Colette Murphy

Professor Jacobs

ENG 110

10/05/2022

Today’s youth are too sensitive according to “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Their essay reviews censorship on college campuses through apparent micro aggressions or trigger warnings; and how to counteract these measures against potential critical thinking using a type of therapy called CBT. They discuss how this movement of trigger warnings is “driven largely by students” since Gen Z and millennial parents are known for “bulldozing” over the hardships their children may or may not experience. They discuss of how this is most likely because of how often kidnapping was beginning to become publicized, so parents were beginning to “pull in the reins and work harder to keep their children safe.” There are a few instances of the outcome of this censorship riddled throughout the book. Harvard students requesting not to teach rape law, a camel petting event being canceled out of concern for animal cruelty, and the list goes on. Lukianoff and Haidt go on to teach their readers about micro aggressions, or words meant to be taken as harmless that have more violent impact than originally meant. The two men discuss how trigger warnings challenge everything that their generation- and past ones -have been through, from “literary” and “philosophical” points of view to the general “historical canon.” This is just one of a few experiences the two summarize, and they finish the essay with simple food for thought: that people with the power to teach should rethink their stances on trigger warnings in general considering this over-censorship seems to be leading Gen Z and millennials down the wrong path: the path of a closeted mind.

While the two are well versed in their fields, a lawyer and a social psychologist, they just simply aren’t of the same age and generation as the children and young adults needing these trigger warnings. To start off, the two older white men from a completely different generation write about how the movement of trigger warnings is “driven largely by students”. This is not true, BBC News wrote an article called “Trigger warnings: What do they do?” documenting how “disabled occupational therapist Claire Jones”…”says that trigger warnings first appeared on feminist websites to flag up accounts of abuse.” I delved deeper and found another article called “A short history of trigger warnings” written by professor Nick Haslam in 2017 which commented on this, he says how “the idea of trigger warnings originates in the psychiatric literature on post-traumatic reactions, where triggering had the same connotations.” It appears to me that not only have trigger warnings been around since before 2015, but it also wasn’t students that made them, it was therapists themselves.

