Getting away for a brief respite recently, my husband and I went for a walk. We were in a touristy locale of shops and restaurants among many others out enjoying the warm, sunny summer day. It was good to be away and focus on having fun together, creating some new memories and building our relationship. We joked as we walked, as we so often do. Amid the joking, I said, “As long as we don’t talk about babies, children, or gender, I’ll be fine.” It was a little funny, a little snarky, and more than a little true.

These days, people regularly talk about trigger warnings, which are defined as statements that occur at the beginning of a piece of writing, video, speech, etc., alerting the participant of potentially distressing material contained within that might trigger a traumatic reaction. Trigger warnings began as an internet phenomenon and have spread into print and other media. Their usage comes on the heels of the creation of the diagnosis of PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the 1960s. The concept of PTSD originally focused on the experiences of soldiers returning home from war, but has since become more widely used to diagnose the aftereffects of all kinds and levels of traumas. For some interesting reading on the topic of PTSD and the development of trigger warnings, take a look at this May, 2015 article entitled “Generation PTSD: What the ‘Trigger Warning’ Debate is Really About.”

I wanted to understand where the term “trigger warning” came from and discovered an earlier concept of trauma triggers as a likely starting point. A trauma trigger is any stimulus that triggers, or sets off, feelings of trauma by reminding someone of a past deeply distressing or disturbing experience. 

A trauma trigger can cause feelings of overwhelming sadness, anxiety, or panic, and can even set off a flashback, causing someone to lose track of their physical surroundings and “relive” the past negative experience.

My joking about words to avoid in our conversation wasn’t a trigger warning, per se, but does speak to the fact that those words trigger negative emotions in me. The list is actually longer and not only includes babies, children, and gender, but also any word that is gendered (son/daughter, male/female), talk about names, gendered pronouns, and so on.

In television commercials or casual chat at the office, people communicate about introducing their baby girl or decorating the nursery blue since they found out the sex of their future son. This talk generates unbidden cynical feelings in me.

I used to love seeing joyful faces of little boys and girls playing when we were out for dinner or at the mall, but now it causes sadness and makes me miss my girls.

I continue to believe that there is something very real about the experience of gender dysphoria. I also believe that the church has done a poor job of helping individuals and families think through the topic and navigate it well to this point. And I believe that the psychological community has done insufficient work in researching causes and developing strategies for overcoming or managing the experience. That leaves us as a society in a position where my children are taught that they should celebrate their transgender identity through medical intervention as a way to become who they were truly meant to be, and leaves parents like me grieving the loss of a child but feeling vilified, because I can’t just accept and support this transition. It drives a wedge between me and my children because what I desire and need seems in direct conflict with what they desire and need. And when I express my thoughts on the subject to them, the cultural filter through which they hear me causes them to think I only care about my needs and not theirs.

While I try to figure out how to exist with my current reality in a way that attempts to communicate love and support to my children, I hope that the people and professionals who make up our churches and psychological communities come together to holistically address this topic. How can medical transition be so right for the gender dysphoric person, but be so painful for their family? It seems to me that either the prescribed treatment is off somehow, or all I’ve learned about sex and gender in my experience of the world to this point is unimportant or wrong.

I have no choice but to engage with the words that trigger my sadness and cynicism as they are everywhere all the time. Our existence revolves around people – children and babies, sons and daughters, gendered beings. I cannot avoid the triggers. Some advice for me from a blog on the topic of triggers I found at GoodTherapy.org:

“But avoiding one’s triggers will not treat the underlying mental health concerns. If triggers interfere with someone’s daily life, the person may wish to see a therapist.

In therapy, people can process the emotions concerning their pasts. Some may learn relaxation techniques to cope with panic attacks. Others may learn how to avoid unhealthy behaviors. With time and work, a person can face their triggers with much less distress.”

Don’t worry about setting off my triggers. Just expect a slightly snarky response and a conversation that might address topics like how pink and blue only began to represent girls and boys in the 1940s.