or, maybe not giving it up entirely and quitting cold-turkey so much as reducing the amount of it consumed. i'm a fan of horror stuff. i wasn't allowed to watch/read anything in the horror genre when i was younger, and then i watched The Ring at a friend's house when i was about 15, and i was hooked. well, sort of. i was actually pretty terrified, but as soon as i got home i looked up clips from it over and over and over. i didn't enjoy watching it, i felt sort of sick, but intrigued, and also like i was a huge wimp for being so scared and needed to toughen myself up. and now i'm a huge fan of horror stuff, totally love it. but i'm afraid it's not playing nice with my brainweird. i feel like it might not be such a problem if i could follow some of the restrictions i laid down for myself when i started consuming horror stuff more frequently: stuff that features certain themes (like kidnapping) super heavily or in graphic detail is out, max limit is two genuinely scary things a month, no watching right before bed or before taking a shower (showers r scary because the only thing worse than being murdered by a demon monster is being murdered by a demon monster while you are NAKED WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED BECAUSE YOU'RE TRYING TO WASH YOUR HAIR.) i did not end up sticking to these and now binge-consuming horror stuff is a daily thing. which, isn't a bad thing! i just suspect it may not be a good thing for me at this exact time. my imagination can get pretty active and i tend to sort of visualize things a lot, and sometimes that goes pretty bad. example: if i'm taking a shower, suddenly i have a thought of "what if i pull back the shower curtain and something is standing there." i can't pull back the shower curtain immediately because i am washing my hair and opening my eyes will mean getting soap in my eyes. so i get increasingly nervous vizualizing some hideous murderbeast outside my shower until i can safely pull back the curtain and look, and there is predictably nothing there. this will repeat about three times over the course of one shower. similar processes happen with walking down the hall in the dark, or looking out my window at night. there's been a noticeable increase in paranoia levels side by side with watching more horror stuff. it's gotten to where getting up early in the morning and walking downstairs in the dark, which i have to do because of my job, is panic attack material, and i have to set my alarm earlier to give myself extra time to panic, calm down, and prepare to walk into the scary dark hallway that definitely didn't used to scare me anywhere near this bad. i know the fault here isn't really on horror material so much as it is overactive brain and some paranoia, but i feel consuming a fuckton of horror stuff probably isn't helping, because it gives my brain things to visualize in detail with little to no effort. so...yeah. am i being really silly about this? is it silly to think giving up or reducing the amount of horror entertainment viewed, even just temporarily, will help at all? how do i get out of the habit of looking up horror whenever i'm bored, even when i know it will fuck me up? (posting from an anon account because it seems silly and petty and i am embarrassed.)
No, I don't think that's silly at all. But... I'm actually wondering if you've got the directionality backward. Did something stressful happen to you recently? Are you prone to depression or other mood issues? The fact that you can't stop yourself from binge-consuming horror sounds to me more like you're "self-medicating" for another issue, not like an addiction per-say. Horror is an emotional jolt that can be intoxicating when you're not feeling anything. And if you're under stress, it can turn an abstract, nonphysical fear like 'what if people I love get sick' into something concrete and physical, like 'WHAT IF AN AXE MURDERER BREAKS IN AND MURDERS EVERYONE'. I definitely did the latter when I had really bad PTSD symptoms in high school, and I blamed myself in pretty much the same way. Because I hadn't figured out yet that my nightmares and paranoia weren't caused by the horror-binging, they were caused by the PTSD, and my brain had latched onto 'zombie apocalypse' as a great metaphor for survivor's guilt.
You might try replacing it with another habit--pick a show to watch (steven universe is short and really fun!) or start reading something popcorn-y. Manga are great for this, so long as you're reading like...clamp campus detectives and not uzumaki or something. Or else when you start wanting to look up horror stuff do something that gives you a physical jolt in its place, like do ten sit ups or go for a short walk or eat something super spicy or wash your hands in super cold (or hot!) water. I definitely have the same results as you're describing here, though its not a problem self-limiting. But fwiw, yes the amping up paranoia is a thing that happens, yes thinking about something else nice helps, no you arent just being silly. If nothing else, following up watching horror with a half-hour of kitten videos or something that makes you feel warm-fuzzy will help mute the effect. Also if you find yourself getting paranoid like that? Put on the dumbest, most upbeat music youve got. Break out your guilty pleasures here--weird al is great, because no one was ever ax murdered to fucking polka are you kidding me.
this...is entire possible actually and i had not considered it at all. i already know i'm depressed as hell, and there's been a fairly sharp increase recently in amount of horror consumed/amount of paranoia that might match up with some pretty stressful shit--actually no that's not entirely true. i've had periods like this happen before, when i was less depressed and had less going on and i would look up a fuckton of horror, but it didn't used to affect me this way. buuuut then again that just kind of demostrates what you're saying, i think? that the paranoia is less a direct result of fictional horror than it is a result of life sucking. i have a huge list of stuff i need to start watching! i just need to actually. watch it, make an actual decision to watch it instead of horror stuff. i think part of the problem is that i tend to do most of my online stuff using a tablet, which uses a youtube app that gives me a lot of recommended videos on the sidebar. so even if i'm watching kitten videos there'll be trailers for horror movies on the side right there for me. watching stuff that i can't watch in the app might be a good idea, because horror stuff won't be as immediately accessible. also i need to try as hard as i can to be stricter about timing, because sometimes i watch horror stuff and then i don't have a whole lot of time to look at nice things to unpanick myself afterwards.
Could set a timer? Or if its youtube just make a rule that you get three vids a day, or two but you have to buy more by watching something else.
yeah, makes sense. i think a lot of this is less a not knowing what i need to do and more just a willpower thing. i need to set down rules for myself and then actually follow them.
