Processing Horror

[Hashi]

Please don't post any details of trauma/horror.
If anyone has thoughts or experiences they can share by talking in a general way, I'd really appreciate it.

Well, I suppose this is progress. After all this time of processing fear, fear and more fear, I seem to have moved on to another stage. Unfortunately this new stage seems to be to process horror. By which I mean the sick, evil aspects that feel (to me at least) that they come from some other realm. An almost supernatural fear, revulsion and disbelief.

In what I've done so far, I've always felt that the horror was something to be careful of approaching. Not because of avoidance but because of its nature.

I don't know if this will make sense to anyone else but my feeling is that horror isn't understandable. I can learn about shame in an intellectual way and see the dynamics of it. Even if it's hard to feel what I know, I can have an understanding of it. Horror is more like something I have to acknowledge and process without understanding.

I used to struggle against my inability to understand horror, because my approach to trauma work is to understand things, and especially to express them. Through metaphors, through art, through talking in therapy. In an attempt to do the same with horror, what came out of it for me was that I should be glad I can't understand it. It's beyond our understanding for a reason. To understand it would mean to have a consciousness that no-one would want to have.

At the same time, I have to process its effect on me. I've been talking in therapy about the most horror-filled thing and I actually got overwhelmed by how affected my mind is now by what happened then. My mind is so horribly messed up by it. I got into a really bad place. We've had to pause things. Both me and my therapist feel stuck at a point where I feel I can't continue with more processing and I feel I can't continue without doing more processing.

She's trying to guide me to the only thing which seems to be able to help me with this, which is beauty. In my case that's mostly visual art, and also music. I do feel like this is my only hope. I seem to be being led towards it, including dreaming about it. Last night I went to an art exhibition that a friend suggested. I didn't know much about the artist and had no particular expectations, but some of the paintings were astonishingly beautiful. I think they really were beautiful, other people were reacting to them that way, but I also felt like something was opened up in me to experience them the way I did.

I have no idea what this means for trauma work though. How do I use beauty to help me do processing? What does processing mean anyway, for something you can't go too near to and can't understand?

Obviously I'll be talking to my therapist about it, but I wondered if anyone had any thoughts.

 

[Lucycat]

Horror- an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust.

I had to Google the definition - as seen above.

In therapy I have looked at and identified various fears, some real some not. To me, shock is about 'surprise'. I don't like surprises as I find it takes away my sense of being in control, which is very important to me. Disgust is very subjective. What disgusts me does not seem to disgust others, so it can be hard to distinguish.

Putting these three together to come up with Horror is difficult. When you consider horror movies, it is clear that some people identify with horror and enjoy the intense emotions it causes. I don't! I don't like to feel fear - it is not so much avoidance as I can't see the point.

In therapy I have not looked specifically at horror. But think if I were asked, or wanted to do so I would probably break it down as above, to try and reduce its impact.

I don't suppose that is helpful in the least, but you have certainly made me think!

 

[shell]

I struggled to deal with the horror the my mother was sadistic, that she didn't just physically hurt me, she got pleasure from it.

My previous therapist tried to get me to talk about it, but I don't think that was some place I would ever go to, what does it ever achieve, because for me sometimes there is just no understanding. The only thing I could process was that the shame was not mine to carry anymore.

 

[Philippa]

I think the way art can help to heal through the beauty it can convey is that it takes your attention away from the focus on all the fear and revulsion and the things you cannot understand, and places it, and your energy, onto something that is easy to understand. Your emotions respond to beauty in a way that is almost instant, and it can penetrate through to your soul (if you believe in it's existence I guess.)

When I look at the paintings I create...like the one in my avatar for instance...they are soothing to me in a way, and I think that is what others derive from them as well. Art is healing. Painting is healing, but seeing a beautiful painting, even if it is just a pretty landscape, or something that does not require too much intellectual thought or analyzing, it draws you into it's world, and for a while you are there...and you benefit from that in a very positive way I think. It gives you pleasant memories...to counter act the horrifying stuff that you have no way of knowing how to understand, and shouldn't have to.

I wish you all the beauty in the world to soothe your mind and bring you back to a place of higher vibration and healing Hashi. You do deserve that.

 

[Flyaway]

Horror is a word I use to express my upbringing. I would also add 'unexpected' to the definition. We never knew when the fake front would crumble and the monster would emerge.

