Aversion to Violence

[NoID10ts]

Do any of you ever get intensly bothered by a particular news story or word of a disturbing event? This has happened to me 3 times in the past week, and it bothers me profoundly, but I am not quite sure why.

Ever since I was young, I have had a stong aversion to real life violence (movie violence doesn't bother me at all). I remember in school seeing fights break out and feeling sick to my stomach over seeing it. I was clearly odd because everyone else would run over to watch like it was some sort of sporting event. They would all laugh and discuss it throughout the day, like it was all so great, but I just felt disturbed by it.

Last week, I came across this news article on INTPc about this murder that took place on a bus in Canada, and it really bothered me. It's like I can envision myself being there, and experiencing it so intensly that it is overwhelming, almost traumatizing. Every imagined detail goes through my mind, the violence, the blood, the faces of the witnesses. I don't know how to stop my mind from being hijacked by it, like my mind's eye can circumvent my physical eyes.

I also recieved an email from an old friend (facebook ). Two of his six children were burned to death in a fire. I read this news article about it and its just overwhelming. I keep envisioning them dying, their bodies being found, and my friends at the gravesite. It's like an assault on my senses.

The third one was this video I came across through google of this guy being beheaded by these Jidad fuckers. I don't think my mind has been right sense. It may have even played a role in my uncharachteristic drinking spree Saturday night. I keep hearing his screams and its just sickening. I wish to the flying spaghetti monster that I'd never watched it.

Is anyone else troubled by certain things like this, or am I even freakier than you imagined? The thing is, I guess I can't really define the emotion that I feel. I don't cry and don't feel inclined to, its not necessarily sadness. It's a sense of disgust, of hatred almost, a mad at the world reaction. Just curious to know if I am alone in this. I don't see other people reacting this way.

 

[Dissident]

The other day my sister showed me like it was an awesome thing one of those fucking chain mails (I hate them), "you gotta see this", it was a powerpoint slideshow with images of car accidents that showed the mutilated passengers in high fucking definition (I will spare you the details). I wonder what do they have in their minds when after seeing something SO unpleasant the first thing they think is "I want to share this with everyone I know!!" People are sick.

PS: My sister is 37

Vicarious - Tool

 

[FusionKnight]

The beheading crap freaked me out too. I was intensely curious about it, but when I actually found a video, I felt nauseated, and my INTPness couldn't just let it go. It bothered me for weeks.

 

[Snail]

I can relate perfectly, but I'm an INFP. That sort of thing is expected. I can't even stand certain kinds of movie violence. Anything real is only more intense, because my mind fills in the details with horrible clarity, including the way I think it would impact me emotionally to be in the situation.

 

[NoID10ts]

It's strange because movie violence very rarely bother me, unless it happens suddenly or is realistic enough to trigger my imagination and cause me to begin extrapolating what it would actually be like. I instinctivly know its latex and fake blood and acting, etc. so I'm not phased by it. Plus, there was a time when I wanted to do make up effects for the movie industry, so I know the tricks of the trade.

But the real thing is just too much. It makes me feel raw and terrified of life in a way.

I'm such a nutcase.

 

[Sarafin86]

for me reading about violence doesn't really affect me like it does you but seeing it does. i can't stand some scenes that are too real. because later it gets into my head and when i let my mental guard down my brain will bring it back up with gory detail.
i love the story for Saw but i can barely watch it.

 

[Ermine]

I've got a vivid imagination, so I'm best off keeping away from graphic news stories. Movie violence doesn't bother me though.

However, the headlines mainly bother me for extended periods of time because I realize the ideological meaning that most people don't seem to detect or care about.

 

[Chimera]

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I think I cover my mind's eye to most violence. The few things that slip through the cracks of the blindfold leave scars. ​

In my imagination, I view the violence from many different angles. I slip into the psyche of a witness and see a person mutilated right in front of me, hear their screams or their ragged breathing as they grapple for their life. From there I switch to the perspective of the one causing the violence, if possible (obviously I can't if it's car vs. tree.) If it was intended, what made them commit such an act? What was on their mind? Did they enjoy seeing the victim writhe, did they lust for the taste of pain? Were the screams beautiful music? Years later, will they remember the victim's face? Will it haunt them and shadow over every thought? And then I move on to the people who know the victim, friends and family. That one is easy enough to imagine. Finally, if I can bear it, I shift to the victim's perspective. Fear, helplessness, hopelessness, pain...the pain is the easiest thing to imagine and the hardest to deal with. Before I've even begun to focus on it, there are phantom pains all over my body, and they don't go away for hours. ​

