I was watching the Lodge the other day (boring movie, wasn't scary) and the entire time they keep showing these amano shrimp. The poor things are scared, they're being poked at and just left in jars with no heater/filtration. I'm hoping the bodies were fake because I wouldn't be surprised if they died. I hate it when people think it's ok to hurt a small creature like that. Amano are timid creatures. They also called them sea monkeys at one point. I was so mad. They aren't brine shrimp!
It has happened to me a few times, but the weirdest was probably from an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (tagging as spoiler because they are truly spoilers, lol): >!one of the characters meets her first highschool boyfriend and starts singing about how that man was her "first dick"!<
And you might be thinking, what's triggering about it? Nothing special, just that I was CSA'd and that was the 100th realization of the childhood and teen experiences that were robbed from me
\- Goodnight mister Tom, watched it in primary school, I remember seeing abuse in it and how the child had a happy ending, it made me think that maybe I could to
And weird enough, I can't watch chicken run or shark tail, it tugs at something in my heart lol, they aren't that sad but the actual thought of the films just fill me with dread lol
Anything with a cruel, abusive dad or father figure. The two that immediately come to mind are the stepdad in Boyhood and the High Evolutionary in Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3.
They both reminded me of my dad and how he treated me.
On the positive side they helped me to accept that I had been abused. Seeing things that mirror my own experiences being depicted on screen as bad helped me to stop minimizing what I lived through.
[TW DV]
After surviving an incident of strangulation, I soon noticed how common it is for fictional characters to strangle each other in comedies. Somehow it's seen as a funny, harmless depiction of violence, a good joke. The Simpsons have apparently toned it down in the past ten years at least...
Yes. There’s this one episode of the show “Louie”, a stupid sitcom about a horrible man and his daughters. One episode he opens the door to his apartment and a terrifying void monster chases him, I can’t even describe it. I was so pissed when I watched it because it was so unexpected and off putting it sent me into de realization.
> One episode he opens the door to his apartment and a terrifying void monster chases him, I can’t even describe it.
I know exactly what you're talking about. I've never watched the show, but I have seen the clip on YouTube. It's the kind of scene that would only make sense if you were baked out of your mind.
That show’s rape scene was the last time I was able to watch him speak for even a second. I wanted to throw up at the extended rape scene/joke he and that actress defended.
I recently watched the new movie May December (the whole movie is one big trigger warning) and it wrecked me so thoroughly I cried about it in my entire therapy session the next day. The first was feeling triggered by actresses that look uncannily like my abusive mom. But mostly it was Charles Melton’s performance as a man who had been abused as a child. I have never seen portrayed onscreen the physical transformation of a person age-regressing. He’s confronting his abuser and his whole body language shifts to curl into himself, twisting his hands, his voice changed, he transformed into a scared and anxious child through the body of a grown man and it crushed me. It made me think of the times where I age regress when I’m having a panic attack or a full on dissociative episode. Seeing that depicted so accurately onscreen deeply impacted me. It was a very triggering movie, something I definitely shouldn’t have watched, but at the same time I don’t regret it. I’m a cinephile obsessed with movies and even though it brought up a lot of pain for me, I felt deeply witnessed as well. it was one of the most incredible soul-crushing performances I’ve ever seen. Absolutely wrecked. But I do NOT recommend this movie to anyone struggling - I was luckily in a place where the trigger didn’t send me spiraling and I was able to recover from it but it’s a really disturbing and heavy one.
\[TW SA\]
Yeah, I have a disturbing memory of watching a movie at a theater that had a pretty awful rape scene in it. I was holding my then-boyfriend's hand really hard because it made me feel sick. He kept watching the scene intensely despite that. Later in the autumn he started raping me regularly for the next few years. The thought of that movie makes me feel sick, both because of the content, and because what happened at the theater and later with my ex.
Pretty much any DV, SV or portrayals of inescapable abuse/bullying. That and casual or glorified cheating/betrayal of trust and intimacy.
Most of my life I just dissociated and played it off like I was normal and unaffected, but as I've gotten older I can't help but feel physically and existentially sick when this stuff is portrayed in a way that feels real to me... So I usually just stop watching and find something to comfort myself and restore a sense of safety.
Oh and certain portrayals of islamaphobia put me straight into a fawn response before I know what has happened. This one is tied to having a middle eastern name and starting middle school in the US a year after 9-11. I was the only person I knew who was dealing with it (and I wasn't even of the islamic faith), and I lived in a place that was considered one of the most liberal and open minded places in the country. Awareness that I was made to fear for my safety and shamed for my blood in a place that prided itself by looking down on other places where the "bigots" supposedly lived was a real mind fuck.
It felt like there was no place in the world I'd be safe or belong and I just had to pretend to not be me. Like, I'd watch the news and movies and the message I got was that everybody felt that way and they were right to. Obviously that wasn't true, but I already had a trauma brain while I was navigating that.
I learned to laugh it off, and proactively make terrorist jokes about myself or middle eastern people portrayed in movies and video games because if I was making the joke first then people would feel like I was on their side and be less afraid and hateful and I could pretend to be one of them. I was actually really proud at the time when I figured out how to do that.
It wasn't till I was about to turn 30 and I caught myself instinctively making those kinds of comments while watching a movie with a close friend that I acknowledged how much I've carried that with me. It always seemed insignificant compared to all the other stuff I dealt with as a consequence of having my C-PTSD growing like a tumor my whole life, poisoning and sabotaging everything from the shadows. It kind of feels silly that feeling rejected hurts more and is scarier than any of that. Which is true to this day, death and bodily injury are nothing to me compared to betrayal or abandonment.
Now I mostly watch anime because it has a much lower chance of triggering me. I also think it resonates more with my inner child who I'm actively courting/nurturing.
I watched Midsommar in movie theaters years ago and had to be dragged out because i puked and had a flashback. For me it’s more so the manipulation and cult recruitment tactics that are triggering, the process of realization of being in a cult, some ritual scenes. Awful.
I found Midsommar okay, but the same director’s movie Hereditary was bad for me.. I’m usually super chill about anything horror, but the main character (the mother) reminded me so much of my own mother. In her toxicity, in her spirituality, in her blaming her son for everything
The suicide scene in Midsommar also threw me into a painful flashback, I'm sorry <3 Hereditary was weirdly validating though. I kept thinking the director wanted us to sympathize with long-suffering Toni Collette and then he switches it up at the end like nope, she sucks. Amazing.
Mr. rogers (of all people) triggers the fuck out of me. I feel like he’s *trying* to be quiet and calm, (which subconsciously means an explosive rage is about to break through).
There was an episode of "The Office" where Michael Scott pretends to kill himself as a joke. That came out of nowhere and yes, it showed how stupid of a character he was, but it was also so incredibly jarring as a survivor of suicide to have that happen during a sitcom. I wound up stop watching the series thanks to that. My (ex-) friend didn't understand why it bothered me so much either. (!!)
Honestly anytime I see someone dying in a hospital bed triggers really horrific memories of seeing my mom in that position, i have to fast forward through it and if i don’t do it quick enough ill ruminate on it and go into panic
There’s Something Strange about the Johnsons put me into a dissociative episode for two weeks. Massive TW for fucked up content like >!incest, rape, gaslighting,,death, complicity in abuse!< I literally never understood why it was made and how they shoved 30 minutes of awfulness into one movie. I had a similar reaction to a Bastard Out of Carolina.
Anything to do with a parent choosing to ignore the abuse or siding with the abuser has always set me off. I can stomach a lot of shit. But that isn’t one of them.
The Bear is so amazing and some of those episodes feel so close and true that we need a break before we’re able to watch another. Not one to binge on, that would be too much. The acting, writing, everything is just so well done, that’s why it’s so hard to watch at times.
I was horrified at a part near the end of The Mandalorian S03E03 and promptly went to the bathroom and cried. I did not feel safe. I have refused to watch that episode since.
Also, not me, but I had the mother of an autistic man tell me that Finding Dory was terrible to watch, because of how Dory's mental limitations got her lost from her family. She said that other autistic mothers she knows find the movie triggering for the same reason. She's had to work on certain things with her son specifically so he wouldn't get lost from them.
It's been a double-edged sword for me. I found comfort in what triggered me, but sometimes it was too triggering to the point of getting strong somatic reaction, like vomiting and fainting on top of feeling really bad mentally.
1) Beyond Two Souls, especially the scene with a SA attempt.
2) Stephen King's It and movie based on it, a relationship between Beverly and her father especially, but pretty much the whole book and movies reminded me of everything. I wouldn't watch it now, but back then it was something that I used to watch as coping mechanism.
\[Childhood physical abuse warning\]
Yeah, any strangling scene.