Going back to the specific type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that they discuss in the article called exposure therapy, most adults say that it works on them better than the peers that I’ve discussed this matter with. When I went back to talk to my best friend who I co-ran CBT sessions with in high school, she commented on how the adults that would stop by and listen to us talk seemed to use our methods more than the actual children we were teaching. I agree with this, not because the children weren’t absorbing what we were teaching, but because they were numb to it after hearing it every day. One of the kinds of CBT we were teaching called exposure therapy, the same one talked about in the article, is hard to go through with in general. No one wants to re-live their experiences with PTSD and trauma, and it’s especially difficult in a generation where everything is already so censored. Not just this, but as I read “The Coddling of the American Mind”, I noticed that they didn’t try to understand the other side, only reviewed their own and only talked to victims of these new ways of censorship. While I do feel that a lot of this essay doesn’t bring the best points to light, I am neutral on the subject of trigger warnings in general. I think that “The Coddling of the American Mind” does have some good points about Gen Z and millennials being oversensitive, but I also feel that they aren’t showing either the full story or the other person’s perspective in general. This brings me to believe that it is because it is a new thing and older generations are anything but susceptible to change. As John A. Davis and Jennifer M. Silva help my own point by writing in their essay, “Boomers and Millennials: Adapting to Generational Change”, they comment on how they’ve “never seen generational change on this scale before,” and how “most Boomer leaders are not ready for the widespread changes the Millennials will bring.” This brings me to one of my own beliefs, that everyone’s opinions and perspectives on things are derived from different past experiences. The people needing these trigger warnings weren’t born in the 60s and 70s, they were born 20, 30, and now 40 years later. Every year more and more abuse allegations, rapists, and instances of police brutality are coming to light in ways older generations just simply haven’t seen before and/or couldn’t handle/talk about. This brings me back to how Lukianoff and Haidt argue that a new type of therapy, CBT, can help the youth of today navigate triggering subjects through exposure therapy. According to the two authors of “The Coddling of the American Mind”, they say that CBT can cure several different mental illnesses, including “depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and addiction.” To talk more in-depth about my experiences with CBT therapy as someone who has gone through CBT for seven years, it does not take “a few months of training” as they put it. I was put into a group of four Freshman girls in my high school, which was gradually expanded upon in my years there. Every year more adolescents were joining the CBT program I ran, which was at once comforting knowing other children had the same problems as I. But looking back, it just proved this statement right. Lukianoff and Haidt discuss how “Nearly all of the campus mental-health directors surveyed in 2013 by the American College Counseling Association reported that the number of students with severe psychological problems was rising at their schools.” Which is understandably true. I agree with how they mention “Many seem fragile” but I think the reason that they think that so many Gen Z and millennials seem fragile is because they never got the chance to be. Even I have to remind myself that the people writing this article are two older white men. During that time in highschool in that program, they tried behavioral therapy and CBT every day. Having been in an environment where I was being constantly over exposed to issues way out of the school’s control was extremely unsettling and detrimental to my mental health. One therapist we had over the four years we co-ran the group together was so sick of how child protective services wasn’t helping any of us that she ended up quitting her job as a social worker. On top of this, I found that within those walls instead of growing from and moving past my PTSD, I was stuck in a hole and constantly swimming in it. Not only was the exposure therapy horribly done with no trigger warnings, but someone was having a panic attack every session. Another therapist assigned to us spoke without any warning of anything; she would say “faggot” and “rape” with no regard to our past experiences with those words. For context behind her using of the word “faggot”, my best friend back home is gay and would go home to her mother calling her a faggot. In response to learning this, the behavioral therapist had her write faggot in sharpy all over her arms as a form of exposure. She went home that day, her mother saw her arms, and didn’t talk to her daughter, my best friend, for two months straight. This therapist didn’t use trigger warnings, blamed us for our sensitivity to certain subjects, and refused to facilitate our needs. Now I do think that if we had a more experienced social worker/therapist working with us and gradually got used to not using trigger warnings that it might have worked. But I know too many children and young adults that have gone through the same experiences that I have with this: being shoved into this world of unblanketed trauma all at once instead of gradually. While which I do in fact agree with some of the subjects mentioned in “The Coddling of the American Mind”, they also argue that trigger warnings simply aren’t needed at all. That triggering subjects in the “real world” won’t be blanketed or wrapped up in softer words or phrases. This brings me to why I am neutral on this essay, but do lean towards needing trigger warnings. People who need them don’t want to re-experience their PTSD/trauma. Not to mention exposure therapy is usually used for physically scaring experiences like getting stuck in an elevator or escaping a fire. The CBT that is discussed in “The Coddling of the American Mind”, from my perspective, can’t be used in terms of being “over-sensitive” to racism and/or PTSD. On top of this, as I’m researching more examples for this paper, I’ve come to see that exposure therapy among young adults and children is mainly used for not-as-extreme cases. I don’t want to undermine any case since, as I restate what I said before, different situations can be felt differently because of past experiences. One example of a “not-as-extreme-case” is how I saw a video in which a girl is wearing a sweater because she’s self-conscious about her body, and then taking that sweater off. As I searched for more examples of extreme exposure therapy, all I found were some instances of OCD. I don’t think that “The Coddling of the American Mind”’s instances of exposure therapy being used to counteract trigger warnings are appropriate.

