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I know that reading or watching films about certain topics* is almost guaranteed to leave me emotionally/mentally wounded. Doing it fuels my depression, makes my mind hurt, brings a dark mental cloud more to the forefront. Those feelings tend to linger in my mind, and take a while to fade away again.
And yet, I often have a morbid curiosity that makes me want to continue reading or watching those things, even after I've realized that they are going to affect me in a bad way.
Sometimes, I am able to stop myself at the outset... by not clicking on a particular link, by skipping past the material in question, or by switching the TV channel. (Because yes, I already know it is bad, and I don't want to expose myself to even more details of how bad it is, when I'm already too horribly aware of how horrible it all is!)
But once my curiosity has been piqued by something, I'll often keep watching or reading, and even actively searching out more information. Why is it that I do this, even when I know it is going to hurt me?
One might say that I got my fill of the topics in question at an early age. By reading too many National Geographic magazines, watching too many documentaries. Too many "real-life" stories and biographies, too many news shows. The depression that starting coming over me during my teen years may be related to why those topics trigger me so badly. The topics helped shaped my world-view, which helped shape my depression... Then again, maybe those topics are bad enough that I would feel the same way about them even without a history of depression; I don't know.
.
* There are many such triggering topics: Wars, the military, the Holocaust, mass killings, individual killings, rape, torture, unjust imprisonment, industrial pollution, clear-cut logging, environmental degradation, radioactive waste, factory farming, slaughterhouses, animal experimentation, pesticides, genocides, the Inquisition, African-American slavery, unjust treatment of Native Americans, racism, sexism, gender-based inequality, police corruption, government corruption, dictatorships, child soldiers, modern day slavery, just about any nation and place on Earth because they've all got horror stories in their histories, and more.
And yet, I often have a morbid curiosity that makes me want to continue reading or watching those things, even after I've realized that they are going to affect me in a bad way.
Sometimes, I am able to stop myself at the outset... by not clicking on a particular link, by skipping past the material in question, or by switching the TV channel. (Because yes, I already know it is bad, and I don't want to expose myself to even more details of how bad it is, when I'm already too horribly aware of how horrible it all is!)
But once my curiosity has been piqued by something, I'll often keep watching or reading, and even actively searching out more information. Why is it that I do this, even when I know it is going to hurt me?
One might say that I got my fill of the topics in question at an early age. By reading too many National Geographic magazines, watching too many documentaries. Too many "real-life" stories and biographies, too many news shows. The depression that starting coming over me during my teen years may be related to why those topics trigger me so badly. The topics helped shaped my world-view, which helped shape my depression... Then again, maybe those topics are bad enough that I would feel the same way about them even without a history of depression; I don't know.
.
* There are many such triggering topics: Wars, the military, the Holocaust, mass killings, individual killings, rape, torture, unjust imprisonment, industrial pollution, clear-cut logging, environmental degradation, radioactive waste, factory farming, slaughterhouses, animal experimentation, pesticides, genocides, the Inquisition, African-American slavery, unjust treatment of Native Americans, racism, sexism, gender-based inequality, police corruption, government corruption, dictatorships, child soldiers, modern day slavery, just about any nation and place on Earth because they've all got horror stories in their histories, and more.