On top of all this perspective switching, which I do more or less subconsciously, I have a small sense of mourning for this person I never knew. (This only happens if the person dies.) I grieve for their families and friends, the people who are devastated from the loss. I imagine how they recieve the news, how they react, can almost hear their sobbing. Of course then everything switches around, and all of a sudden I'm imagining the cries of my own family if something like that were to happen to me. ​

It's all a big mess...but only certain things trigger this reaction. Usually I feel a fleeting sense of sorrow for the victim, disgust for the instigator, regret for the family. And maybe one out of fifty stories or events I hear about cause the reaction described above. Movie violence doesn't bother me at all.​

If I actually witness the thing, rather than hear about it on the news or something, I would be trying to figure out how I could help. I've only been witness to something minor violence-wise, and that was years ago. All I remember now was that for weeks their faces and voices were branded into my mind.
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[NoID10ts]

^ I think you described it much better than me. That's exactly how I percieve it. I wonder if this is true for all types, or if it is an INTP thing or maybe even an NP thing. The reason I don't think it carries over to all types is that so many people seem to relish in it.

Just imagine the public executions and punishments going on in the Middle East. What about the coliseums of ancient Rome? People seem to have a bloodlust that I don't understand.

Fiction is one thing. But real life violence is tough to handle.

 

[Kidege]

I feel for you people.

If I'm a spectator, I thankfully remain a spectator. It's more like being a ghost. The emotional void has its uses.

I do avoind gore and terror movies. If I watched a terror movie I'd be one of those people who talk the entire time in order to gain distance. Gore is yucky. If there's a pic of burnt or mutilated people I fold the paper so I don't see it. But it's more an aesthetical reaction.

However, two days ago there was a picture of severed heads (a mutiny in Guatemala). Some were on the ground, and I went "ugh. don't want to see". But one of them was on a stake, and to my big surprise, there was no "ugh". It seemed almost normal. As if heads lying on the ground were messy and disruptive, but on a stake they were orderly.

So while I avoid violence, it's as if a part of me, somewhere, somehow, could be very clinical about it.

You know what? I envy you people.

 

[NoID10ts]

For me, its not the gore and blood that bothers me. It's what lies beyond the event that can be so devastating. The victims, the perpertrators, the families, the witnesses, and their experiences of it. It's like I can't help but see it all through their eyes. It's the sheer gravity of the whole event that is so troubling. It's like a black hole pulling everything into it.

When I was in seminary in Fort Worth, TX this gunman opened fire at Wedgewood Baptist Church, killing 7 including himself. My wife and I almost joined that church just a few months before the shooting. A guy in one of my classes was killed and several people in the same class were there that night. I remember their stories of what happened. The whole thing was unbelievable to me. I lived it out in my mind from every conceivable position. It was like I was paralyzed for a while.

My reactions to these things have always been a curiosity for me. I don't quite know why I react this way.

 

[Chimera]

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NoID:
Maybe our reactions are caused by our ability to analyze/theorize? I guess it's our subconscious response to most everything, but we never really have a problem with it 'cause it's usually detatched from emotion. But imagining how other people percieve an act of violence is a whole different matter, 'cause there are are so many different emotions and feelings and blah that assault our senses all at once. ​

Most people probably are focused on the "here and now" of the violence. They see the blood or the pain or the injustice of it all. Maybe they're even one of the people who would be cheering at a Roman colliseum. Maybe since that stuff doesn't phase us as much (I for one am not bothered by blood in the slightest), we automatically focus on other factors of the violence, such as the effects on the people connected to it. I don't know if this is an INTP trait or not, but whenever I'm presented with something that has an obvious answer, I completely miss it 'cause my mind automatically skips over obvious things and tries to dig deeper.
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[Agent Intellect]

violence, even in real life, doesn't bother me that much. and that bothers me a lot, because i know i should be bothered, but i'm not. i'm not the type that laughs when i hear about someone dying or anything, i really have no emotional response to it. i've even seen those beheading videos you were talking about (along with videos of people being quartered) and while i found it disgusing, it had no lasting affect on me, as far as thinking about it for days or anything like that. perhaps i'm the one with something wrong with them

