Panic Attacks from Horror Movies

[NotDarkYet]

Years ago, during high school, I saw a scary movie in the theater.  It caused a panic attack, and I developed subsequent panic attacks for about 2 months afterward.

 

Has anyone else had this sort of experience?

 

 

It was a truly horrific time in my life, and I had nobody to talk to about it.

 

 

From that day on, I can't watch scary movies.  They disturb me for days afterward.

 

 

 

 

 

[Lars]

I have also suffered from panic attacks, they're usually triggered soon after witnessing/participating in significant emotional conflict. Most of the symptoms can be managed by lying down and steady circular breathing. 

It could be our subconscious trying to inform us that we aren't living our values or that there exists an unacknowledged threat to future well-being. Even if we successfully change our present behavior, the past may have become internalized and thus difficult to shake.Psychological horror movies basically attempt to unearth adverse childhood experiences with metaphors in order to elicit terror. I consider the genre disgustingly exploitative.

 

When you suffer a panic attack, does it cause trembling and an escalating feeling of numbness around your extremities?

[hitbox]

Yeah, I think I know what you're saying. I looked up the definition of panic attack to be sure.

 

Gremlins (1984) used to really freak me out when I was about 8 years old. When I closed my eyes in the shower to shampoo my hair, I imagined that when I opened them, a gremlin would rip back the curtain and attack me. I was paranoid that everywhere, just beyond where I could see, there was a huge mass of murderous little creatures waiting for the moment when I wasn't watching.

 

I didn't ask my parents for help or my friends. What sort of worked was to make the gremlins silly. I imagined them being my friends and following me around the house.

 

I watched "The Descent" (2005) in my late twenties and it was exciting at first to feel that old terror come back to me. Then I had to turn off the tv and goto sleep. And it wasn't fun anymore.

 

I get this sometimes just spinning out of control of imagining terrors. I find it useful to get angry. And if I can, utter some sort of defiance. I know the terrifying monsters are not in the shadows but I don't really feel like I'm accepting that fact until I say, out loud, "Bring it on!"

[shirgall]

The cold-blooded murder of a bound and helpless prisoner in Braveheart really got to me. Very disturbing. Gore never really bothered me that much, but stark realism still does. I don't like shows like "Worst Traffic Accidents and Police Chases" either. I don't know how people can watch that.

[NotDarkYet]

Hitbox:  

 

When I say "panic attack" I don't mean 'scared' or 'creeped out'.  I mean massive dizzying rushes of adrenaline, feeling like you're dying, hyperventilation, loosing emotional control....numerous times a day.

 

And when I wasn't having a panic attack, I had a black mental fog due to the exhaustion.

 

Imagine every day the only thought you had was, "am I going to have another panic attack?!", while trying to pretend you're normal.

The cold-blooded murder of a bound and helpless prisoner in Braveheart really got to me. Very disturbing. Gore never really bothered me that much, but stark realism still does. I don't like shows like "Worst Traffic Accidents and Police Chases" either. I don't know how people can watch that.

 

Yes.  The realism is the darkest, somehow.  The movie that gave me a panic attack was Se7en, and that has a very starkly real feeling.

 

Recently I saw "The Act of Killing", a documentary about some war criminals, and that set me off (although I'm much better at managing my breathing and mind, so the panic attack didn't come back again)

[hitbox]

Yes, sorry, I don't think I fully appreciate what that's like.

[SamuelS]

hitbox, could you describe the physical sensations and emotional states you're referring to as panic attacks? I don't know how to use the term properly but I may experience something similar.

 

That braveheart scene really got to me too...the worst experience I've had in recent memory was watching the first few episodes of Breaking Bad, I was really empathizing with the main characters and they were making such horrendously bad decisions I started to feel quite ill, like I was about to vomit my heart out, my blood pressure spiked into stroke territory and my heart rate was around 140, it took an hour of focusing on my breathing to calm down...I don't know of that's a panic attack, but it was awful, and ssomething I've got to avoid if I don't want to have a stroke.

[hitbox]

SamuelS, sure I can. It was paralyzation. I didn't want to move but also I felt like I couldn't stay where I was. "They're coming for me and if I run, I'll just run into them!" There's no safety and I'm in great danger. I also remember feeling colder.

 

I would want to cry out for help but knew there was no threat. And that's where I think it falls off the rails of being a panic attack. I still had the ability to rationalize the situation.

 

Reading yours and threebobs descriptions is enlightening. Your reactions are more powerful to me than the movies themselves. I was just thinking that it seems like you should stay away from these kinds of movies but you can't always know what you're going to see. I can't imagine how tough a spot that is to be in.

[Lars]

Since panic attacks cause my heart to beat more noticeably (I have a distinct aversion to heart beats), it escalates toward a feeling of frantic faintness, hyperventilation, trembling deathly numbness as if I'm losing blood flow throughout my whole body, including facial muscles, so it becomes difficult to speak. The best course of action is to relax before it gets worse. At one point I needed someone to hold my icy-cold hand before it stopped.The first time I experienced it was seemingly out of nowhere in a university ethics class, caused a bit of a scene.Similar experiences?

[dsayers]

I do patrols alone, in a very large, dark, seemingly alive factory every night as well as other, similar scenarios less regularly. As such, I have to be very careful when it comes to thrillers/horror movies.

 

The first time I saw the original Paranormal Activity, I was alone in a hotel room with the lights off, movie playing on my laptop, laying down, drifting off. When the first night time scene came, I sort of "woke up" due to the sudden, conspicuous lack of any audio. I watched intently, knowing it was supposed to be a horror movie, to try and see what they were trying to show me. Nothing happened. The entire movie went on like this, escalating a bit here and there, but mostly in a peculiar (not scary) kind of way. Being that it was dark, I had no sense of time. All this combined, the ending literally came out of nowhere. I give credit to the movie since the ending would otherwise be mundane, but the pacing of the movie really made it quite horrifying to me. For a couple weeks afterwards, my patrols were coupled with a cold sensation and hair standing on the back of my neck as I couldn't shake the imagery from my mind.

 

More recently, I got my first taste of a true panic attack. I had begun to watch a movie called Banshee Chapter. I had to turn the movie off 10-15 minutes in because I knew I had already seen too much. For over a month afterwards, I would remember the imagery I saw and the way it made me feel and would have the same cold and hair standing up as before. But for the first few nights afterwards, I also had a near inability to breathe and I literally fled (abandoned my duties) in order to be able to calm down.

 

The irony here is that my job puts me in situations where I might very well go up against another person who would mean me bodily harm. While I've been in near misses and it's shaken me up something powerful, the thought of it in advance doesn't frighten me because I'm equipped to fight back. It's when my mind plays tricks on me and entertains notions of supernatural (despite understanding there's no such thing) that I can become frightened.