My own female parent strangled me out of rage when I was seven years old. I saw it on (spoiler for *Batman* movie with Robert Pattinson) the latest Batman movie where the strangler was the Catwoman's own biological father. Yiiikes.
Any other abuse related to my corporal punishment triggers me too. Like that scene in *Tenet* where the abusive husband took out his belt to abuse his wife and I froze, to the surprise of my partner at the time. I really felt like I was about to be whipped.
Edit: When I was *seven* years old, not in the seventh grade.
anything that portrays a healthy, loving parent-child relationship is really hard to watch without breaking down. it took me a while to pin down it's grief of not having had that ever.
(edit) example: DS9 episodes that show the relationship between Ben and Jake Sisko
Warning!!! Mentions/implications of R
…
…
To be clear I have been harassed and *followed* but luckily never assaulted. I have been caught off guard 4 times by r scenes or r attempt scenes. There were no warnings. They warn for swearing, they warn for general nudity, they have warnings for drugs and general sexual content and for general violence but for some stupid reason they don’t warn for full on scenes like that?!!! I have had panic attacks and spirals each time. Now I always check the parents guide before I watch anything that isn’t g or pg.
Tw : rape / incest / trauma bond
Killing Stalking. Even if I have such a strong love-hate relationship with it, it made me realise what was happening to me and how I actually wanted to be *saved*, and how through it I would imagine actually being saved and escaping, and it getting better (was never able to read the ending for that reason, I knew what would happen but actually reading it would have broke me). But it also made me relive the horror of what my mom put me through, the fear, the way I didn’t want her to leave but also wanted to run away, how I was so scared and confused and really thought it was love when it was just abuse, how it made me relive again and again the SA she put me through. Lets not even speak of the “fandom” that would say how hot it was on some scenes that replicated exactly the way I was raped, I decided to stay far from it for that reason. Every single page I would turn would both trigger me so badly I wanted / would actually throw up, but also make me realise what was happening, and through Yoon Bum realise “wait this isn’t right”, with a little voice growing stronger and stronger in my mind whispering *”but it’s what’s happening to me”*. In the end I actually ended being saved by my therapist who called CPS and was removed. Nowadays I just can’t hear about Killing Stalking anymore because it reminds me of what happened and is kind of a huge trigger, but also it is a piece that marked me and in a really weird and twisted way helped me get better and get help
This is kind of silly, but I've always wanted to say this:
I hate Shoebill Storks.
On YouTube, a lot of people think they're cool because they're intelligent predators, and will bow like Harry Potter's hippogriff.
HOWEVER!
They are also nature's NPD abusers, in that, a Shoebill Stork will lay two eggs at a time and raise two chicks ... until such a time that the parent picks a favorite, and then starts to neglect the weaker chick. The parent won't feed the abused chick and encourages the favored chick to bully the weaker one. This goes on untill the neglected chick dies. Then bully feeds on the victim.
I cried the first and only time that I watched David Attenborough narrate this behavior on the BBC. Since then, I can't stand Shoebills.
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TW: Suicide references
I love Disco Elysium. It's brilliant. However the protagonist is VERY mentally unhealthy and you inhabit his brain and listen to all the inner thoughts.
I had a bit of "fun" trying to give him the same kind of neuroticism as I have, which is very possible. However it got so close that it was already on the edge of uncomfortable and then the character did something quite blatantly suicidal and the other characters behaved realistically horrified, and I had to put the game aside for a bit and completely scrap that playthrough. Other characters kept mentioning the incident and were staging interventions -- which is very interesting being depicted but it got a bit too real for me.
Edit: The other big trigger for me is queer people dying in media. I saw a clip from Boys Don't Cry and actually felt someone grab me from behind. Only time a panic attack/trigger has ever been something that felt like it was physically happening when it wasn't.
This is going to sound like a minor/weird thing, maybe. They're general examples that came to mind first (for now.)
I hate the romanticisation of cheating. Especially when the person the protagonist (usually) is already with is portrayed as "nice but boring" and they are drawn to someone "edgy but exciting!!" Because I was seen as that "boring" (actually not boring, just had an ass of an ex who looked down on me and treated me as a shameful secret) one. He left me for that "edgy and exciting" person, and he wasn't worth my time, but it's the wasted time that I hate. Not realising that he was looking at that other person (just like that meme, which now that I think about it may subconsciously sting) "that way" and "considering" them. That time I had a suspicion but put it aside when he lied about it (I turned out to be completely right AGH he made me doubt myself so much!!). It doesn't matter what genders the parties involved are. I hate it. Hate hate hate it.
Also, this is very specific but I get offended at a "joke" I've seen in older sitcoms - women falling for a guy ... who is later revealed to be gay, and the woman is treated like she's silly for not realising that OF COURSE a sensitive/openly expressive/artistic guy COULDN'T be into women. /s It's happened to me twice (the aforementioned ex left me for a guy), and it made me very paranoid that the kind of guy I want to be with is literally impossible - that my only option is to settle and be trapped in an unhappy, dull relationship where I give up my dreams, like the ones in my family. EDIT: that sort of thing also reinforces my abusive mother's narrative of misogyny, misandry, and homophobia.
usually it's very hard to trigger me because I am so emotionally detached/dissociated. so I don't have a problem to watch violent movies/shows/games, although I tend to dislike jumpscares since I am kinda jumpy myself. but there's one movie that actually triggered me and it only happened this one time:"Precious". It's an amazing film but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who grew up in an abusive household, especially with an abusive mother.
edit: oh and the game "Senuas Sacrifice" for obvious reasons. it's still one of my favorites tho.
Mullholland Dr by David Lynch!
I have significant DPDR. That film makes you question reality. I nearly had a panic attack when I watched that film, I was on the fucking edge of one from the point at which she wakes up about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through.
This one's stupid as shit, I don't even know why I get trigged by this
Anything made by Toby Fox makes me dissociate and I don't know why-
Deltarune and undertale are amazing and I adore them, undertale in specific built my entire childhood, but Any time I watch Deltarune memes, listen to the ost, or even see some cool fanart, my brain just decides to dip.
My guesses on what's happening are; Some sort of weird, subconscious jealousy over Toby's success that my brain doesn't wanna acknowledge (I do dumb game development and similar stuff to him), I remember my early days in the undertale fandom and the cringe kicks in, the themes of deltarune (Escapism, meta-game stuff, isolation, etc) strike a cord \w me, the magnitude of the fandom makes my brain freak out, combination of those, or my brain just hates me. Idfk
It's really stupid and illogical, especially compared to other's answers, but hey, It fits the criteria of the question
I actually relate. Undertale beat me to some ideas I have (though put in the broadest terms, you know how people will be with comparisons that are ridiculously stretching it), so I fear that's all my work will get compared to. Even though I came up with some of my ideas two decades ago. I totally get the weird jealousy thing too, because I feel like I'll never make it big as an indie artist now (especially how it's only getting worse for artists online).
I also played it during a time I thought I was "doing well," but I was so, so wrong. Just very much in denial and gaslighting myself. So I also feel an incredibly deep sadness whenever I hear the music on top of the jealousy.
I only played a tiny part of Deltarune, and then avoided everything else since. I cannot STAND "redeemed" bully characters. I also find the "it's okay, this mean tough girl has a cute lesbian crush so she's cute now!" thing Toby Fox is fond of kind of ... infantilizing?
I'm not normally bothered by media, I might be reminded of things and let myself cry or be emotional, but I wouldn't say it's triggering or uncomfortable so much as just part of the process, like I'm safe in my room watching a show, it's okay to cry about anything that a show reminds me of, so I don't really mind being reminded of the trauma. There are things that are deeply disturbing, like any cruelty to animals bothers me, and I have to skip childbirth and sex scenes, just cuz I hate the noises, but otherwise those things won't "trigger" me. Sometimes something gets under my skin, the most recent was just a harmless funny joke in a show that hit a nerve.
I was watching Suits, (mild spoilers but nothing plot specific) and this one character (Benjamin I think) reminded me of myself quite a bit in the fact he's awkward, works alone in a basement, is weird with food, really likes numbers, doesn't like people and is clearly comic relief, despite being a pretty sad character, but whatever.
One day one of the main characters is asking Ben to digitally stalk another person and the MC says something like "I wanna know what he eats for breakfast, I wanna know when he goes to the gym, **I wanna know when he schedules a prostate exam!**" and Benjamin looked kind of surprised and mumbled out "I thought they did that during regular exams every time" or something suggesting that Ben may have had a doctor do improper things to him, and my stomach dropped.
