On PTSD

I was reading a rather good rant elsewhere about folks misusing "triggering" and other things as excuses to exclude trans women from women's spaces. And one part struck me as something that *really* needs to get spread around.

I hear a lot of people throwing the word “triggering” around who don’t seem to understand what it means. Being “triggered” does not mean “feeling kind of freaked out” or “being squicked” or “being reminded of something unpleasant or painful.” When I say I am triggered I mean I am in a physical state of panic when the adrenaline really gets going, my heart is racing, and my reptile brain genuinely thinks I AM GOING TO DIE.

Is that REALLY what you mean?

That's pretty much it. Triggers can be all sorts of things for folks with PTSD and related problems. And they are *not* merely being uncomfortable or squicked.

For example, a certain tone of voice (which I hear far too often from parents berating their children in something just short of a rage) used to *immediately* put me into full "fight or flight" mode. Or the abuse survivor's third alternative, "freeze and try not to draw the attention of the MAJOR threat to your life/safety.

It still triggers a not good response, but I just go into an adrenaline surge and can usually stop at cringing a bit and restraining myself from the "freeze" response. That's what a few decades of exposure that *doesn't* turn into abuse of other danger will do. And yes, it takes years of "desensitization" to begin to moderate the response.

A single instance where something bad *does* follow the trigger can wipe that out.

Another, rather more complex trigger for me is "people having authority over e making a decision that could go really badly for me.

I get this one several times a year when they do things like the annual apartment inspection (there are at least two, because one is the outfit that owns the building and the other is HUD or some such).

It's triggering because I *could* get evicted if I failed badly. Given that some of the folks who do the inspection are the sort how believe in the de-cluttering BS such as "If you haven't used it in six months, you should get rid of it" I'm just about guaranteed to get hassled. (That "rule" from those shows is so stupid. What about seasonal items? What about items that you *will* need occasionally and, being poor, you can't *afford* to go out and buy new ones when you need them again, etc.

So it's not uncommon for me to have a slow-building panic attack on the days leading up top the inspection. At least once I had chest pains (which whatever they were, were apparently not a heart attack as I've tests more recently that show my heart is in good shape).

Anyway, if you *don't* have PTSD, *don't* talk about things being "triggering". Also, realize that because triggers for different people are so varied, you *cannot* make any pace trigger free. *At best* you can try to warn folks you know about things that might trigger *them* based on what *they* have told you.

For anyone who is interested, the link to the original article is below the cut
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geographical ignorance

Ok, tonight I saw a really stupid mistake for the *second* time.

They had someone giving "co-ordinates" to a location. As latitude and longitude. Ok, fine. Though expecting them to have it accurate is a reach, but...

The problem is in both cases they gave it as degrees and *nothing* else. Not decimal degrees (commonly shown in GPS setup as DDD.ddddd), not as degrees, minutes and decimal minutes (DDD MM.mmmm) not as degrees, minutes and seconds (DDD MM SS.ssss)

Why is this important? Well the size of a one *minute* of longitude interval on the ground varies depending on your latitude. But a one minute interval of latitude is constant, at around a nautical mile.

A degree is *60* minutes.

So if all you are giving is something like 31 97 then the location has an uncertainty of *30 miles* north south, and and an east west variation that ranges from +/- 30 miles at the equator to zero at the poles.

So the writers on two different shows had people or places being located by co-ordinates that are about as exact as "somewhere in the New York City area".

Now, it's *possible* that the locations in the two shows were actually *at* the intersection of those lines of latitude and longitude. But that's really unlikely.

Latitude and longitude are not magic. To give useful locations you need to give them to fractions of a minute. Geocaching tends to use DDD MM.mmm That's 3 decimal places on the minutes, which, if the GPS signal co-operates will get you within a few feet of the cache.

TV writers shouldn't write stuff they aren't familiar with.