Heey!
As I was finishing my latest Thriller, One by One, a thought struck me.. Shouldn’t thrillers “technically” trigger my anxiety?
We’ve talked about recognizing panic attacks in books here before.. but what about being triggered by them?
Though I have to say i’m quite lucky in the sense that only few things bothers me.. I love something deep & dark and the gore doesn’t bother me much — for the exemption of ONE thing that is sadly WAY too used for ending a TV show in cliffhangers; visuals of a suicide attempt. Then again it’s only when cutting is using, others still hits me, but not as strong as that one.. which ofcourse was worst when I was in a bad space mentally and happened to cross it in one of my shows I loved; which left me almost shaking with the need to do the same that I had to push off.
But reading wise… the only thing that comes to me involving my anxiety was one time in senior year of high school where we were reading a text and then answer some questions kinda thing, and the story was about someone stuck in an elevator. Now, I do am claustrophobic aswell and reading that made me feel for her so vividly that I had to remember that it was something written and not actually happening, so it couldn’t hurt me.
Another instance that also triggered my depression in the same way as seeing that in a TV show would.. although I’m not sure why.. I had been reading “Benny & Shrimp” (in french as “Le mec de la tombe d’à Coté”) — I had just finished the book and it left me with a strong feeling that I should hurt myself; and it’s wierd because I don’t recall the novel finishing that bad ?? Nothing of the like happened in the end or anything.. so I have truly no idea why that happened, maybe it was just- not really because of the book but just a “bad timing”?
Nothing else of the liked happened for me..
A thought that comforted me was knowing that the brain actually don’t know that it’s fiction when one of our loved characters dies.. meaning the sadness & emptiness we feel as readers when that happens is very much real! Which made me wonder about other emotions like anxiousness, and potentially up to panic attacks.
A theory could be that I am a mood reader; so potentially that when I do go for my thrillers and other nerve-racking novels, that i’m mentally ready for it — so the anxious instinct of “fight or flight” isn’t triggered by my brain?
Then again I’ve been in a phase of listening to true crimes lately, which in my opinion is way worst than thrillers as it is very much real and happening/has happened in real life.
Has your mental health stopped you from reading specific genres before?
I feel like I’ve gone the other way for this: when I was a kid I hated horror in any form because I scared really easily and couldn’t handle it, but now I still have the same anxiety issues as I did before (maybe even worse) and horror is one of my favourite genres along with thriller. A recent experience I had has made me more likely to look into content warnings to see if it’s something I’ll be able to handle.
Ahh, yes that’s interesting!
I was way too scared of horror movies too— but what I did is I started watching people playing horror games first x) so it kind of « smooth » it out to be able to watch them.. but i’m still unable to play them 🙊 I got some resident evil games and amnesia and after like 5mins I have to stop..