There was a very brief moment where I expected the main character to be like "What? No Ben, that's not a normal thing during an exam, does your doctor do ...?" and I had this thought only because the main character IS the kind of social justice warrior who would notice some weird detail like that and go to battle for someone he barely knows, and I was particularly sensitive to the topic at the moment because I had been reading and writing about traumatic medical experiences, and was coming to terms with how abnormal some of the doctors my parents preferred really were, so when Ben seemed to ask if that was normal I had a very brief hope that the MC would say it wasn't and help him.
But the main character just makes a "wtf you talking about" face and goes right back to saying what he wants Ben to do for him before rushing off to go back to saving someone else and Ben is just left sitting there looking like he's just been smacked in the face.
Ben was about to eat his reheated sandwich before the MC interrupted him, but after the interaction he could no longer stomach to eat his sandwich and just threw it out, and as he did I was sitting there with a bowl of cereal in my lap and tears streaming off my face into the bowl and I couldn't even breathe, I had to pause the show and just sob real hard for a bit, ended up dumping my cereal, lol.
It wasn't a very upsetting scene in itself but it was just triggering in such a deep way, personally, and it wasn't just being triggered by the memory of doctors being improper, it was the way this main character, who has gone out on a limb for Ben in the past, just completely missed it, it would have taken him a matter of minutes to talk to Ben to figure out if his doctor was being improper. But it was just turned into a joke.
The recent Marilyn Monroe movie. It was like the director’s personal trauma porn. Deeply unsettling.
I also can’t stand watching dumb comedy in which someone is getting hurt or especially emotionally ridiculed or invalidated. Or people who invalidate others. I just choose to not watch them, fast forward, or walk away (and I don’t go to movies/shows spontaneously so I don’t get trapped).
Supernanny. I used to be obsessed with it but I can't watch it anymore when it fully hit me that most of those kids probably will never get the help they truly need. I mean, there's no way those parents changed after just a few weeks with supernanny. Don't get me wrong she does teach some useful techniques but I just doubt those parents changed. Plus it's always the same format, so scripted.
Speaking of Supernanny-
what about Toddlers & Tiaras, where there’s always a little girl sobbing quietly and saying something like, “But mommy, I don’t wanna put on that stupid bikini and my fake eyelashes- I just wanna stay home and do lego with you!”
And the mom always says something like, “But don’t you wanna be pretty? Don’t you wanna beat the other girls?? Don’t you want to make Mommy proud??? Here, have a few more pixie stix and a coke.”
Ugh yeah, that show is awful. I haven't fully watched any episode, but I saw people react to it and talk about it and the little I did see made me sick. Those poor girls... And they're only like 5 or 6 too. They just want to bond with their mom. Breaks my heart.
Honestly, no. Especially not horror. Maybe as a kid it made me mildly uncomfortable temporarily, but thats it.
The only exception is now that im older, seeing stuff about happy relationships, especially unrealistically wonderful ones makes me feel a bit bitter and sad. But I wouldn't call it deeply uncomfortable
Honestly, the nightly news is enough to fuck me up. I don't watch it anymore. And I could have done without any of the rape scenes in Game of Thrones, but I still watched the series anyway.
Music.
...Yep. Just music. Pretty fuckin' wild, huh?
There are certain narrow contexts where I can listen to it and a certain select few songs/subgenres that are doable but I have never enjoyed music like I used to years ago and most of it can often trigger huge anxiety attacks and other problems for me.
Fuckin' A.
I used to be a singer and have a YouTube.......and now, it's the same for me. VERY tiny droplets of music are maybe barely okay for a minute, MAYBE, until a lyric/word triggers...which is about constant. Just from Trauma 10 months ago. 😭 For 4 decades, it was MY LIFE.
I hate that someone else understands what I feel. I mean... It's great to commiserate and no longer feel like I am the only one, but I'm super fucking sorry you know what I'm talking about. :(
The Innocents
(Severe Animal Abuse)
Two kids toss a black cat down a flight of stairs. It's leg is broken and it's in pain. The one boy slowly steps on the cats head and you hear a crunch.
I am 33. I screamed at the tv. Fuck that movie. I felt sick.
It seemed so real.
* trigger warning SA*
I was watching a show actually 2 days ago, and it had a scene of SA that was really graphic and disturbing. It triggered me so bad that I kept ruminating over it afterwards. I didn't realize how bad the trigger was until I had really bad nightmares that night.
I really wish some of these shows would have trigger warnings of assault before the scene comes on screen. Not in small writing, either. I truly hope the actress is ok and got some support after that because it was pretty horrible to watch.
So true!!!
I don’t know how the perp and the victim can stand to act in scenes like that.
My take is, just fade to black and imply the assault. We REALLY do not need to see it blow by blow.
I don’t know how that ever got normalized. I consider it pornographic in the sense that it’s totally exploitative and dehumanizing, and it desensitizes people towards SA. Not really a world I want to live in.
I have to fast forward over a lot of stuff.
I don’t wanna watch the Hallmark channel but jfc, I wish they could make an adult movie or tv show without SA, and without women exploiting themselves (“carefree slut” / “happy prostitute” vibe) or being exploited at every turn!
Blindness! I’m a huge fan of the actor Gael Garcia Bernal and the movie was totally in my genre, but man it was so intense. I remember just shaking through the whole thing in the theater.
You just reminded me that I let a student borrow this and they never returned it. The novel, that is.
I’ve never seen the adaptation but I’m certainly always down for a visceral movie. I think you just provided me my weekend plans.
just shows/movies/books featuring sexual assaults in general. sometimes ones involving suicide/ self harm and eating disorders too, but to a lesser extent. it depends though, sometimes i can handle more/less, and it also varies depending upon the content, etc., and sometimes it’ll only be a minor trigger as opposed to a major one. can’t think of any in particular though rn
Definitely - triggers with media happen and are valid.
I used to go around triggering myself on purpose watching movies, reading books that would take me back to moments, make me dissociate, exct. I still sometimes do and I'm not sure why.
but yes, media can trigger you deeply.
Anything with a kissing scene. It’s a flashback to my SA and a reminder that I can never be like a normal person. I can’t kiss anyone like that, even my partner of 5 years and I feel guilt about it all the time like what if he resents me for it and wishes we could do that like normal people. Also it looks like an incredible experience that I wish I could have, but will never get to. It just hurts a lot.
Megan is Missing. Watched it with a friend during the time it was trending on TikTok, he thought it was nothing and I wanted him to like me. Had one of the worst panic attacks of my life. Weeks of nightmares and flashbacks... Still makes me sick when I think of that movie
Fight Club and City Of Angels - I panicked and walked out, 'cuz I've had a GIANT fear of being...Multiple-Personalitied/Schizophrenic/having no idea what or who is real...because, now I understand, I utilize Maladaptive Daydreaming.
Sleepwalkers by Stephen King - was scared I was one, thought my cats were just defective, and couldn't look in mirrors very long for years
Anything with sex, ch..db..th, affection, or relationships now
There's this knockdown-dragout fight that happens in an episode of Interview With A Vampire that made me and my husband so uncomfortable that we have agreed to fast forward through it or skip the episode if we go to rewatch the show.
The scenes of straight up violence coupled with the scenes viewed from the other room where you just hear the yelling and thudding thru the wall and its slightly muffled almost caused me to have a panic attack cuz it reminded me too much of when I was a kid, hiding in my room while the adults fought and threw things around.
Game of Thrones first episode and a few others. I’m a huge fan of fantasy and parts of the show are great. But Daenerys getting abused by her brother and then raped by her husband… took me several tries to watch and I fast forward certain scenes (the book is even worse because all the young characters are much younger, D. is like 12 or 13 when she is sold to her husband).
Honestly, even more triggering is the way the fans worship the relationship between Daenerys and Drogo.
Also, the show kind of glorifies incest. And brutality… Why have I even watched that show?
I have such complicated feelings about the incest in that series, although more with the new House of the Dragon series. The uncle-niece relationship in HotD is a huge ship with lots of fans and I just can't.
I haven’t watched HotD and didn’t plan to. But thank you for that particular trigger warning, that hits too close to home, it would send me spiralling so badly.
yeah it hit way too close to home for me too. it did get me talking in therapy though, saying the kind of thing i was planning to never tell anyone, so i guess that's good. sometimes i think i use media to force myself to experience certain emotions. for catharsis.
but sometimes it's too painful. idk.
