Dark Romance. Dark Fantasy. Dark Psychological Thrillers. Just what does “dark” mean, anyway? When I see a book described as “dark” I know its typically synonymous with heavy content, usually in relation to the struggles the main characters endure. And to be completely transparent, I love a good, deliciously dark read. Humans are complex, we’re not built solely of sunlight and smiles. We have motives, past trauma, emotions, and desires. While fiction gives us a safe place to explore this dynamic nature for entertainment, it’s not enjoyable for some if brings up traumatic memories or draws on specific fears or phobias.
Over the past several years, authors adding content or “trigger” warnings to books has become popular with the surge in dark reads. These trigger warnings have become a hot topic of debate among readers and authors alike. Some feel they give away spoilers, ruin the plot twist, or otherwise offer information that a reader shouldn’t know in advance to get the full story experience. A recent article from Psychology Today (How Science Changed My View on Trigger Warnings | Psychology Today) asserts that a study showed content warnings can actually increase anticipatory anxiety and cause more people to explore emotionally provocative material.
On the other side of the coin, there are fierce advocates for content warnings, justifying them as essential in the spirit of mental health awareness and sensitivity. Trigger warnings aren’t just for horror, violence, suicide, or sexual assault. Many readers want to know if they’re about to experience a read that contains mention of cheating, pregnancy loss, or pet loss, since triggers are born out of a past traumatic experience.
While mysteries and thrillers are somewhat expected to contain content that may include murder, stalking, or kidnapping, what about genre straddlers like dark romance, fantasy, or sci-fi? Triggering content can be found in any genre, so the question is: to warn or not to warn?
Today, Megan Tavares, LICSW, joins us to discuss content warnings, the psychology behind them, and how authors and readers can best communicate the potential triggers before cracking a spine on a new read.
Megan Tavares, LICSW, PMH-C, is a clinical social worker and owner of Peace & Pearl Wellness and Counseling, a private telehealth practice focusing on perinatal mental health. She is also a freelance writer and has been featured in Insider, Edutopia, Parents.com, Today Parents Community and Motherly. Megan lives in Somerset, Ma, with her husband and two sons.
AA DaSilva: Megan, thanks so much for talking about this topic today. I’d like to start by asking you to educate us a bit about triggers in general, and the psychology behind them.
Megan Tavares: First, I want to thank you, Amy, for inviting me to be part of this conversation. When we started discussing the idea of trigger warnings as a topic that would blend both of our worlds, I was all for it. As a therapist, and one who has worked with many people impacted by trauma, my initial reaction was “of course we need trigger warnings!” And then I started to do a little research. I understand now, why you told me this was a hot button issue – there are varying opinions based on varying reasoning, some backed by research and some based on the idea that some people are “just snowflakes” that society is trying to coddle.
I don’t think authors want to “coddle” readers. Authors recognize that what they put out into the world has an impact and trigger warnings acknowledge that. In the past, I’d praise trigger warnings as a sign that our society is starting to acknowledge that bad things can and do happen to people and the impact can be lasting. But if someone were to ask me today how I feel about trigger warnings, I wouldn’t be so quick to endorse them.
Information about triggers in general
Megan Tavares: I’m going to back up a bit here and talk about triggers in general because this word gets thrown around a lot lately and I want to make sure we’re all working from the same understanding as we talk about this topic. A trigger, in the context of trauma, is anything that makes us recall a traumatic event. It can be anything really – sounds, smells, people, places, anniversaries of traumatic events. You name it, it can be considered a possible trigger.
The event or thing that acts as a trigger may not always be something we’d typically consider distressing. The brain is an incredible thing but our sympathetic nervous system, which is part of our autonomic nervous system, isn’t able to differentiate between real and perceived danger – which is why readers can become easily triggered by certain content. Once the sympathetic nervous system, which can be described as our body’s alarm system, detects danger in any form, our fight/flight/freeze/fawn response is triggered in order to prepare the body to engage in one of these four reactions.
So when a reader comes across something in a story that could be triggering, it’s possible that their body’s alarm system will be set off, leading to the chain of events we just talked about. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to see a huge impact on a person. We could, absolutely, but if someone with a history of trauma has gotten support, has learned effective coping skills and has gotten to a place where they are not controlled by their feelings when triggered, then there might be minimal impact, if any.
AA DaSilva: Where do you stand regarding trigger warnings on books? Should they be included in all books, and if so, how best do you think an author should convey these warnings?
Megan Tavares: I know I’ve said this already but before I started doing some research on trigger warnings, I thought they were a good idea. And I still think the general idea behind them – being sensitive to someone else’s experience – is great. But then I went down the rabbit hole and here we are. The stories we read, no matter what genre, reflect our experiences back to us but they also give us the gift of hopeful possibility and the idea that our own character arcs have yet to be fully mapped out. If Frodo had been warned about what was to come on the journey to Mount Doom, would he have followed the Fellowship or would he have stayed tucked away in the Shire? Would Harry Potter have chosen to remain in the cupboard under the stairs had he been warned about Voldemort? These are two characters who suffered tremendously on their journeys and survived. Each made it to their final chapters, a little worse for wear, but they made it.