 

[eudemonia]

I am not that sensitive to violence either. In fact my reactions are a bit confusing. I suppose my overwhelming reaction to violence is anger which then acts as a spur to rather violent reactions on my part. I could genuinely see myself joining a guerilla organisation. If I were a peasant in Guatemala who had seen my family killed by death squads I would fight back and have no qualms about killing people (I think). When American troops bombed the three Palestinian families on a beach about a year ago, killing innocent children and whole families, my response was intense anger and hate. Not empathy with relatives or those affected by it. Oh and I am not proud of that response either - I know it contributes towards the problem.

I will never forget reading a book on the training of death squads in central America. They described a particular torture and it was so horrific that it changed me. From that day on, I feel I lost a bit of hope. That incident, together with watching the film Salvador, made me cynical about human beings and I stopped getting involved in 3rd world politics from then on. What's really scary is that I think I stopped caring.

I have mentioned before that I also believe in evil as a force - that resides in human beings but a force nevertheless. I think you see it in sadism. In the torture and murder of children for pleasure - in those Jersey childrens homes, in Belgium and also in William Burrough Naked Lunch. A picture in the book of a man wandering through a hall decorated with the bodies of dead and dying boys hanging from rafters all designed to provoke sexual pleasure, will never leave me. My response to violence like this is fear - and it is fear about what lies in men's souls that haunts me. It is about potential rather than what has actually happened. Random violence I can 'understand' - triggered by emotions or insanity; but when violence is coldly planned and executed for sexual pleasure - that is terrfying.

 

[loveofreason]

I'm in tune with the OP.

I actually stopped reading papers, watching news etc because I simply couldn't stomach the dependence of the masses on vicarious pain and my own heightened responses to certain things. My imagination works too well thankyou very much.

It's very difficult, sometimes impossible not to transplant oneself right into the event, through various perspectives as Chimera has already noted. And I'm just disgusted with the whole 'media circus'; the way people feed off the misery of others.

It must serve a function - must be some kind of social glue. Surely it's an Fe thing?

 

[Fleur]

Violence doesn`t leave a great effect to me either, and basically it doesn`t matter if it`s fiction or real life `cause I can get disturbed by novel and be completely indifferent about real life action. But, even there`s any affect to my emotions, I, like Agent Intellect, tend to forget about it soon. My repulsion fades away as quickly as it cames.

In fact, I have got in some fights myself but, luckily, they weren`t too serious (still, after the whole action I couldn`t understand my reasons of getting involved - I kept on developing different scenarious in my mind a` la "if I had a chance to get back on time and revert my deeds"). I`ve always prefered a verbal problem solving over the physical.

However I`ve never understood how people can feel amused by watching a pain of the others. It seems to be sort of unnatural to me.

 

[NoID10ts]

Now, I'm curious to know if this attribute relates to creativity. For those of you who aren't really bothered by it, do you consider yourselves very creative and visionary, not creative, somewhere in between? How about those of you who are affected by it. I am very creative, my mind just runs wild, so I'm curious if this is a component in it.

I must study you, my guinea pigs.

 

[Jordan~]

I close my eyes at most violence. Anything that breaks the skin makes me feel nauseous. I can remain pretty emotionally distant, but I don't like seeing it. I don't like thinking about it, either, but I can easily avoid thinking about it. Violence against animals, however, infuriates me. It stays in my mind, it breaks down that INTP emotional dam. I have a lot more empathy for other animals than I do for humans, for some reason.

 

[eudemonia]

I don't consider myself creative and I am not that affected by violence - apart from what I said above. I am more affected by what I consider to be injustice and believe I would adopt violence to fight it. At school I did.

 

[Agent Intellect]

i don't know about creative really. i have an incredibly (almost irresponsibly) vivid imagination, but i have a difficult time creating things out of it. i'm constantly making up characters and stories i'd like to write (but usually don't get around to it) and imagining how great it would be for such-and-such to happen.

and yet, i don't have a very big aversion to violence. at least not watching or hearing about it (in real life or in fiction), but i don't think i'd have it in me to shoot someone, and i really don't think i could go through with stabbing someone. i think the most grossed out i've ever been (besides those beheading and quartering videos) was watching a show on the history channel about Vlad Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) about how he impaled people (i won't go into the lurid details). and even then, i wasn't horribly affected by it, and i didn't even change the channel.