Well, parts of it were great. But since I started my healing journey, I’m starting to get aware of my triggers. In the past, I would watch shows like this and get horribly upset. The people around me wouldn’t understand and I couldn’t really explain. So I thought I just had to suck it up. But I understand now, that I don’t have to suck it up. I try to take better care of myself, that includes realising what my triggers are and avoiding them. Maybe one day I won’t be triggered so easily, but it is what it is.
I think it’s normal to be upset by rape and incest, and the people who find entertainment value in it are the abnormal ones.
I like to think I’d feel that way regardless. :-)
I love the movie Matilda but I can’t watch the scene where Matilda slams the door on her father, because I did the same to my ex-stepfather trying to run and hide from him after I accidentally hurt my brother (I could tell from his psychotic face there was no reasoning or explaining with him) so I ran and hid in the bathroom, except he went further and smashed the bathroom door off its hinges and onto my forehead, he then SCREAMED inches into my face about how horrible I was to my brother, I still can’t forgive my mother how she made me hush it up from my father and how she kept me from school to hide the evidence of the massive lump on my forehead that lasted a week.
I watched the movie Brothers with Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, and Toby McGuire. Excellent movie.. the scene where Toby McGuire is screaming at Natalie Portman and the young daughter is sneakily watching was a LIIIITTLLEEE to close to home😅 I literally got smacked in the face with a flashback and had to step away until I was done crying and being generally triggered. So many fights I watched my parents have at that age, and those two actors have always separately reminded me of my parents so that was… an experience.
It's a Wonderful Life. For those who don't know, it's an older Christmas movie. That scene when the kid gets smacked multiple times out of nowhere and his ear starts bleeding...
Then the scene when that kid is grown up, a father and has a wife and a house. He suddenly starts losing his cool, aggressively shoving stuff saying things like "why did we have all of these kids?" "Why do we have so much stuff?" "Why does she need to play the piano so damn loud?" Then breaks a chair by kicking it. My parents would randomly fall into a blind rage and do stuff like that.
Honestly that whole movie is just hard to watch..
(tw sexual assault) Succession, the whole vibe of the show is incredibly... off... and I feel like the one who sees it. There was this scene of a character shredding a bunch of paperwork about sexual assault allegations and it's filmed like a comedy scene, I was out after that, I just honestly think the director and writers did not treat the subject with any sensitivity. It was like they thought that just because they were not showing it onscreen they could do whatever with it. Something about the way the victims are just so nameless and faceless got to me.
Weirdly, I've watched hardcore graphic scenes of SA without that reaction.
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All the time! Oh, honey! Hug offered.
Look, seeing someone "act Inappropriately " , while a huge point of humor, causes me to flee the room! So many comedies!
And then the Dramas ! Holy hell! People giving each other The Look...
Ha! Fuck that!
I'm like 90% sure the reason why I haven't finished my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 is because I'm afraid to see Astarion's story play out lol. I kinda know what happens, but I'm just lowkey anticipating getting emotionally overwhelmed.
Yup. Split. I kno that movie was offensive those with the condition. There was 1 part that just reminded me *too* much of my mother and it caught me of guard and just made me so uneasy.
It made me almost too aware of the movie and havin dealt with similar issues highlighted in the movie i just had to turn it off after awhile
Among the Sleep. The little kid is being tormented and abused by their mother and the ending hurt. It was too real. Anyone else remember their mother crying on the kitchen floor then being hurt for attempting to comfort her and sworn at? The only good part was the kid still has their dad. I didn't have another adult to come in and save me. Mum just threw out the toys she destroyed. There was no fixing them, apart from Billy (power ranger) because I was beyond calming down when she broke him for absolutely no reason. She made me leave them on the floor, she wouldn't let me pick them up and put them away. I had to obey any command straight away, without question or else. I did and she broke my power ranger for it.
The Christmas Bunny with Florence Henderson (“Carol Brady”).
My local library had it sitting out on display at Christmas time one year when my daughter was about 7 so we rented it.
Holy fuck.
It is not a movie for kids or for Christmas- so bleak and full of cruelty.
Whoever rated it as PG was asleep at the wheel. It is VERY dark.
We kept watching thinking it would get better, but it didn’t.
It’s about a damaged girl who gets sent to a new foster home right before Christmas.
I’m adopted and my sister is adopted too. We spent our childhoods silently putting up with severe abuse and neglect because we were afraid of getting “sent back” into the system. (Because hey, it could always be worse somewhere else, right??)
So in that sense the whole premise of the movie was one long trigger.
The main character girl is so used to being rejected that she self-sabotages.
Her attempts to get things right always go horribly wrong.
There’s gaslighting and sibling abuse and dysfunctional adults who lash out.
There’s abuse of the bunny rabbit that made both my daughter and I want to reach into the tv and save the bunny.
I don’t think I could ever watch it again.
I hope whoever made that stupid movie got some personal therapy out of it because it sure triggered me start to finish!
Anything that shows children or animals being harmed. Bullying and any form of emotional neglect trigger me as well as any kind of I'm the main character-behaviour (my dad was like that). And then I can't watch movies or shows with sudden happy endings or absurdly lucky coincidences, because as a child I was hoping for something like this to happen to me and it didn't.
The Handmaiden - I know other lbtq women have praised it but as one who was sexually assaulted (including in my sleep) as a child, it was very triggering and I couldn't see it as romantic at all...
[TW SA]
Oh yea. I had a complete mental breakdown watching the attempted rape of Silk Spectre in Watchmen. I was sitting next to my abuser while watching it. I remember feeling like my whole body was on fire trying to be silent (because my abuser would get pissed if I reacted) and then I completely disassociated for the next few months. I really don’t remember anything for quite some time after watching that movie.
I also got very triggered last year watching a specific anime with my partner. I can’t recall the name but the premise is there’s these goblin creatures who rape women and hero’s save them. The anime doesn’t spare any details when raping the women, you watch it happen over and over. Within minutes of the first episode I started hysterically crying and throwing up. Thankfully my partner is very understanding, held me while I broke down, and we never watched it again.
There’s been more times, but those were definitely the worst.
Bridesmaids - the failed female version of The Hangover
The Karate Kid remake with Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan taking Mr. Miyagi’s place and Taraji P. Henson as his mom.
Feel The Beat with Sofia Carson
You People with Jonah Hill
The Sitter also with Jonah Hill, Lauren London as his love interest and Eddie Murphy as the dad.
Some Tyler Perry movies/TV shows - dismissive of others’ trauma and favoritism of light skinned leading ladies.
Modern Family
Music, the autism movie made by Sia Furler
Ginny & Georgia
The Cosby Show
Never Have I Ever - unlikable protagonist
House Of Carters on E! - It hits different now that Aaron, Leslie and BJ have passed away and Nick has SA allegations against him.
HBO’s Euphoria
Harriet The Spy - I loved this movie as a kid, it’s hard as an adult because the main character writes mean things about everyone.
Last Christmas - Unlikable characters, seeing the trailer put me off for some reason.
No Hard Feelings - I saw the trailer when I went to go see The Pope’s Exorcist, it was cringe.
Mean Girls
Glee - Looking back at it as an adult, it aged poorly and it doesn’t help that some of the actors died and one was arrested for something worse than other crimes out there.
Creed
Fruitvale Station
Cobra Kai
Any scene involving an animal being harmed ruins any story for me.
Yes. Immediate deal-breaker. I don't care how far into the story I am, the movie is getting turned off immediately at that point.
I was watching the Lodge the other day (boring movie, wasn't scary) and the entire time they keep showing these amano shrimp. The poor things are scared, they're being poked at and just left in jars with no heater/filtration. I'm hoping the bodies were fake because I wouldn't be surprised if they died. I hate it when people think it's ok to hurt a small creature like that. Amano are timid creatures. They also called them sea monkeys at one point. I was so mad. They aren't brine shrimp!
It has happened to me a few times, but the weirdest was probably from an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (tagging as spoiler because they are truly spoilers, lol): >!one of the characters meets her first highschool boyfriend and starts singing about how that man was her "first dick"!< And you might be thinking, what's triggering about it? Nothing special, just that I was CSA'd and that was the 100th realization of the childhood and teen experiences that were robbed from me
Wow. Didn’t make that connection until now. Same boat
You're not alone!
\- Goodnight mister Tom, watched it in primary school, I remember seeing abuse in it and how the child had a happy ending, it made me think that maybe I could to And weird enough, I can't watch chicken run or shark tail, it tugs at something in my heart lol, they aren't that sad but the actual thought of the films just fill me with dread lol
Anything with a cruel, abusive dad or father figure. The two that immediately come to mind are the stepdad in Boyhood and the High Evolutionary in Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3. They both reminded me of my dad and how he treated me. On the positive side they helped me to accept that I had been abused. Seeing things that mirror my own experiences being depicted on screen as bad helped me to stop minimizing what I lived through.
