Abby, you had me 100% until you mentioned students abusing TWs when they don’t have actual traumas.

Abby, you had me 100% until you mentioned students abusing TWs when they don’t have actual traumas. We cannot be the personal arbiters of whose struggles are valid and whose are not. We cannot know from the outside what experiences a person has had, and how they’ve been affected by them. And triggers — while most famously associated with PTSD — are not exclusive to those with specific, singular traumatic experiences. There is C-PTSD (complex PTSD), which arises from a lifetime of smaller-grade abuse or prejudice. There are eating disorders and body dysmorphia (and even gender dysphoria), which can be triggered by talk about body size/shape/fat composition/weight loss. There is Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome and other syndromes associated with OCD that can be triggered from any number of things. There’s suicide ideation, which can be triggered from talk about depression or death. There are a lot of very silent, very subtle ways that students can suffer, and I respect them all and want to accommodate them all.