 

[Kidege]

^ What he said. Making up stories: easy.

 

[Fleur]

About the creativity: more or less same situation as for persons above.
Making up stories is easy thing for me (with condition that I`m not forced to do it - if so, then my mind is simply refusing to work out an idea), I draw too and sometimes my imagination may go out of limits.

Actually I just remembered one interestingly pathologic detail about myself. I`m living in countryside, so when I was child, I had to experience a pig slaughtering but my reaction never was "poor little piggy" and tears in my eyes, it was more like "Is this red thing a heart?" I`m not sure what it stands for - curiousity or some kind of maniacal issues.

 

[Snail]

One of the things that makes me panic when I have to see something violent is the idea of intentional harm. My only real defense is expressing pain, and if that doesn't stop someone, I am doomed. Therefore, when someone is capable of going past that point, harming someone who is showing obvious signs of suffering, I can't take it. I identify with the victim and feel helpless and afraid. If talking or crying cannot invoke mercy, then I can't imagine a way out of the situation that is still in line with my personal values and natural methods of resolution. I have a horrible fear of merciless people.

 

[Dissident]

Depending on people's mercy is a bad idea. Kicking their ass should always be an option

 

[Auburn]

One of the things that makes me panic when I have to see something violent is the idea of intentional harm. My only real defense is expressing pain, and if that doesn't stop someone, I am doomed. Therefore, when someone is capable of going past that point, harming someone who is showing obvious signs of suffering, I can't take it. I identify with the victim and feel helpless and afraid. If talking or crying cannot invoke mercy, then I can't imagine a way out of the situation that is still in line with my personal values and natural methods of resolution. I have a horrible fear of merciless people.

......why is it that whenever I picture an INFP in my head I always get this visual of a little pixie fairy???

Such rare and delicate specimen they are...

hmmm... *malevolent smile*

(Now where did I leave my pixie net?)

 

[Jennywocky]

Do any of you ever get intensly bothered by a particular news story or word of a disturbing event? This has happened to me 3 times in the past week, and it bothers me profoundly, but I am not quite sure why.

I don't have time to read the whole thread, I hope this fits with the rest.

I can handle just about any level of fictional violence (only the movie "Hostel" ever made me a bit ill, most movies I can handle just about anything).

Sometimes real-life violence, if extreme enough, can bypass my mental faculties and make my body ill all on its own.

About 12 years ago, a small plane crashed near my workplace, and a coworker had a friend on the EMT squad that handled the call. The person took pictures of the scene and I happened to see one of them. It was very odd, because mentally the picture did not bother me -- I could recognize most of the corpse, and the only odd thing was what looked like small slabs of meat laid out across shattered pieces of wood.

At least that was how my mind viewed it. Like chicken that I cook for dinner.

Then I started to get really nauseated, and I had trouble sleeping for a day or two. That was my first big time where my body reacted without my mind being engaged.

9/11 was another one, just because of the sheer emotional trauma involved. So that one was less visceral, but I still had trouble sleeping for days because I could not stop overidentifying with, imagining, and projecting myself into people in the planes and two towers.

Another incident that really bothered me was one where I saw a young woman stoned in the middle East, because she had married someone outside her religion. Her family lured her back home for something, and they betrayed her and dragged her out in the street, and threw large rocks on her. There was a large pol of blood on the street. Someone filmed the entire thing with their cell phone and the footage was posted online. I don't know why I watched it, except sheer curiosity coupled with horror... and it made me really really ill and very very angry.

I can't think of anything more Evil... and I was almost crying for that girl, because she was no doubt terrified and scared as she was being dragged through the crowd that was pushing her and abusing her and striking her and spitting on her... and feeling betrayed and knowing she was going to die, and she just sort of succumbed and let them finish her off.

Because I think just the thought that her family hated her that much to do that to her left her wondering what the point of living might be anyway; after being betrayed so horribly, maybe it is just easier to be dead.

But the sheer physical violence just sickened me and haunted me for days.

