Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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I did a foolish thing this evening. I rarely go to movies, but an older student of mine, a guy I've known at the college for 2 years, offered to see a movie at the mall. He meant well, but his movie choice was a big mistake for me.
I didn't even think about which one he chose. Big mistake. I won't identify it here because, first of all, someone here may like it, which is fine. I'm just speaking for myself. Second of all, I don't really want this thread to be a movie critic discussion. I just needed to vent about what a mistake I make seeing this movie at this time. It had scenes of child abuse, kidnapping, and torture.
I have CPTSD because I survived child abuse in my home. Then there was kidnapping, killing, and torture in my neighborhood in South America during the 6 years of the civil war in my neighborhood. I survived there from age 9 to 15, not to mention the dictatorship after. Just when I thought it was all over, I was tortured at age 15 myself.
I went back to South America this past July and confronted the places those things happened, emailing here to DS PTSD every day. It was very healing.
This movie was not healing. I didn't think to question my student about what we were going to see. I think his choice was trying to impress me about what a thinker he is, as it was about good and evil.
My issue with most of these movies is that they stir up my PTSD for little new insighted gained for me in return. I'm just someone who has survived abuse and trauma at the hands of evil doers as many here have. Speaking just for myself, though, movies about evil abuse still seem to fall into sensationalizing the violence only to give serve up cliches when it comes to any new wisdom about it. So I wish I hadn't gone to this movie tonight. My mistake. I don't get out much.
The real thing is much worse than they seem to gather. Abusers smile and get away with it and go to church and seem a lot more like nice people than these movie villains. And that's scarier than any movie villain to me. Seems to me that those who haven't had even touch them directly don't quite know. How could they?
My mistake. It'll take a while to get my ducks back in a row.
Has anybody else made this kind of mistake here?
I didn't even think about which one he chose. Big mistake. I won't identify it here because, first of all, someone here may like it, which is fine. I'm just speaking for myself. Second of all, I don't really want this thread to be a movie critic discussion. I just needed to vent about what a mistake I make seeing this movie at this time. It had scenes of child abuse, kidnapping, and torture.
I have CPTSD because I survived child abuse in my home. Then there was kidnapping, killing, and torture in my neighborhood in South America during the 6 years of the civil war in my neighborhood. I survived there from age 9 to 15, not to mention the dictatorship after. Just when I thought it was all over, I was tortured at age 15 myself.
I went back to South America this past July and confronted the places those things happened, emailing here to DS PTSD every day. It was very healing.
This movie was not healing. I didn't think to question my student about what we were going to see. I think his choice was trying to impress me about what a thinker he is, as it was about good and evil.
My issue with most of these movies is that they stir up my PTSD for little new insighted gained for me in return. I'm just someone who has survived abuse and trauma at the hands of evil doers as many here have. Speaking just for myself, though, movies about evil abuse still seem to fall into sensationalizing the violence only to give serve up cliches when it comes to any new wisdom about it. So I wish I hadn't gone to this movie tonight. My mistake. I don't get out much.
The real thing is much worse than they seem to gather. Abusers smile and get away with it and go to church and seem a lot more like nice people than these movie villains. And that's scarier than any movie villain to me. Seems to me that those who haven't had even touch them directly don't quite know. How could they?
My mistake. It'll take a while to get my ducks back in a row.
Has anybody else made this kind of mistake here?
I found that hopeless. There were no survivors who could function in the world and the implication seemed to be that there could be none.
My friend and I didn't talk about it because he is an adult with autism, and doesn't discuss things that way. His uncle was my student and introduced me to the family and we all went to the movies together. Then this fellow invited me to go on his own. He collects comic books and took us to superhero movies before, so I went to this one expecting more of the same. Lots of boom boom but harmless to me.
This time it got to me. So I came here to vent my feelings instead.
The theater was full. Lots of people will like it, and that doesn't rule many of us here out, either. I can see people taking it as a serious and thoughtful tragic film. After all, that was the case with the last movie that triggered me: Sophie's Choice. Sophie's Choice was an awesome movie but one that was about children in the Holocaust. It triggered my memories of childhood in the Dirty War in South America.
So I acknowledge my reaction as personal, which is why I didn't mention the title. It wouldn't be fair in a movie review to judge the movie based on my own PTSD past. A lot of people will enjoy the movie and find it thought provoking.
I sort of have a special relationship with media. Usually I am ok. It's complicated.
But there was an awareness film at school or two that sent me fleeing back to my dorm room to shut out the lights and hide under the covers to have my "episode."
When abuse is used as part of a plot in a really thought out way that makes sense and is more realistic as to how it works as an element, I am usually ok. But when it is just sensationalized for hollywood, that really bothers me.
I am often the one person in my group of friends that waves the "reality check" flag when things are portrayed in a disrespectful way to people's real struggles. I am not always liked for it.
i walked out of the theater within the first 10 minutes of pineapple express. i thought it would be some harmless stoner comedy, and instead it showed a very graphic head-shot murder right off the bat.
i was so angry. they actually did give my money back i was so irate.
I know you mentioned part of what got you is the treatment of the mentally ill. I'm wondering what you thought about Silver Linings Playbook.
Usually movies depicting mental illness don't freak me out. I actually really liked the Argentine movie "Man Facing Southeast" and even have the poster on the wall in my house.
I saw Stephen King's The Shining adapted to film with Jack Nicholson, too. I admit I laughed along with everybody else in the theater at the "heeeeere's Johnny!" moment.
I guess Sophie's Choice and this film got to me more because of the severe child abuse/child murder theme. Live and learn.