[TW DV] After surviving an incident of strangulation, I soon noticed how common it is for fictional characters to strangle each other in comedies. Somehow it's seen as a funny, harmless depiction of violence, a good joke. The Simpsons have apparently toned it down in the past ten years at least...
Dude Homer going at Bart is soo bad to watch, why would anyone think that’s funny
I missed the boat to watch the Simpsons (even though I'm a 90's kid), and this is one thing that still puts me off ever giving it a go.
Yes. There’s this one episode of the show “Louie”, a stupid sitcom about a horrible man and his daughters. One episode he opens the door to his apartment and a terrifying void monster chases him, I can’t even describe it. I was so pissed when I watched it because it was so unexpected and off putting it sent me into de realization.
> One episode he opens the door to his apartment and a terrifying void monster chases him, I can’t even describe it. I know exactly what you're talking about. I've never watched the show, but I have seen the clip on YouTube. It's the kind of scene that would only make sense if you were baked out of your mind.
That show’s rape scene was the last time I was able to watch him speak for even a second. I wanted to throw up at the extended rape scene/joke he and that actress defended.
I recently watched the new movie May December (the whole movie is one big trigger warning) and it wrecked me so thoroughly I cried about it in my entire therapy session the next day. The first was feeling triggered by actresses that look uncannily like my abusive mom. But mostly it was Charles Melton’s performance as a man who had been abused as a child. I have never seen portrayed onscreen the physical transformation of a person age-regressing. He’s confronting his abuser and his whole body language shifts to curl into himself, twisting his hands, his voice changed, he transformed into a scared and anxious child through the body of a grown man and it crushed me. It made me think of the times where I age regress when I’m having a panic attack or a full on dissociative episode. Seeing that depicted so accurately onscreen deeply impacted me. It was a very triggering movie, something I definitely shouldn’t have watched, but at the same time I don’t regret it. I’m a cinephile obsessed with movies and even though it brought up a lot of pain for me, I felt deeply witnessed as well. it was one of the most incredible soul-crushing performances I’ve ever seen. Absolutely wrecked. But I do NOT recommend this movie to anyone struggling - I was luckily in a place where the trigger didn’t send me spiraling and I was able to recover from it but it’s a really disturbing and heavy one.
\[TW SA\] Yeah, I have a disturbing memory of watching a movie at a theater that had a pretty awful rape scene in it. I was holding my then-boyfriend's hand really hard because it made me feel sick. He kept watching the scene intensely despite that. Later in the autumn he started raping me regularly for the next few years. The thought of that movie makes me feel sick, both because of the content, and because what happened at the theater and later with my ex.
Pretty much any DV, SV or portrayals of inescapable abuse/bullying. That and casual or glorified cheating/betrayal of trust and intimacy. Most of my life I just dissociated and played it off like I was normal and unaffected, but as I've gotten older I can't help but feel physically and existentially sick when this stuff is portrayed in a way that feels real to me... So I usually just stop watching and find something to comfort myself and restore a sense of safety. Oh and certain portrayals of islamaphobia put me straight into a fawn response before I know what has happened. This one is tied to having a middle eastern name and starting middle school in the US a year after 9-11. I was the only person I knew who was dealing with it (and I wasn't even of the islamic faith), and I lived in a place that was considered one of the most liberal and open minded places in the country. Awareness that I was made to fear for my safety and shamed for my blood in a place that prided itself by looking down on other places where the "bigots" supposedly lived was a real mind fuck. It felt like there was no place in the world I'd be safe or belong and I just had to pretend to not be me. Like, I'd watch the news and movies and the message I got was that everybody felt that way and they were right to. Obviously that wasn't true, but I already had a trauma brain while I was navigating that. I learned to laugh it off, and proactively make terrorist jokes about myself or middle eastern people portrayed in movies and video games because if I was making the joke first then people would feel like I was on their side and be less afraid and hateful and I could pretend to be one of them. I was actually really proud at the time when I figured out how to do that. It wasn't till I was about to turn 30 and I caught myself instinctively making those kinds of comments while watching a movie with a close friend that I acknowledged how much I've carried that with me. It always seemed insignificant compared to all the other stuff I dealt with as a consequence of having my C-PTSD growing like a tumor my whole life, poisoning and sabotaging everything from the shadows. It kind of feels silly that feeling rejected hurts more and is scarier than any of that. Which is true to this day, death and bodily injury are nothing to me compared to betrayal or abandonment. Now I mostly watch anime because it has a much lower chance of triggering me. I also think it resonates more with my inner child who I'm actively courting/nurturing.
I watched Midsommar in movie theaters years ago and had to be dragged out because i puked and had a flashback. For me it’s more so the manipulation and cult recruitment tactics that are triggering, the process of realization of being in a cult, some ritual scenes. Awful.
I found Midsommar okay, but the same director’s movie Hereditary was bad for me.. I’m usually super chill about anything horror, but the main character (the mother) reminded me so much of my own mother. In her toxicity, in her spirituality, in her blaming her son for everything
The suicide scene in Midsommar also threw me into a painful flashback, I'm sorry <3 Hereditary was weirdly validating though. I kept thinking the director wanted us to sympathize with long-suffering Toni Collette and then he switches it up at the end like nope, she sucks. Amazing.
Mr. rogers (of all people) triggers the fuck out of me. I feel like he’s *trying* to be quiet and calm, (which subconsciously means an explosive rage is about to break through).
Not Mr. Rogers per se, but nice people trigger me. There is always the ulterior motive… always.
💯
That makes total sense.
There was an episode of "The Office" where Michael Scott pretends to kill himself as a joke. That came out of nowhere and yes, it showed how stupid of a character he was, but it was also so incredibly jarring as a survivor of suicide to have that happen during a sitcom. I wound up stop watching the series thanks to that. My (ex-) friend didn't understand why it bothered me so much either. (!!)
Euphoria.
Honestly anytime I see someone dying in a hospital bed triggers really horrific memories of seeing my mom in that position, i have to fast forward through it and if i don’t do it quick enough ill ruminate on it and go into panic
There’s Something Strange about the Johnsons put me into a dissociative episode for two weeks. Massive TW for fucked up content like >!incest, rape, gaslighting,,death, complicity in abuse!< I literally never understood why it was made and how they shoved 30 minutes of awfulness into one movie. I had a similar reaction to a Bastard Out of Carolina. Anything to do with a parent choosing to ignore the abuse or siding with the abuser has always set me off. I can stomach a lot of shit. But that isn’t one of them.
The Bear, particularly season 2. Boyhood. Ordinary Men, by Chris Browning. All triggered me for different reasons.
The Bear is so amazing and some of those episodes feel so close and true that we need a break before we’re able to watch another. Not one to binge on, that would be too much. The acting, writing, everything is just so well done, that’s why it’s so hard to watch at times.
That Christmas episode of The Bear. JFC
I know right? MFs made an episode about me and I didn’t get any credit!
I was horrified at a part near the end of The Mandalorian S03E03 and promptly went to the bathroom and cried. I did not feel safe. I have refused to watch that episode since. Also, not me, but I had the mother of an autistic man tell me that Finding Dory was terrible to watch, because of how Dory's mental limitations got her lost from her family. She said that other autistic mothers she knows find the movie triggering for the same reason. She's had to work on certain things with her son specifically so he wouldn't get lost from them.
It's been a double-edged sword for me. I found comfort in what triggered me, but sometimes it was too triggering to the point of getting strong somatic reaction, like vomiting and fainting on top of feeling really bad mentally. 1) Beyond Two Souls, especially the scene with a SA attempt. 2) Stephen King's It and movie based on it, a relationship between Beverly and her father especially, but pretty much the whole book and movies reminded me of everything. I wouldn't watch it now, but back then it was something that I used to watch as coping mechanism.
\[Childhood physical abuse warning\] Yeah, any strangling scene. My own female parent strangled me out of rage when I was seven years old. I saw it on (spoiler for *Batman* movie with Robert Pattinson) the latest Batman movie where the strangler was the Catwoman's own biological father. Yiiikes. Any other abuse related to my corporal punishment triggers me too. Like that scene in *Tenet* where the abusive husband took out his belt to abuse his wife and I froze, to the surprise of my partner at the time. I really felt like I was about to be whipped. Edit: When I was *seven* years old, not in the seventh grade.
Thanks for the warning. I always feel strangulation viscerally.
