Triggers are like allergies.
- An allergy is an extreme sensitivity to something that might not bother most people.
- There are common ones and rare ones
- They range from mildly annoying to life threatening, depending on the degree of sensitivity.
- Not everyone has them. Some people might have several.
- There’s no need to include allergy warnings when your audience is small and well known and you know no one present is allergic to anything you’re bringing.
- When your audience is wider or unknown, it’s courteous to include warnings for the more common ones (peanuts, milk). Because better safe than sorry.
- If you find out that someone with a rarer one might be present, you should include warnings for things you usually wouldn’t (cayenne pepper, mint).
- If you set off an allergic reaction, you apologize even if you didn’t know they had that allergy, you do what you can to help, and you take care not to do it again.
- Teasing someone for having one is stupid.
- People don’t choose to have them, and those that have them wish they didn’t.
- Faking one that you don’t have is bad form.
- And if you intentionally expose an allergic person to something you know they are allergic to, you are an ASSHOLE.
I have more.
- Sensitivity to an allergen can increase over time. Having better tolerance in the past does not mean that the current level of sensitivity is fake.
- Sensitivity to an allergen can decrease over time. Having better tolerance now does not mean that the past level of sensitivity was fake.
- An allergy can develop abruptly. Something that had no reaction on first exposure can have a violent reaction on second exposure.
- Often a person doesn’t know they have an allergy until their first allergic reaction. This can be terrifying.
Unfortunately some people treat allergies as nonsense too.