After an 8 a.m chem lab (YUCK!) I found myself sitting on a couch in the student center of my school, telling myself I was doing homework, but actually staring out into space. As I was trying to calculate the number of tiles on the hallway floor, my eyes wandered over to two women walking in my direction. They were engaged in a very loud conversation, and as a self-diagnosed chronic eavesdropper, I had to listen.
One of them was talking about how much weight she had lost, and how proud she was. The other chimed in to say that she was jealous because it was personally difficult for her to lose weight. She went on to explain that after a while the “excess food” in her body simply had nowhere to go, so it started packaging itself into her thighs and hips. At that point, both of them turned the corner and I couldn’t hear anything else. After about five minutes they returned and their topic of conversation had not changed. They were now discussing the best foods to avoid when trying to lose weight.
As they made their way down the hall and I looked down at my legs. Five minutes ago, I was fine with them. Now they seemed to be covered in “packaged excess.” I thought about the food I had eaten that morning. The bagel sitting in front of me lost all of its appeal, as it was one of the foods they had mentioned. Suddenly I could feel my stomach, my hips, my legs. Every part of me felt uncomfortable.
A week after this incident, I was sitting in my therapist’s office recounting what I had heard and my reaction to it. When I finished she looked at me, tilted her head to the side and asked, “Do you think everybody reacts the way you did?” Not thinking twice, I confidently answered yes. A very short, “no,” was her response. “No?” I was confused. My reaction to a perfectly normal common conversation between two people was apparently, the opposite of perfectly normal.
Alas, there is a reason. The word “triggered” get’s thrown around in our everyday vernacular so often that it has completely deviated from its meaning. I don’t like to use it but when my therapist mentioned it to me, something clicked in my head.
“I think, correct me if I am wrong, that these women’s conversations triggered your eating disorder to start planting thoughts in your head. Most people hear this conversation, maybe think about it for a couple of minutes, and move on with their lives. It doesn’t stay with them for a week after.”
I have been living with an eating disorder since I was 8, and this illness had, and continues to have, the ability to distort irrational thoughts and make them seem perfectly rational. Case in point, during the entire session I was convinced I could feel the bagel I had eaten a week ago growing in my body. Although rationally I knew it was scientifically inaccurate and basically impossible for a bagel to stay in my body that long, I was convinced this was the absolute truth.
After the session, I went over the conversation in my head. The word “trigger” took on a whole new meaning. Think about an alcoholic who is at a bar with his friend. This alcoholic hasn’t had a drink in years and has gone to bars many times without being tempted to drink. This time his friends are discussing how much fun they had drinking a couple of weeks ago and how they couldn’t wait to do it again. Suddenly, those voices in his head telling him to drink, the ones that had been whispers moments ago, were screaming at maximum volume. He was triggered by the conversation, a conversation that to someone who has not struggled with alcohol addiction, is normal.
Let’s use the word triggered to describe a physical illness. Anybody with an allergy is triggered if they come in contact with what they are allergic to. If they aren’t careful, the trigger can be fatal. Someone with a peanut allergy has to avoid peanuts, someone without a peanut allergy can eat tubs of peanut butter without giving it a second thought.
In my case, a conversation about weight had caused alarm bells to ring in my head, releasing a stream of thought that is normally kept at bay. I was triggered. This word gets thrown around in our everyday vernacular so often that it has completely deviated from its meaning. Now people see it as a joke, saying they are triggered when they hear something they don’t like. Admitting that I was triggered by a conversation felt like I was censoring the world around me, preventing free speech, and making others tiptoe around me.
It is okay to not be okay with things others are.
My experience with the women taught me that there is a difference between censorship and self-care. Although there was nothing I could do to influence their conversation as I was not a part of it (and shouldn’t have heard it in the first place) I know there are going to be situations where people around me are discussing weight loss, avoiding food, calories etc. In those moments, I know that I need to take care of myself. I am not afraid to admit that something is triggering, because in the end if I don’t speak up all I am doing is hurting myself. How others react, that’s up to them. I am doing everything in my power to ensure my health and safety. Next time you have the urge to use the word triggered to describe the ridiculous amount of reading your teacher assigned for class, think about how that word may impact those around you.