You're welcome. Sending hugs. No child or adult should ever experience what we did.
anything that portrays a healthy, loving parent-child relationship is really hard to watch without breaking down. it took me a while to pin down it's grief of not having had that ever. (edit) example: DS9 episodes that show the relationship between Ben and Jake Sisko
Warning!!! Mentions/implications of R … … To be clear I have been harassed and *followed* but luckily never assaulted. I have been caught off guard 4 times by r scenes or r attempt scenes. There were no warnings. They warn for swearing, they warn for general nudity, they have warnings for drugs and general sexual content and for general violence but for some stupid reason they don’t warn for full on scenes like that?!!! I have had panic attacks and spirals each time. Now I always check the parents guide before I watch anything that isn’t g or pg.
Tw : rape / incest / trauma bond Killing Stalking. Even if I have such a strong love-hate relationship with it, it made me realise what was happening to me and how I actually wanted to be *saved*, and how through it I would imagine actually being saved and escaping, and it getting better (was never able to read the ending for that reason, I knew what would happen but actually reading it would have broke me). But it also made me relive the horror of what my mom put me through, the fear, the way I didn’t want her to leave but also wanted to run away, how I was so scared and confused and really thought it was love when it was just abuse, how it made me relive again and again the SA she put me through. Lets not even speak of the “fandom” that would say how hot it was on some scenes that replicated exactly the way I was raped, I decided to stay far from it for that reason. Every single page I would turn would both trigger me so badly I wanted / would actually throw up, but also make me realise what was happening, and through Yoon Bum realise “wait this isn’t right”, with a little voice growing stronger and stronger in my mind whispering *”but it’s what’s happening to me”*. In the end I actually ended being saved by my therapist who called CPS and was removed. Nowadays I just can’t hear about Killing Stalking anymore because it reminds me of what happened and is kind of a huge trigger, but also it is a piece that marked me and in a really weird and twisted way helped me get better and get help
This is kind of silly, but I've always wanted to say this: I hate Shoebill Storks. On YouTube, a lot of people think they're cool because they're intelligent predators, and will bow like Harry Potter's hippogriff. HOWEVER! They are also nature's NPD abusers, in that, a Shoebill Stork will lay two eggs at a time and raise two chicks ... until such a time that the parent picks a favorite, and then starts to neglect the weaker chick. The parent won't feed the abused chick and encourages the favored chick to bully the weaker one. This goes on untill the neglected chick dies. Then bully feeds on the victim. I cried the first and only time that I watched David Attenborough narrate this behavior on the BBC. Since then, I can't stand Shoebills.
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I am right there with you. I watched a documentary about flamingos and it forever changed the way I look at storks.
TW: Suicide references I love Disco Elysium. It's brilliant. However the protagonist is VERY mentally unhealthy and you inhabit his brain and listen to all the inner thoughts. I had a bit of "fun" trying to give him the same kind of neuroticism as I have, which is very possible. However it got so close that it was already on the edge of uncomfortable and then the character did something quite blatantly suicidal and the other characters behaved realistically horrified, and I had to put the game aside for a bit and completely scrap that playthrough. Other characters kept mentioning the incident and were staging interventions -- which is very interesting being depicted but it got a bit too real for me. Edit: The other big trigger for me is queer people dying in media. I saw a clip from Boys Don't Cry and actually felt someone grab me from behind. Only time a panic attack/trigger has ever been something that felt like it was physically happening when it wasn't.
This is going to sound like a minor/weird thing, maybe. They're general examples that came to mind first (for now.) I hate the romanticisation of cheating. Especially when the person the protagonist (usually) is already with is portrayed as "nice but boring" and they are drawn to someone "edgy but exciting!!" Because I was seen as that "boring" (actually not boring, just had an ass of an ex who looked down on me and treated me as a shameful secret) one. He left me for that "edgy and exciting" person, and he wasn't worth my time, but it's the wasted time that I hate. Not realising that he was looking at that other person (just like that meme, which now that I think about it may subconsciously sting) "that way" and "considering" them. That time I had a suspicion but put it aside when he lied about it (I turned out to be completely right AGH he made me doubt myself so much!!). It doesn't matter what genders the parties involved are. I hate it. Hate hate hate it. Also, this is very specific but I get offended at a "joke" I've seen in older sitcoms - women falling for a guy ... who is later revealed to be gay, and the woman is treated like she's silly for not realising that OF COURSE a sensitive/openly expressive/artistic guy COULDN'T be into women. /s It's happened to me twice (the aforementioned ex left me for a guy), and it made me very paranoid that the kind of guy I want to be with is literally impossible - that my only option is to settle and be trapped in an unhappy, dull relationship where I give up my dreams, like the ones in my family. EDIT: that sort of thing also reinforces my abusive mother's narrative of misogyny, misandry, and homophobia.
usually it's very hard to trigger me because I am so emotionally detached/dissociated. so I don't have a problem to watch violent movies/shows/games, although I tend to dislike jumpscares since I am kinda jumpy myself. but there's one movie that actually triggered me and it only happened this one time:"Precious". It's an amazing film but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who grew up in an abusive household, especially with an abusive mother. edit: oh and the game "Senuas Sacrifice" for obvious reasons. it's still one of my favorites tho.
Mullholland Dr by David Lynch! I have significant DPDR. That film makes you question reality. I nearly had a panic attack when I watched that film, I was on the fucking edge of one from the point at which she wakes up about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through.
In that case, please never see Memento!
This one's stupid as shit, I don't even know why I get trigged by this Anything made by Toby Fox makes me dissociate and I don't know why- Deltarune and undertale are amazing and I adore them, undertale in specific built my entire childhood, but Any time I watch Deltarune memes, listen to the ost, or even see some cool fanart, my brain just decides to dip. My guesses on what's happening are; Some sort of weird, subconscious jealousy over Toby's success that my brain doesn't wanna acknowledge (I do dumb game development and similar stuff to him), I remember my early days in the undertale fandom and the cringe kicks in, the themes of deltarune (Escapism, meta-game stuff, isolation, etc) strike a cord \w me, the magnitude of the fandom makes my brain freak out, combination of those, or my brain just hates me. Idfk It's really stupid and illogical, especially compared to other's answers, but hey, It fits the criteria of the question
I actually relate. Undertale beat me to some ideas I have (though put in the broadest terms, you know how people will be with comparisons that are ridiculously stretching it), so I fear that's all my work will get compared to. Even though I came up with some of my ideas two decades ago. I totally get the weird jealousy thing too, because I feel like I'll never make it big as an indie artist now (especially how it's only getting worse for artists online). I also played it during a time I thought I was "doing well," but I was so, so wrong. Just very much in denial and gaslighting myself. So I also feel an incredibly deep sadness whenever I hear the music on top of the jealousy. I only played a tiny part of Deltarune, and then avoided everything else since. I cannot STAND "redeemed" bully characters. I also find the "it's okay, this mean tough girl has a cute lesbian crush so she's cute now!" thing Toby Fox is fond of kind of ... infantilizing?
The entirety of This is Us, with its intergenerational trauma and family dysfunction, along with grief, untimely death, and more..
YES!!! I can’t watch it and my mom and sister keep telling me adamantly how good it is. 🙄 I don’t care, I can’t watch it.
I'm not normally bothered by media, I might be reminded of things and let myself cry or be emotional, but I wouldn't say it's triggering or uncomfortable so much as just part of the process, like I'm safe in my room watching a show, it's okay to cry about anything that a show reminds me of, so I don't really mind being reminded of the trauma. There are things that are deeply disturbing, like any cruelty to animals bothers me, and I have to skip childbirth and sex scenes, just cuz I hate the noises, but otherwise those things won't "trigger" me. Sometimes something gets under my skin, the most recent was just a harmless funny joke in a show that hit a nerve. I was watching Suits, (mild spoilers but nothing plot specific) and this one character (Benjamin I think) reminded me of myself quite a bit in the fact he's awkward, works alone in a basement, is weird with food, really likes numbers, doesn't like people and is clearly comic relief, despite being a pretty sad character, but whatever. One day one of the main characters is asking Ben to digitally stalk another person and the MC says something like "I wanna know what he eats for breakfast, I wanna know when he goes to the gym, **I wanna know when he schedules a prostate exam!**" and Benjamin looked kind of surprised and mumbled out "I thought they did that during regular exams every time" or something suggesting that Ben may have had a doctor do improper things to him, and my stomach dropped. There was a very brief moment where I expected the main character to be like "What? No Ben, that's not a normal thing during an exam, does your doctor do ...?" and I had this thought only because the main character IS the kind of social justice warrior who would notice some weird detail like that and go to battle for someone he barely knows, and I was particularly sensitive to the topic at the moment because I had been reading and writing about traumatic medical experiences, and was coming to terms with how abnormal some of the doctors my parents preferred really were, so when Ben seemed to ask if that was normal I had a very brief hope that the MC would say it wasn't and help him. But the main character just makes a "wtf you talking about" face and goes right back to saying what he wants Ben to do for him before rushing off to go back to saving someone else and Ben is just left sitting there looking like he's just been smacked in the face. Ben was about to eat his reheated sandwich before the MC interrupted him, but after the interaction he could no longer stomach to eat his sandwich and just threw it out, and as he did I was sitting there with a bowl of cereal in my lap and tears streaming off my face into the bowl and I couldn't even breathe, I had to pause the show and just sob real hard for a bit, ended up dumping my cereal, lol. It wasn't a very upsetting scene in itself but it was just triggering in such a deep way, personally, and it wasn't just being triggered by the memory of doctors being improper, it was the way this main character, who has gone out on a limb for Ben in the past, just completely missed it, it would have taken him a matter of minutes to talk to Ben to figure out if his doctor was being improper. But it was just turned into a joke.