I haven't even come close to discussing all the horror I felt in counselling. I figure I just need to keep walking forward a bit at a time, and keep gathering strength. I'll deal with it when I'm ready to.

I hate horror movies too... I think some people like them because they feel empowered being able to turn it off- or something. Or maybe because it's just not real to them. But for me, it's just a trigger for PTSD - it's very real to me.

 

[franciemarnie]

I think that horror, the kind you are referring to, is as incomprehensible as beauty and it makes sense that beauty would be the antidote in processing or releasing it. I know that the one time I had a full blown experience in a visceral way of the horror, beyond the more ordinary banal forms, immersing myself in its opposite was the only way out.

I don't think we have to understand something to process it. And there are certain things we can't understand, that we aren't built to understand like we can say - physics, which can be intellectually understood though often with difficulty.

I think Einstein said something about the mystery of the universe being the source for everything beautiful. Some things just are a mystery although mystics probably can get more of an ineffable understanding of the beauty and the horror. I don't think we need to understand somethings to function, but can work with having a general idea, even if only in metaphor.

I think dealing in metaphors, in art and so on is the only way I know of to process some incomprehensible experiences. I think we can have mystical understandings of what we can't understand and it still works. I have had some positive experiences I can't put into words, particularly with music and nature that have been healing without understanding them and that didn't undermine the healing effect. It doesn't bother me that I couldn't know why. Maybe I will someday.

The only way I know to release the horror is thru stuff like somatic experiencing and art and spiritual experiences. Beyond that would be getting into a realm I hope I never need, which would be dealing with releasing evil. I know I dealt with that kind of evil in other people but I don't believe I have that particular affliction where it literally got into me and would have to be removed by specialists so to speak.

So I guess I'm saying it doesn't matter how immersing myself in and exposing myself to beauty or the good actually works, it just does.

Great post. Thought provoking.

 

[zaniara]

I don't have much to add, but I basically feel stuck in the same way, and everything you said about horror vs. shame feels true. I have never thought about it that way, so thank you so much for writing that. And thank you for writing about beauty.. Maybe that's true as well. In the horror there is no beauty.. Not as I see it any way. It's just so indescribably ugly somehow. It made me want to die- or rather cease to exist, because it sucked the life out of me. Or sucked me into it.. Not sure how to express that.

Sorry you're stuck too. I hope you find your way through it soon.

 

[DMerish]

In what I've done so far, I've always felt that the horror was something to be careful of approaching. Not because of avoidance but because of its nature.

Hi Hashi,

I agree with you, and with Franciemarie's reply above.

I stay away from things that have an element of horror. We're now approaching Halloween, and some TV commercials have characters in costumes that I find disturbing/unnecessary.

I think, in general, that most people have an aversion to sensory (sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and physical sensations) that are displeasing and, in general, gravitate more towards experiences that are pleasing to the senses. I think these propensities are the body's natural inclination to move more towards things that enrich one's being, and away from those things that could affect it negatively. I believe this also pertains to thoughts and emotions - listening to a particular piece of music or reading a book with psychological undertones can have a very melancholic affect.

I believe all impressions that come into us have an affect and, therefore, try to have beautiful impressions (of all sorts) prevail over less beautiful impressions or at least maintain a balance. The world is filled with beauty and horror. For me, it just seems that maintaining a balance between the types of impressions I expose myself to, or allowing myself more impressions of a "positive nature", helps me to be more peaceful and happy.

Drew

 

[Venusian]

Life is a series of opposites, we can't know angels without touching demons, we can't appreciate beauty without knowing ugly. For most people knowing horror can only be achieved by watching movies or reading books. To know only one is making that single extreme more normal in the balance of our life instead of putting it at the extreme end of our experience. Over the course of a lifetime extremes are rare and should be if we want to find peace and calm in our everyday life.

I think your therapist is right in helping guide you through the beauty that you can find in life because that puts the horror where it belongs, at the extreme end of your experience so that (hopefully) it in no longer part of everyday life.

 

[Jenfa]

If I didn't feel horrified at the the things I'm horrified at, I'd be worried. I think we feel that emotion for a very special reason. Instinct! I never used to factor in instinct as I always thought being a human, I didn't have any lmao. But seriously, that stage before fight or flight is something that if you didn't have, you would be.. well, horrified.