Desensitisation
Desensitisation: “to make emotionally insensitive or callous. specifically: to extinguish an emotional response (as of fear, anxiety, or guilt) to stimuli that formerly induced it.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
It is a thing that exists in this world with both positive and questionable outcomes, like so many other things, isn’t it?
I consider that I must expose myself to some situations, experiences, people, environments, sounds, tastes, sensations and textures (continue the list as suits you) to ensure they don’t disable me. Am I sensitive to many things? Oh yes. But any futile attempt at total non-exposure to them will only increase the sensitivity of my already sensitive sensitivities. Such an aim (if I carried it out) will cause me to be less able to function as will be necessary, if I’m going to live any kind of life, wouldn’t it? Because I’d be compounding the issue by non-exposure and my sensitivities would be even more disabling, wouldn’t they? I believe they would.
If I ruled out all exposure to everything that causes me emotional or physical or mental discomfort, the end point would surely be me going no-where, doing hardly anything, engaging with no-one, becoming more isolated and not really needing to ever buy clothing, wouldn’t it? And so, my appropriate exposure (those appropriate levels being set by me with the additional flexibility for any pre-set level to be altered at any given time on any given day as seems appropriate to me), helps me to desensitise myself a little. It means I develop a way of partially managing those things. By so doing, I can be in places or situations I would otherwise not be able to function in at all. Is there ever fallout? Sometimes. But the reality remains that some exposure to those things that overload me sensorarily (or in other ways), results in me finding ways to navigate more situations than I would have managed on any given day.
That kind of desensitisation is something I believe to be important and valuable and an aid to my life. Not that I should continually force-feed myself with everything that triggers me, I’m not saying that. However, I know myself well enough to know I need enough exposure to that which is not comfortable to enable me to access experiences in life that would be unavailable if I were led only by my sensitivities.
What about the other kind of desensitisation, though? The one where I would expose myself to visual imagery or sounds or storylines or other external stimulus that attack me in some way? As I mentioned in ‘Social Media’, I was staggered by how drained I was after just a brief encounter of being bombarded with so much content (which was also non-content in some ways) from such a variety of sources in a short time frame, having not engaged with social media at all for several years. I am sure that if I were to spend more time ‘in it’, I’d find ways of being less drained. I would desensitise myself via exposure. But do I want that to happen? I’m not so sure I do.
It's the same with TV. I am not even slightly comfortable with horror of any kind, nor shooting or fighting or spiteful ways of being between two human characters, nor am I comfortable with heads being chopped off (and the associated swooshing and cutting noise of the blade against the flesh – even writing it is unnerving…I am going to stop). But you get the idea, I expect. I don’t like looking at it or hearing it. It overloads my inner empath.
The thing is, it’s not just the shooting (but it also is ‘just’ the shooting), it is the fact that whoever was connected to the person who has just been shot has to now find a way of dealing with the loss of them (if they died) or the impact on their life (if they survive) and all of the emotional fallout in and around all of that. And that’s before we even get to the literal mess that now needs clearing up. Okay, to many humans, these characters are not real, it’s fiction and it doesn’t matter. But to me it is real (because it does happen) and there are consequences of such huge magnitude that I can’t even expose myself to the idea of them via the means of so-called entertainment on the tv or at the cinema or wherever else. These things really happen and the fallout of them is ridiculously huge.
It's not entertaining. For me, it’s not entertaining.
Yes, there are things I must cope with re my husband (find me a partner who isn’t in that boat…what boat? Oh, you know what I mean), but I guess one does have to feel for him in some ways. By the time I don’t want to watch any of the things I’ve already mentioned, plus anything with intentionally silly/immature humour, or anything with sex in it, or anything where there are relational complications, well, it doesn’t leave much. I managed Brooklyn 99 okay, and The Big Bang Theory, but other than that, it’s pretty much Only Connect, The Great British Bake-off and The Sewing Bee.
The thing is though, there is not a single cell in my being that wants to become desensitised to my sensitivities around the tv content, and I guess that’s just fine. In this house, we have a way of working with it, and he does get to see things he likes to watch for ‘entertainment’.
I guess I’ll just keep on adding to my own internal lists of those things I realise I do need to be at least partially desensitised towards for my own long term good (and for the good of those around me) and those things I can keep as sensitivities. I can jump between the two extremes. Yes. I can and undoubtedly will. I do a lot of jumping between extremes. Sometimes the gap is quite large.