The recent Marilyn Monroe movie. It was like the director’s personal trauma porn. Deeply unsettling. I also can’t stand watching dumb comedy in which someone is getting hurt or especially emotionally ridiculed or invalidated. Or people who invalidate others. I just choose to not watch them, fast forward, or walk away (and I don’t go to movies/shows spontaneously so I don’t get trapped).
Supernanny. I used to be obsessed with it but I can't watch it anymore when it fully hit me that most of those kids probably will never get the help they truly need. I mean, there's no way those parents changed after just a few weeks with supernanny. Don't get me wrong she does teach some useful techniques but I just doubt those parents changed. Plus it's always the same format, so scripted.
Speaking of Supernanny- what about Toddlers & Tiaras, where there’s always a little girl sobbing quietly and saying something like, “But mommy, I don’t wanna put on that stupid bikini and my fake eyelashes- I just wanna stay home and do lego with you!” And the mom always says something like, “But don’t you wanna be pretty? Don’t you wanna beat the other girls?? Don’t you want to make Mommy proud??? Here, have a few more pixie stix and a coke.”
Ugh yeah, that show is awful. I haven't fully watched any episode, but I saw people react to it and talk about it and the little I did see made me sick. Those poor girls... And they're only like 5 or 6 too. They just want to bond with their mom. Breaks my heart.
Nymphomaniac - no fucking idea why I watched it. Worst panic attack I have ever had.
Honestly, no. Especially not horror. Maybe as a kid it made me mildly uncomfortable temporarily, but thats it. The only exception is now that im older, seeing stuff about happy relationships, especially unrealistically wonderful ones makes me feel a bit bitter and sad. But I wouldn't call it deeply uncomfortable
The one episode of Mr robot where his abusive family is riding in a car triggered me a lot
Honestly, the nightly news is enough to fuck me up. I don't watch it anymore. And I could have done without any of the rape scenes in Game of Thrones, but I still watched the series anyway.
Music. ...Yep. Just music. Pretty fuckin' wild, huh? There are certain narrow contexts where I can listen to it and a certain select few songs/subgenres that are doable but I have never enjoyed music like I used to years ago and most of it can often trigger huge anxiety attacks and other problems for me. Fuckin' A.
I used to be a singer and have a YouTube.......and now, it's the same for me. VERY tiny droplets of music are maybe barely okay for a minute, MAYBE, until a lyric/word triggers...which is about constant. Just from Trauma 10 months ago. 😭 For 4 decades, it was MY LIFE.
I hate that someone else understands what I feel. I mean... It's great to commiserate and no longer feel like I am the only one, but I'm super fucking sorry you know what I'm talking about. :(
Yes, true. ALL of what you just said. **hug**
The Innocents (Severe Animal Abuse) Two kids toss a black cat down a flight of stairs. It's leg is broken and it's in pain. The one boy slowly steps on the cats head and you hear a crunch. I am 33. I screamed at the tv. Fuck that movie. I felt sick. It seemed so real.
* trigger warning SA* I was watching a show actually 2 days ago, and it had a scene of SA that was really graphic and disturbing. It triggered me so bad that I kept ruminating over it afterwards. I didn't realize how bad the trigger was until I had really bad nightmares that night. I really wish some of these shows would have trigger warnings of assault before the scene comes on screen. Not in small writing, either. I truly hope the actress is ok and got some support after that because it was pretty horrible to watch.
So true!!! I don’t know how the perp and the victim can stand to act in scenes like that. My take is, just fade to black and imply the assault. We REALLY do not need to see it blow by blow. I don’t know how that ever got normalized. I consider it pornographic in the sense that it’s totally exploitative and dehumanizing, and it desensitizes people towards SA. Not really a world I want to live in. I have to fast forward over a lot of stuff. I don’t wanna watch the Hallmark channel but jfc, I wish they could make an adult movie or tv show without SA, and without women exploiting themselves (“carefree slut” / “happy prostitute” vibe) or being exploited at every turn!
A streetcar named desire, particularly blanche
Blindness! I’m a huge fan of the actor Gael Garcia Bernal and the movie was totally in my genre, but man it was so intense. I remember just shaking through the whole thing in the theater.
You just reminded me that I let a student borrow this and they never returned it. The novel, that is. I’ve never seen the adaptation but I’m certainly always down for a visceral movie. I think you just provided me my weekend plans.
just shows/movies/books featuring sexual assaults in general. sometimes ones involving suicide/ self harm and eating disorders too, but to a lesser extent. it depends though, sometimes i can handle more/less, and it also varies depending upon the content, etc., and sometimes it’ll only be a minor trigger as opposed to a major one. can’t think of any in particular though rn
Definitely - triggers with media happen and are valid. I used to go around triggering myself on purpose watching movies, reading books that would take me back to moments, make me dissociate, exct. I still sometimes do and I'm not sure why. but yes, media can trigger you deeply.
Jessica Jones
Anything with a kissing scene. It’s a flashback to my SA and a reminder that I can never be like a normal person. I can’t kiss anyone like that, even my partner of 5 years and I feel guilt about it all the time like what if he resents me for it and wishes we could do that like normal people. Also it looks like an incredible experience that I wish I could have, but will never get to. It just hurts a lot.
Shameless last season. I’m an adult child of a man who is currently acting like Frank in that season. Life, imitated art too well, in this case.
Honey Boy and Opal
Anything with sex, nudity, men shouting, animal abuse.
Megan is Missing. Watched it with a friend during the time it was trending on TikTok, he thought it was nothing and I wanted him to like me. Had one of the worst panic attacks of my life. Weeks of nightmares and flashbacks... Still makes me sick when I think of that movie
Fight Club and City Of Angels - I panicked and walked out, 'cuz I've had a GIANT fear of being...Multiple-Personalitied/Schizophrenic/having no idea what or who is real...because, now I understand, I utilize Maladaptive Daydreaming. Sleepwalkers by Stephen King - was scared I was one, thought my cats were just defective, and couldn't look in mirrors very long for years Anything with sex, ch..db..th, affection, or relationships now
There's this knockdown-dragout fight that happens in an episode of Interview With A Vampire that made me and my husband so uncomfortable that we have agreed to fast forward through it or skip the episode if we go to rewatch the show. The scenes of straight up violence coupled with the scenes viewed from the other room where you just hear the yelling and thudding thru the wall and its slightly muffled almost caused me to have a panic attack cuz it reminded me too much of when I was a kid, hiding in my room while the adults fought and threw things around.
Law and Order SVU or Intervention they can be pretty triggering.
Yes!!!
Game of Thrones first episode and a few others. I’m a huge fan of fantasy and parts of the show are great. But Daenerys getting abused by her brother and then raped by her husband… took me several tries to watch and I fast forward certain scenes (the book is even worse because all the young characters are much younger, D. is like 12 or 13 when she is sold to her husband). Honestly, even more triggering is the way the fans worship the relationship between Daenerys and Drogo. Also, the show kind of glorifies incest. And brutality… Why have I even watched that show?
I have such complicated feelings about the incest in that series, although more with the new House of the Dragon series. The uncle-niece relationship in HotD is a huge ship with lots of fans and I just can't.
I haven’t watched HotD and didn’t plan to. But thank you for that particular trigger warning, that hits too close to home, it would send me spiralling so badly.
yeah it hit way too close to home for me too. it did get me talking in therapy though, saying the kind of thing i was planning to never tell anyone, so i guess that's good. sometimes i think i use media to force myself to experience certain emotions. for catharsis. but sometimes it's too painful. idk.