But this isn’t to say that I’m completely against the essay either, in fact I’m almost neutral, leaning towards using trigger warnings. I want to admit that I do see their point about how exposure therapy can help with using trigger warnings. For example, the two men discuss how asking someone seemingly of non-white descent asking “Where were you born?,” can be seen and/or taken as a microaggression. I feel that this is a bit over-the-top; but I’m white and have never experienced a micro aggression. The closest thing I’ve gotten to that, as a bisexual white woman, is when I came out to my mother and she told me to “give it time” before I settle on being bisexual, as if it wasn’t something I’d felt my whole life. In “The Coddling of the American Mind” they discovered that “The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”” Of course they didn’t agree with this, if I were them I wouldn’t either; and I don’t. In the book itself Lukianoff and Haidt even mention how when the Great Gatsby has been taught in English classes, adolescents have requested that trigger warnings be used as “alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response.” I felt the same way in high school. When I read about the physical and mental abuse that was disregarded throughout the book until it became critical, I resonated with Daisy and Myrtle. I saw them in me, and it triggered me when nothing seemed to be done when Myrtle died because I was suddenly worried that the same thing would happen to me; that I would die from my father’s hand as I relived the moments in time when he had pushed me down the stairs, and beaten my younger brother for not putting pants on when he was four years old. At another point towards the end of their essay, the two discuss an instance in which an event where a student would be able to pet a camel was cancelled because students thought it was being abused, going as far to create a Facebook group about it. Students thought that the event was “being insensitive to people from the Middle East.” Even though Lukianoff and Haidt argue that “The inspiration for the camel had almost certainly come from a popular TV commercial in which a camel saunters around an office on a Wednesday, celebrating “hump day”.” They say how “it was devoid of any reference to Middle Eastern peoples.” and that even though everyone seemed to know this, it was cancelled anyways out of fear of discomfort. Now I agree that this is bullshit. I am white, I can’t speak on micro aggressions- especially ones that are racism-based. I’ve never been physically or mentally harmed just because the color of my skin, and they are also old white men of a completely different generation talking about this. Neither of us should have any say on racism-based micro aggressions, yet it’s the only kind they seem to talk about.

I do feel as if trigger warnings can be overused nowadays, especially by younger people on TikTok. The other day I saw a trigger warning for eyes and deleted the app all together. Trigger warnings shouldn’t be used for everything, but basic things like abuse, sexual assault/rape, self-harm, excessive blood/gore, dead animals/humans, and Tourette tics (I say this because seeing tics can cause tics to occur). Though I’d like to go back to where I said that I am, in the end, neutral on this situation. As someone who has been co-running and helped my school build a CBT based class in high school for the past four years, it takes literal years to master. And what about the people that don’t know about CBT? Even then because of that we need Trigger Warnings for students, adolescents, people in general. While I say all of this in a tone of disagreement, there are obviously things that I also do agree with. In my time in high school, and as one of the founders who set up and built that program, myself and two other students said that it wasn’t useful; that talking about anything felt like it was censored, especially by the younger incoming Freshman. I had a friend get into a car crash and wasn’t able to talk about it in the group setting because another girl had PTSD from a car crash earlier in her life. This isn’t to put down either of them, but it was obviously stressful that she couldn’t talk about it in a class that was meant to use exposure therapy; in which one goes through the motions of the event that happened. If they had allowed us to use trigger warnings and let the other girl who had PTSD from the car crash leave the class, it would have worked in everyone’s favor. Imagine if we had decided to let her talk about the car crash anyways, sure it would have been alleviating but what about the other girl? It’s instances like these where trigger warnings are needed, and where exposure therapy is just too much.

To expand upon what I’ve just talked about as someone who has gone through CBT my whole life, specifically exposure therapy, it does not help and rather brings me back to the incidents in my life that I never want to think about, much less re-live, again. I see Lukianoff’s and Haidt’s point that a lot of this generation is soft. I go as far as to agree with how the two authors word “You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.” Considering these words evoke something in me. Something I’d never admit aloud: they’re right. People can be too soft, people can be too over sensitive, but this brings me back to my own key point of my response: that differences in judgement are derived from differences in experience. The two even say how “Preventing that devastation becomes a moral obligation for the whole community.” and that “A discussion of violence is unlikely to be followed by actual violence.” Of course I don’t feel that this can be applied to me since I grew up around violence and was breed from it, hence my own PTSD. But that’s not to say that it can’t be used as a step in the right direction to other millennials and young adults who need to hear it more than I do. So when they say that “critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire” it scares me because I’d hate to hurt anyone’s feelings ever. But critical thinking is driven by change in thought, in wanting to convince and display actions through thoughts. One line that really stood out to me when I read this is when they say about a paragraph later “subjective feelings are not always trustworthy guides” and to restate/reword what I said before, I hate hurting people’s feelings- for I am an incredibly subjective person that has no opinions on anything out of pure fear that my thoughts could hurt someone. Or that my thoughts aren’t powerful enough to convey the messages that I’d like to. But I digress, at the end of this essay I feel that trigger warnings are needed and that CBT isn’t a big enough cushion to prevent their use. Not just for people like me who have severe PTSD attacks, but for many children and adults alike.