In the Age of Trigger Warnings

I was talking with a friend recently who read a book I absolutely loved. But she needed to put it down. The premise of the book was causing her to have anxiety and feel uneasy; it was too scary, though it wasn’t a thriller or horror book by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, it was futuristic technology that stretched our universe into multiple realities with the possibility of false memories. Time warped, stretched, molded into an unrecognizable society. 

Did you guess the book? It’s Recursion by Blake Crouch, a book I LOVED and have been recommending pretty constantly. 

I was shocked. I couldn’t get enough of the beauty of the love story, the science fiction elements, and the brilliant writing. She said she wished she’d been warned about how scary and anxiety inducing it is, because she would have avoided it or felt more prepared at a difference time to give it a try. I felt guilty, thinking I should have included a trigger warning. 

But then I stopped and thought about it. What is a trigger warning? It’s a warning that gives the reader a heads up to any content that could make them feel extraordinarily upset, like from sexual assault, suicide, miscarriage, or violence. 

I never would have thought Recursion needed a trigger warning. But it got me thinking on the overwhelming amount of content out in the world today and how we really don’t know what will trigger a person. 

I want to start including some kind of content guide on my reviews. I started this site to review books and while I’ve incorporating a little more of my personal life, I’m still here to talk about books because that it what I love. 

It’s okay to avoid topics that trigger us. And it’s okay to have completely difference subjects that bother us! I, for one, will never finish reading The Handmaid’s Tale (well, at least until the current administration is no long longer in the White House). It was a premise that gave me too much anxiety and fear, given the present circumstances. I’m sure it’s brilliant, but that won’t make me compromise my mental health. I won’t watch the show either. I got 2 episodes into season 2 and needed to step away. 

So basically, I want to be a more mindful blogger and book reviewer. I think content warnings are so important! What about you?