Horrifying

When I was younger (particularly in my teens) I used to have trouble with what I think of as "waking nightmares". Just before I'd properly fall asleep, when your senses are getting all fuzzy and making nonsense, I'd get flashes of images that were the sort of thing you'd see in a horror film. They'd startle me awake, and give me the heebie jeebies, and I'd struggle to calm down enough to try going back to sleep.

As someone who has had trouble sleeping since forever, this didn't help.

They were often things I'd actually seen in an ad for a horror film or on the cover of a DVD case or book. Sometimes they were new and exciting combinations of these things. I think, for some reason, my brain just decided to process anxiety and/or depression by showing me things I found unsettling - things I hadn't wanted to see in the first place, and now wished I could unsee because I was getting to see them again and again - quite involuntarily.

You know how, when you have a cut somewhere on your ankle, you suddenly keep kicking that spot on your ankle whenever you walk even though you never do otherwise? It was a bit like that.

And I've always had this weird thing happen with my sight and hearing when I'm overtired (which is quite a lot of the time, really). I'll see movement in the far reaches of my peripheral vision that isn't there when I turn my head to look at it, and I often hear sounds I can't pinpoint. Add that to the fact that I grew up in a Christian denomination that believes in demons, and that demons try to manipulate you...

Well, let's just say I started being completely terrified by the threat of being terrified. I needed to sleep in a room that was controlled enough for me to keep tabs on everything, so I could tell myself what every shadow and sound was, and I'd still feel on edge. I still hate sleeping in a room where you can see your reflection in a mirror (that lovely half awake state you get into when you're just conscious enough to catch sight of something moving in the mirror, but not quite awake enough to realise it's *you*). I'm not fond of being in a dark room with a mirror in it, in general. Those things are just inherently disturbing.

And I guess, even though I'm now much better at shaking myself out of the "creeped out" zone that I used to get in back then, I'm still a little bit on edge about things like this. I still have ideas and images I didn't particularly want in my head in the first place come back and visit me when I'm trying to relax.

This is one of the reasons why I hate clicking on "hey, you should see this!" links that have no indication of what they are or what I'm going to see. Things that other people don't even notice (especially if they often watch the kind of things I avoid watching, like horror or violent films) can just leave me feeling creeped out or depressed for days.

I think people who know me well tend to share lighter, brighter things with me, because they know I don't like the dark stuff, but newer friends and acquaintances are always a bit of a minefield.

And I'm not sure it's necessarily "Horror" (as we think of it in terms of a genre) that does it for me so much as cruelty. I can read old-school ghost stories by the likes of Poe or James without drama. Zombies chasing people to eat their brains or vampires trying to seduce people before draining them dry? I can take it or leave it, depending on how it has been executed. But something where someone is being hurt or disfigured (by natural or supernatural beings)? Or forced by demonic powers to hurt or disfigure themselves? Nope. Nope nope nope.

And anything with really strong, visceral imagery is a big "no thank you!"

There's a theory (in a couple of schools of Buddhism, and probably some other faiths as well) that heaven and hell are where your head is at. When you are feeling swamped by negative and dark thoughts, then you start to spiral into a hellish state. I also think that what you put into your head through the media and images you consume contribute to this. How can you feel bright and happy when you are weighing yourself down with things dark and cruel? 

Or, as the old saying goes "garbage in, garbage out"... only the garbage tends to stick around for a while and mess up the place, in my experience. 

St Paul's advice to the Philippians - to find things that are lovely and admirable to dwell on - is sort of a basic survival tactic for me. I think lovely and admirable things come in all sorts of forms (often in genres that are looked down on as much as those that seem "nice" on the surface), but the one thing they have in common is they make you feel lighter after encountering them, not weighed down.

And certainly not horrified.