 

[Snail]

......why is it that whenever I picture an INFP in my head I always get this visual of a little pixie fairy???

Such rare and delicate specimen the are...

hmmm... *malevolent smile*

(Now where did I leave my pixie net?)

That is odd, because many of us do identify with little pixie fairies. Someone at another forum noticed how many INFPs had flying creatures in their avatars, and I am certain that I dress the way I do because I feel the lack of the wings that should be there. If you netted me, you would feel horrible and guilty until you released me, because I would let you see how sad I was and how harmless. I have the power to break your heart with a look.

As for the stoning story, it made me queasy just reading about the very idea of that. Again, it is because I am afraid of merciless people who lack compassion.

 

[Auburn]

If you netted me, you would feel horrible and guilty until you released me, because I would let you see how sad I was and how harmless. I have the power to break your heart with a look.

*Auburn snatches pixie Snail from the air and puts her in a magic inescapable glass jar*

​

*However, he refuses to look at her in fear of being succumb by her tender eyes, so he covers the jar with a cloth.*

*As he sits in his master chair at home reading an ancient book on pixie fairies from his extended library, he comes across an ancient text:* (roughly translated in English to say)

"As long as a pixie is nurtured fair - a pixie will live to ancient age. But beware. A pixie feeds not by morsel or bread, but by the kindness and love of people instead."


...oh sh#%...

 

[Snail]

*dies from emotional starvation* That's the danger of being an INTP's pet. The appeal to mercy is only effective on certain individuals within your type category, and even when it works, sometimes you just don't know how to be nurturing in a way that satisfies all of the complex needs of an INFP. I warned you not to capture me. Now you have to figure out what to do with an INFairyP's sad little corpse.

 

[Auburn]

*dies from emotional starvation* That's the danger of being an INTP's pet. The appeal to mercy is only effective on certain individuals within your type category, and even when it works, sometimes you just don't know how to be nurturing in a way that satisfies all of the complex needs of an INFP. I warned you not to capture me. Now you have to figure out what to do with an INFairyP's sad little corpse.

*feels a deep sinking feeling of guilt in his stomach*

*goes into denial, and frantically looks through his entire library for a spell or charm to bring her back!*

*looks and looks and looks but doesn't find anything. He keeps looking and looking until he collapses on the ground... numb...*

*slowly, very slowly... a tear begins to fall from Auburn's eye...*

 

[Kidege]

Sweet gentle Auburn reveals himself as a T.
Bring back the little fairy!

 

[Auburn]

*laying on the ground pitifully, he glances over at the jar. the sight of her death breaks his heart even further.*

*as he watches the little fairy he sees something odd. the fairy is crying also... and alive!*

At the brink of death, his tears had given her the love and care necessary for her to barely stay alive. Now the shock of having thought she was lost, and the relief to see her alive create a deep attachment in Auburn that wasn't there before.

As the pixie slowly recovers her strength, Auburn apologizes sincerely and offers to let her free, but having seen the love he has for her, she decides to stay just a little longer to fully recover...

 

[fullerene]

why would you go and make auburn cry like that? for shame...

there there, auburn... she can't hurt you any more now.

 

[Agent Intellect]

this thread is making me want to be violent for some reason.

 

[Snail]

Awwwww! *hugs to everyone who doesn't feel like committing acts of violence*

 

[loveofreason]

So I don't use my emotions the way an INFP does!

You've shed much light in your sharing, Snail. Thank you.

As for the creativity question...

I like to think that I'm creative, but am by no means convinced of it being so. I'm a good recycler of ideas.

 

[EditorOne]

"I remember in school seeing fights break out and feeling sick to my stomach over seeing it. "


That could be your genetically programmed "fight or flight" response flooding your system with adrenaline which, if you neither fight nor flee, has nothing to do but subsequently flood your system with unused glucose or whatever, producing nausea. That is, it might have nothing to do with your mind. Your body is still hardwired to respond to situations your mind might want to ignore.

I was a volunteer firefighter for 18 years and was involved in processing a lot of bad accidents. I learned that while most injury and death didn't bother me much, making me useful as the guy sent wriggling into the wreckage to see if the pinned passenger's foot was still attached and whatnot, I could not with diffidence handle situations involving hurt children, pre-teen kids especially. Still haven't figured it out.