It seems that, for whatever reason, things that I might have been able to stomach years ago are now making me ill. Not food stuff but visual stuff. Like that breast rash thing on Snopes. I know it’s fake, but it gave me nightmares for a week. The movie Requiem For A Dream gave me nightmares for about a week.
It’s almost like as I have gotten older the stuff that as a kid I might have thought was unspeakably vile but somehow interesting brings me to borderline puking. And truth is, I just don’t know what to do about it. If it keeps getting worse, though, it could almost be debilitating for me. Imagine for example that I am the only one who can do first aid on one of my fellow Airmen who is injured. How can I do that if I’m barfing my guts out? I’m not sure if I can even look at that kind of thing, let alone take measures to help fix it.
Action movies. Realistic action movies make me cringe. Some of them are so intense that I simply can’t watch them.
What’s worse is that there are times when I can’t fight the urge to look, knowing that what I see will be unspeakably vile, and when I look I have nightmares about it. It costs me sleep and alters my focus so dramatically enough that I feel the need to address it, but first I have to get an idea of what the problem is.
Sorry I can’t offer any help but I’m with you on the breast rash thing brother. Even knowing right away it was fake and immediately recognizing how they made it, it still grossed the hell out of me. I haven’t seen it in months and I’m feeling uneasy just thinking about it now.
Its just the *shock culture * that is currently prevalent.
Just because you haven’t been desensitized to violence and horror doesn’t make you a weird person.
A lot of people try to act cool and nonchalant about it, but I think it does disturb them. They just don’t want to look like wusses in front of their friends.
Personally, I hate the current trend of trying to out-shock each other, especially with the media.
Normally visceral stuff does nothing to gross me out, but that breast rash thing, even though the photoshop job is pretty obvious, … BLEEEEEEEEEEEECCCCCCCCH.
I seem to recall a Pit thread recently where you mentioned that a close relative was dying, so here’s my guess: some combination of your relative’s illness and the arrival of Major-Select “Bomb Bay” Doors have brought your mortality and all of the very very heavy life and death stuff into stark focus for you. I remember seeing which unit you were assigned to, and I remember thinking “Wow, he’s in a real live operational unit.” Any deaths you witnessed, facilitated, whatever… you probably have a relatively sane way of dealing with them, which I’m guessing amounts to trying not to think about them as real people. Recent confrontations with the fragility of life, and the lives around you, have forced your subconscious to reevaluate what it’s seen. That’s just my guess, though.
Example: a close friend of mine survived a suicide attempt almost ten years ago, and to this day I can’t sit through a realistic suicide scene in any film. The gunshot scene in Full Metal Jacket, the bathtub in Rules of Attraction… just can’t sit through it now that I have that kind of connection.
The people I’d talk to about it:
MsRobyn, because she’s going through a lot of the same things
Unit chaplain, if you’re so inclined
First shirt – or someone with a decent accumulation of stripes (not bars) – who is not going to put you on psych-eval leave just for talking with them.
If none of those people is the right fit, find someone – hell, shoot me an e-mail – and we can chew it over, see if we can figure out what’s up.
I do have some good news, though. I have a feeling that if it were one of your fellow Airmen, your body would send your brain off to San Antonio at the first sign of non-compliance, and you would just revert to robotically following your training. That’s what training’s for.
Doors I am not a licensed therapist but I do have a Master’s in Biological Psychology and have done some work as a counselors assistant. Diagnosis used to be one of my strong points.
BUT… this is simply my opinion.
You recently got back from Iraq IIRC?
You probably have some first hand experience with the casualties, injuries, and suffering that occurred and is still going on. Would that be an accurate accessment thus far?
If you found these images disturbing (and who wouldn’t) and didn’t deal with the anxiety they produced within you. You could be experiencing a type of PTSD whereby these NEW images you described are “reminding” your body of the previous events. This could cause you to experience physical side effects such as, nausea, sleeplessness, nightmares, and several other anxiety related manifestations. It may be that these new images are simply triggering behavior that you suppressed while you were overseas and had to simply “suck it up” rather than actually coping/dealing with the stress at the time.
Understand that this is based on very little information on my part. There could be another, perhaps several other “better” reasons for what you’ve described. It just sounded like a classic PTSD case to me. good luck
I think that breast rash thing is so stark because it’s not inconcievable that something like that might happen. Not with tapeworms and insect bites and stuff like that. Sure, it’s fake, but it’s just a little bit too possible.
The harlequin baby thing is just horrifying, goatse is just sick, and tubgirl did make me puke the first time I saw it.
I think Keapon Laffin had something there with the shock culture thing. People are constantly trying to be more revolting than the next person. I just don’t get it. But nonetheless, I have been noticing this trend since before the recent death of my grandmother. I just can’t handle gruesomeness or gross-looking weird stuff anymore, and the list just keeps getting longer. And it’s geeking me out.
http://www.ncptsd.org/facts/general/fs_what_is_ptsd.html
Here ya go, just in case you’re interested.
An interesting fact, 1 in 8 service men and women returning from Iraq experience PTSD. But less than 1/3 of those seek treatment.
Alcohol seems to just make it worse. Isn’t that usually the case though.
Left untreated it will in most cases get worse. Treatment usually consists of a combination of approaches.
Medication can/may involve mood stabilizers (ie: zoloft) but not necessarily. Often PTSD, if not severe, simple counseling may resolve the immediate symptoms. There is (supposedly) no actual cure for PTSD but it is easily controlled in many cases.
I’m just posting a few facts that may or may not apply to the OP.
In any event A/D I hope you get it figured out, good luck.
Sometimes it helps to just talk about it. Get it out in the open and deal with issues as they present themselves.
Goatse was simply amusing. Tubgirl was kind of strange/gross. Harlequin babies are just sickening. But that breast rash. Shit. Gave me the frickin’ creeps.
I have a reprint of a late 1800s-early 1900s photo-illustrated textbook ANOMALIES AND CURIOSITIES OF MEDICINE which I got when I was in FIFTH FREAKIN’ GRADE! Since then, I alternate through phases when I can stand to read/look at it. Right now, I could if I had to but I choose not to. I can NOT look at harlequin baby photos. I doubt I could look at breast rash or tubgirl.
That said- I still would like to see the Wisconsin police photos of the Ed Gein collection. I went through the Los Angeles Museum of Death and only occasionally had to avert my glance three years ago. Earlier tonight I watched HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES with no problem. and in the next month I’m finally gonna order the DVD of FREAKS.
AirmanDoors- probably a combination of your recent loss and the new baby has just made you more sensitive. Don’t worry about it unless it actually complicates things.