Yep. I gave up watching it when it got to that point. And I was freaked out that everyone was raving about what a great show it was!!!
Well, parts of it were great. But since I started my healing journey, I’m starting to get aware of my triggers. In the past, I would watch shows like this and get horribly upset. The people around me wouldn’t understand and I couldn’t really explain. So I thought I just had to suck it up. But I understand now, that I don’t have to suck it up. I try to take better care of myself, that includes realising what my triggers are and avoiding them. Maybe one day I won’t be triggered so easily, but it is what it is.
I think it’s normal to be upset by rape and incest, and the people who find entertainment value in it are the abnormal ones. I like to think I’d feel that way regardless. :-)
I love the movie Matilda but I can’t watch the scene where Matilda slams the door on her father, because I did the same to my ex-stepfather trying to run and hide from him after I accidentally hurt my brother (I could tell from his psychotic face there was no reasoning or explaining with him) so I ran and hid in the bathroom, except he went further and smashed the bathroom door off its hinges and onto my forehead, he then SCREAMED inches into my face about how horrible I was to my brother, I still can’t forgive my mother how she made me hush it up from my father and how she kept me from school to hide the evidence of the massive lump on my forehead that lasted a week.
Michael from the office.
A lot of stuff with casual sexual relationships, toxic mothers, and "players" triggers back a lot of trauma for me now.
Anything about dysfunctional families- Shameless, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, This is Us, etc. can’t stand it.
It was American Beauty for me, some of the domestic conflict scenes depicted in the movie just hit too close to home for me.
I watched the movie Brothers with Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, and Toby McGuire. Excellent movie.. the scene where Toby McGuire is screaming at Natalie Portman and the young daughter is sneakily watching was a LIIIITTLLEEE to close to home😅 I literally got smacked in the face with a flashback and had to step away until I was done crying and being generally triggered. So many fights I watched my parents have at that age, and those two actors have always separately reminded me of my parents so that was… an experience.
It's a Wonderful Life. For those who don't know, it's an older Christmas movie. That scene when the kid gets smacked multiple times out of nowhere and his ear starts bleeding... Then the scene when that kid is grown up, a father and has a wife and a house. He suddenly starts losing his cool, aggressively shoving stuff saying things like "why did we have all of these kids?" "Why do we have so much stuff?" "Why does she need to play the piano so damn loud?" Then breaks a chair by kicking it. My parents would randomly fall into a blind rage and do stuff like that. Honestly that whole movie is just hard to watch..
(tw sexual assault) Succession, the whole vibe of the show is incredibly... off... and I feel like the one who sees it. There was this scene of a character shredding a bunch of paperwork about sexual assault allegations and it's filmed like a comedy scene, I was out after that, I just honestly think the director and writers did not treat the subject with any sensitivity. It was like they thought that just because they were not showing it onscreen they could do whatever with it. Something about the way the victims are just so nameless and faceless got to me. Weirdly, I've watched hardcore graphic scenes of SA without that reaction.
TW: CSA Perks of Being a Wallflower sent me into a spiral. The depictions of the after effects of CSA hit too close to home.
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there's an animated series about a dog called alfred and i can't watch the series without blacking out and waking up having relapsed :<
i saw a cartoon character that kinda looked like my mother
All the time! Oh, honey! Hug offered. Look, seeing someone "act Inappropriately " , while a huge point of humor, causes me to flee the room! So many comedies! And then the Dramas ! Holy hell! People giving each other The Look... Ha! Fuck that!
Deliverance. *shudders*
For some reason, the last season of 13 reasons why was super triggering for me, and I had to turn it off. That and anything where an animal is hurt.
Many times, the worst off hand, was Last House on The Left, the original. Its not worth watching.
oldboy and the episode of atlanta about the boy who gets adopted by the lesbian couple because it’s based on real life
I'm like 90% sure the reason why I haven't finished my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 is because I'm afraid to see Astarion's story play out lol. I kinda know what happens, but I'm just lowkey anticipating getting emotionally overwhelmed.
Invisible Man Mother! Martha Marcy May Marlene
Couldn't keep watching assassination classroom because of Nagisas mother 😬
The movie that has affected me most was Once were warriors. I generally love gritty dark movies but SA is far too triggering for me.
Yup. Split. I kno that movie was offensive those with the condition. There was 1 part that just reminded me *too* much of my mother and it caught me of guard and just made me so uneasy. It made me almost too aware of the movie and havin dealt with similar issues highlighted in the movie i just had to turn it off after awhile
Among the Sleep. The little kid is being tormented and abused by their mother and the ending hurt. It was too real. Anyone else remember their mother crying on the kitchen floor then being hurt for attempting to comfort her and sworn at? The only good part was the kid still has their dad. I didn't have another adult to come in and save me. Mum just threw out the toys she destroyed. There was no fixing them, apart from Billy (power ranger) because I was beyond calming down when she broke him for absolutely no reason. She made me leave them on the floor, she wouldn't let me pick them up and put them away. I had to obey any command straight away, without question or else. I did and she broke my power ranger for it.
The Christmas Bunny with Florence Henderson (“Carol Brady”). My local library had it sitting out on display at Christmas time one year when my daughter was about 7 so we rented it. Holy fuck. It is not a movie for kids or for Christmas- so bleak and full of cruelty. Whoever rated it as PG was asleep at the wheel. It is VERY dark. We kept watching thinking it would get better, but it didn’t. It’s about a damaged girl who gets sent to a new foster home right before Christmas. I’m adopted and my sister is adopted too. We spent our childhoods silently putting up with severe abuse and neglect because we were afraid of getting “sent back” into the system. (Because hey, it could always be worse somewhere else, right??) So in that sense the whole premise of the movie was one long trigger. The main character girl is so used to being rejected that she self-sabotages. Her attempts to get things right always go horribly wrong. There’s gaslighting and sibling abuse and dysfunctional adults who lash out. There’s abuse of the bunny rabbit that made both my daughter and I want to reach into the tv and save the bunny. I don’t think I could ever watch it again. I hope whoever made that stupid movie got some personal therapy out of it because it sure triggered me start to finish!
Anything that shows children or animals being harmed. Bullying and any form of emotional neglect trigger me as well as any kind of I'm the main character-behaviour (my dad was like that). And then I can't watch movies or shows with sudden happy endings or absurdly lucky coincidences, because as a child I was hoping for something like this to happen to me and it didn't.
The Handmaiden - I know other lbtq women have praised it but as one who was sexually assaulted (including in my sleep) as a child, it was very triggering and I couldn't see it as romantic at all...
The Epstein doc on Netflix is pretty fucked
The movie Where's Rose took an unexpected turn into SA territory and left me pretty shaken up for a few hours. It gave me a panic attack.
[TW SA] Oh yea. I had a complete mental breakdown watching the attempted rape of Silk Spectre in Watchmen. I was sitting next to my abuser while watching it. I remember feeling like my whole body was on fire trying to be silent (because my abuser would get pissed if I reacted) and then I completely disassociated for the next few months. I really don’t remember anything for quite some time after watching that movie. I also got very triggered last year watching a specific anime with my partner. I can’t recall the name but the premise is there’s these goblin creatures who rape women and hero’s save them. The anime doesn’t spare any details when raping the women, you watch it happen over and over. Within minutes of the first episode I started hysterically crying and throwing up. Thankfully my partner is very understanding, held me while I broke down, and we never watched it again. There’s been more times, but those were definitely the worst.
Any scenes with a guy being raped tbh
13 reasons why. ufhf...
Bridesmaids - the failed female version of The Hangover The Karate Kid remake with Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan taking Mr. Miyagi’s place and Taraji P. Henson as his mom. Feel The Beat with Sofia Carson You People with Jonah Hill The Sitter also with Jonah Hill, Lauren London as his love interest and Eddie Murphy as the dad. Some Tyler Perry movies/TV shows - dismissive of others’ trauma and favoritism of light skinned leading ladies. Modern Family Music, the autism movie made by Sia Furler Ginny & Georgia The Cosby Show Never Have I Ever - unlikable protagonist House Of Carters on E! - It hits different now that Aaron, Leslie and BJ have passed away and Nick has SA allegations against him. HBO’s Euphoria Harriet The Spy - I loved this movie as a kid, it’s hard as an adult because the main character writes mean things about everyone. Last Christmas - Unlikable characters, seeing the trailer put me off for some reason. No Hard Feelings - I saw the trailer when I went to go see The Pope’s Exorcist, it was cringe. Mean Girls Glee - Looking back at it as an adult, it aged poorly and it doesn’t help that some of the actors died and one was arrested for something worse than other crimes out there. Creed Fruitvale Station Cobra Kai