This is the argument against trigger warnings – that in providing an opportunity to avoid the possibility of being triggered, readers will do just that, avoid stories which may include triggering content. Avoidance is not a coping skill, in fact, if someone is actively avoiding reading something because of a trigger warning, the trigger warning has become a trigger. I know advocates of trigger warnings say they hope readers will use the warning to get their arsenal of coping skills ready as they read, but that’s like gearing up for battle before we even know what we’re up against. A trigger warning for content related to sexual assault could mean anything from sexual harassment to rape. I’m not minimizing any form of sexual assault; my point is that we’re taking this broad range of sexual behaviors and boiling it down to two words meant to warn people but are probably doing more harm than good.
Avoidance also denies readers the opportunity to bear witness to the hero’s journey. In some communities, healing and happy endings aren’t always part of the narrative. Stories have the ability to expose us to ideas and possibilities we’d never be able to dream of and for a lot of us, that includes overcoming hard things. But overcoming hard things is more than just an idea being reflected back to us. Fiction can offer us a safe place to use learned coping skills if triggered while showing us that by doing our work, we’re already on the road to healing.
AA DaSilva: Speaking of content warnings, how detailed should an author be?
Megan Tavares: The female main character in the book I’m currently reading, The Dixon Rule by Elle Kennedy, was a dancer and gymnast in the past and she talks about quitting those activities, though she initially is pretty evasive about the why. My brain immediately jumped to “oh no, did she quit because of an eating disorder? Did she quit because of sexual abuse from a coach? I need to know what happened!” It turns out, the FMC chose to stop dancing and doing gymnastics because she felt they were “pretentious.” My brain went to the worst place because we know that it can be part of the dance/gymnastics culture but I wouldn’t expect an author to be mindful of that and I would definitely not expect a trigger warning so detailed that it encompassed that. I’m not even sure how you can break that down into a quick trigger warning. Trigger warnings are never going to be able to cover every little thing that could potentially trigger someone and I think that would be a really challenging task for authors to try and do that.
AA DaSilva: What about anticipatory anxiety? Do you think trigger warnings can actually cause more anxiety for a reader?
Megan Tavares: Absolutely. Anticipatory anxiety is oftentimes worse than how you’re feeling during the actual event and can influence how things go. In my world as a perinatal therapist, a good example of this would be experiencing dread as night approaches because you have no idea what that night will look like for you and your newborn. Will this be the night they sleep for a longer stretch? Will they cry all night again? Will I be able to handle it? What if I can’t handle it? Why do I feel this way? And on and on our brain spins. The unknown is so much scarier than what’s known and our brains are programmed to fill in the gaps – usually with incorrect information or outsized responses. If I’m browsing on Amazon and check out a book with a list of trigger warnings, there’s the possibility that I’m already triggered and I haven’t even hit the buy now with 1-click button.
I think anticipatory anxiety that occurs due to trigger warnings can also leave people questioning whether they are where they thought they were in their healing journey. Healing is not a linear process by any means and we don’t get over things, we learn to cope when strong feelings are activated, but in our society, it’s all about picking yourself up by your bootstraps and moving on as if nothing happened. People are really hard on themselves when they feel they can’t meet this expectation and the anticipatory anxiety over trigger warnings may exacerbate that, leaving them feeling ashamed about their ability to be strong. That’s the last thing we want people to feel!
AA DaSilva: Do you think retailers should help readers and authors in this new age of content warnings? For example, do you think large book-selling online sites including a search engine that would intentionally filter out specific reads for certain readers is plausible?
Megan Tavares: I think when it comes to large, online book sellers, anything is possible. Whether a search engine that would filter out specific books for certain readers should be created is another story. It’s an interesting time to be talking about this given the whole It Ends With Us controversy since the movie didn’t have trigger warnings. I think when it comes to adult readers, it’s fair to expect that they will take responsibility for what they read and expose themselves to, especially if it’s something that’s been part of the public discourse for years. It really shouldn’t have been a surprise that It Ends With Us, a movie based on a hugely popular book about the generational impact of interpersonal violence, wasn’t a rom-com but was about interpersonal violence. It’s not a creator’s fault if people aren’t paying attention.
I also think creating trigger-based filters could have the potential to create a narrative that says we don’t think you can handle this. This isn’t usually a message people take kindly to, in part because it means we’re questioning someone’s emotional capacity but it also means that we’ve taken away a person’s agency over what they read. When someone experiences trauma, that sense of agency is taken from them. It’s part of the reason why the impact of trauma can be so significant. By leaving adults to decide for themselves, even in this small way, we give them the opportunity to feel empowered. If the content they’re reading gets too heavy, they get to decide how they move forward, but they need to be given the opportunity to do that.
AA DaSilva: What other advice do you have for readers or authors in regards to content warnings?
Megan Tavares: I’m not sure I have advice outside of continuing to have an open dialogue about this topic. Opportunities like this, where mental health professionals and authors can come together and have the space to think critically about content warnings, are key. I know for me, doing this created the time and space to think deeply about the reasoning behind having trigger warnings and I ended up changing my opinion! That won’t be the case for everybody. There will always be people who advocate for trigger warnings and those who are against them and that’s okay as long as the conversation allows for digging deeper when it comes to whether we warn or not. If we’re taking the time to add trigger warnings out of respect for people and their experiences, we should take the time to think about their impact on readers and if they’re really necessary or doing more harm than good.
AA DaSilva: Thank you, Megan, for your participation in discussing this important topic. I am always open to learning more about how to best serve my readers, and I encourage ongoing conversation between readers and authors so that we can remain sensitive to the needs of all.
AA DaSilva 