The ‘conversation’ (incidentally the worst possible way to describe anything other than an actual conversation, as in, human beings speaking with one another) around language and words is ongoing and, dare I say, rather boring.

That aside, it is vital that we reject the amorphousness and imprecision which seems to seep into everything—nuance is added to places where it does not belong, and absolutely rejected in areas where it should be encouraged, to the point where one could safely say that nuance has been cancelled. I publish in the sorts of academic journals that will reject a paper based on one’s use of contractions and so I believe, very much, in boundaries. Like art, most things begin with drawing a line somewhere. The words we use every day when we are upset, uncomfortable, or stressed out—words like ‘harm’, ‘trigger’ and ‘predator’—have psychological definitions. As do the words ‘autistic’, ‘sociopath’, ‘narcissist’ We should respect those definitions.

A student once complained to the dean at a university where I was teaching a course on psychology that I was ‘abusive’ because I did not give a trigger warning before assigning Freud. This was a master’s level student who presumably had at least a vague concept of what the man was on about. At first I was appalled, then frustrated, and finally heartbroken because what are we doing in academia, or the world, if we devote ourselves only to avoidance. Avoidance of unpleasantness, or controversy, or divisiveness. The entire human endeavour becomes impossible. It becomes static. When a person training to be a therapist says out loud that Freud makes them unsafe, clearly we have lost all sense of rigor and reason. To me, in my world, one is unsafe when going home drunk with a stranger or failing to use a condom or picking a fight with a biker. Unsafe means you are frightened of being hurt, physically and for real. It does not mean you are slightly uneasy in a classroom, a classroom situated on a beautiful campus in the heart of idyllic New England. Well, idyllic for rich white people, anyway.

Which leads me to our word of the day: Trigger. Triggering is a physiological and psychological event. It has an application that has nothing to do with 99 percent of the things to which it is attributed. Let us suppose you were the victim of a brutal assault, as I have been. Every time you smell the cologne that the son of a bitch wore you get queasy, your vision narrows to a point, and you feel exactly the same as that long ago night in the UK. You see, your brain (or mine) truly does not know that it is not still in that apartment, and you are not being choked into unconsciousness repeatedly for what seemed like days but which was, in actuality, 18 hours. That is what I mean when I say ‘triggering’. I am not, ever, referring to words on a page. Words on a page are not unsafe, you can close the book, turn the page, write a letter to the editor. But whatever you decide to do with those words, recognize that they cannot truly hurt you. In extreme cases, a single word can cause a trauma response. I can list 10 sadistic edgelords from the annals of true crime that did this to their victims on purpose, essentially conditioning them to respond to certain phrases with terror and helplessness. Personally, I refuse to say the names of my rapists out loud, but this is less about triggering and more about spite, and a refusal to give them even that recognition.

Of course, for me to blithely dismiss how some words and images can be an act of hate would be irresponsible. Some manifestos or calls to action have led to truly horrifying events. Some words and symbols are themselves a crime. Some words are not protected by our ever-eroding constitutional rights. Hopefully we know what these words are. I surely am not going to list them here. We can reclaim a few, but some…some just will not be rebranded. Take for example the ever-present and increasingly common swastika. No matter what that douche at a party says about it being an ancient symbol it means one thing, and one thing only. It is visceral, physical, bone-deep and yes, traumatic, to see the red and black adorning the arms of men in our country. It is terrifying and powerful and reminds me every time I see it that I am unsafe. Like, taken-away-at-4 AM-by-the government unsafe.

So do you get the difference? Between unsafe and triggered and merely uncomfortable? Because I assure you many people seem to have difficulties with this. They seem to believe that being uncomfortable is by definition to be unsafe. That being triggered is an everyday, almost all day, commonplace occurrence. If this were the case, no one would do anything except sit in a dark room and cry forever. Yes, words can upset, incite tears or rage or even lead to violence. Words matter. How we use them matters. I implore all of you to be selective. Be mindful. Be honest. Know what the hell a word means before you ascribe it to a situation or to a person. My ex was not abusive; he was a prick. That time I watched Trainspotting and cried for two days? I was not triggered, just deeply saddened and missing a boy from my youth. And your mom really is a narcissist. Not because you think so but because she meets all of the diagnostic criteria to make that statement true. Finally, if this article upset you, please say that, but do not say it harmed you or triggered you or traumatized you or is somehow violence being perpetrated against you. Trust me, violence cannot be restrained by a page. And it cannot be censored or stopped and it does not give a shit about your safe spaces, your restorative justice, or your feelings. You want violence? Leave your apartment or your discord group or your mother’s basement and venture into the real world, where real people hurt each other every damn day.

­—Dr. C. Barnabas Westlake