I’m triggered by automated TV demos. Not like demonstrations on TV, but automated sequences that are displayed on the TV for marketing purposes, specifically for selling the TV and showing its features. I find it difficult to write but phrases like “why this should be your next TV” are integrally linked with trauma for me. There are no trigger warnings for stuff like this in life. I just have to deal. I’ve gotten better though over the years.

I accidentally entered this mode on the family TV as a child by pushing a button combination with just the right timing. I didn’t know what I did wrong but I thought I had broken our new TV. For context, I actually was responsible for breaking the TV just before this one. I had a day of fear combined with being beaten that evening and for a few evenings after for ruining our new TV. I watched the same advertising sequence play over and over and over for hours trying to understand what I did wrong but I couldn’t understand. The concept of a product demo just didn’t occur to me at that age.

Sometimes a TV advert will hit just wrong and it feels like I can’t breathe. I’ve been able to help it a little bit by watching TV advertisements over the years and it’s gotten to the point where I feel terrible but I can still be functional. A few years ago I stumbled upon the exact TV demo on YouTube. I had never felt such visceral horror in decades. I forgot that I could even feel that awful. It was the scariest video I’ve ever seen in my life.

I know there are far worse things that can happen to a person. I’m sure that for some reason I was just extremely sensitive about this life experience maybe at just the right formative period, but I can’t control the physical reaction that TV advertisements can have on me. It can elicit a response of pure terror from nowhere. This is what I think of when people tell me that they have a genuine trigger. I imagine it as this thing that just defies logic, just this physical terrible and intense response that you can’t control.