They're not conflating them. They're interwoven. It's in the name. A trauma trigger requires a trauma history, and trauma histories have signs, however minor.
Kurose has had no signs that would indicate a history severe enough to elicit this kind of trauma response, despite repeatedly being exposed to similar stimuli throughout this entire band arc. Ffs, the moment they approached him he would've been triggered if it's this severe.
It's not realistic, and it's just bad writing.
You're absolutely conflating two things. If you actually read the research you said you're studying you'd know that a "triggered trauma response" is UNEXPECTED. Kurose isn't a PTSD patient suffering from chronic anxiety and this incident isn't some long-time build up of someone who's been suffering for years. It's an unexpected reaction triggered by the words, situation, and a multitude of other stimuli that happened to set off this reaction.
Even in the case of a fire victim being triggered by grill smoke, they may not be triggered by ALL grill smoke. They may have gone to 13 different cookouts with friends and family and shown 0 signs of trauma from the fire, but that 14th one was on the same day of the week as the fire, at roughly the same time as the fire, and the blend of scents from the fire and the food happened to blend in just the right way to set their brain into "Omfg we're in a fire, gtfo!" And they are sent into a trauma response, UNEXPECTEDLY, from the trigger.
For someone who claims to specialize in trauma you sure don't understand how triggered trauma responses work. I suggest you talk to your professors and actually learn about it.
Regardless, the trauma response was the "hook" and not the "payoff". We have yet to see the payoff so how well it's handled remains to be seen. As it stands, this was a textbook example of a triggered trauma response with all of the same physiological signs after the fact.
