Like a place where I wouldn't shut things down, no matter how heated they got. Or some other set of agreed-upon rules. I'm open.

IMO, I think all sides would need to agree to speak with respect for it to work. And to acknowledge that either side might need to temporarily back down and cool off, and that's fine, not a call to begin passive sniping (which wouldn't allow anyone to truly calm down anyway).

You said about how your headmate was raised to deal with conflict - am I understanding right then that your headmate is the one who's been in conflict with other groups, and not you yourself or the other members of your system?

- Pyraxis

[pyraxis]

Okay, that makes sense.

I think that highlights the problem that's been brought up before, of people getting upset when someone in the comm is accused of things by name.

[pyraxis]

Hey, on that note, do you have any issues with me/Pyraxis?

[pyraxis]

No need to drag things out of the past if it's not a big issue for him anymore, but if he's up for it, I can get with her and see if she'd be willing to talk it out too.

[pyraxis]

Ok, got it about the contact info. I talked to her today and she's willing.

If it turns out to be necessary, he can send to pyraxis at livejournal dot com and she'll get it, or if the mods clear it, I could make a post on multi_dispute.