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Have you ever developed a PTSD only by watching a piece of fiction ?

Have you ever developed a PTSD not because you lived something traumatizing but because of a piece of fiction (movie, serie, book, etc...) ?

For me, it's the saga Final Destination, the first horrific saga i've ever watched, and will likely be the last.

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5 comments
  • So you were diagnosed by a doctor as having PTSD from watching a movie?

    That’s a new one

  • @Merlu i can’t say, but it’s possible, id think, given that to the brain, an event, a dream, a vivid daydream, and a movie are much the same. i can’t, for example, watch horror movies. if i do, i will have terrible nightmares. and i’m choose about what i watch (and read) in general, because for me, it’s like i’m living it. there are things that still evoke feeling from me 60 years later—that didn’t actually happen to me. (oh, and a lot of things did happen too, and i have ptsd, diagnosed, but i probably didn’t have it my whole life.)

    • oh, if you just mean “it horrified me and overwhelmed me emotionally” (vs actual clinical ptsd—i’m too literal sometimes, and i don’t know how to edit or delete on kbin yet so…) then for me, that would be a number of movies, but probably the worst would be blue velvet. dennis hopper’s portrayal of a homocidal maniac was just too, too much. i wish id never watched it.

      @Merlu

  • Not a formal diagnosis, but the curbstomping scene from American History X hit me hard, to the point of developing misophonia at particular scraping sounds that trigger an association with the imagined sensation of biting concrete. That was over 20 years ago, and I still get reactions ranging from goosebumps and discomfort to outright nausea.

    Nails on a chalkboard? No problem, come at me.
    Someone else brushing their teeth? Nope, leaving the room 'til you're done.

  • i dont know if it would be considered PTSD, but i saw one of the Child's Play movies ( i think it was 3) at way to young an age and the the scene where the nerdy kid sacrifices himself for the "cool kids" by diving on the grenade really messed me up for a long as time. still bums me out thinking about it as an adult.

  • The closest to it was watching Dahmer and getting to the part about the teenage boy because it was a fictionalized depiction of a real event. Despite knowing about what happened for years, there's something different about seeing it depicted on screen. It wrecked me for a while afterwards, and I stopped watching the show because how much it bothered me. It would have still bothered me if it was fiction, but probably not anywhere to the same level.