Tag: sensitive

HSPs, Violence, and Guardians of the Galaxy

Marissa

Honestly I have no idea what to write about for today’s post. Guardians of the Galaxy, which I recently watched? The book I just read about HSPs? How much I hate the head cold that kept me from attending a friend’s wedding?

Let’s go with a combo of the first two. My sister talked our whole family into going with her to see Guardians of the Galaxy yesterday. After being … less than impressed with the trailers, I found that I actually enjoyed the film for the most part. I’d thought it would be the characters or humor or plot that I didn’t enjoy, but that that wasn’t what bothered me.

It was the violence. You expect a certain level of violence in a Marvel superhero film. But at least in The Avengers they were trying to minimize casualties and none of the main characters enjoys killing. The Guardians (spoiler warning) do save an entire planet, but there’s a lot of collateral damage in a mining colony that no one seems concerned about, and Rocket Raccoon, Drax, and Groot are all seen laughing or grinning while killing people. The deaths are played for audience laughs too, like when Groot grows a tree limb through about 5 bad guys and batters them around inside a spaceships corridor to kill them and their companions. I think Peter Quinn and I were the only ones in the theater not laughing.

Sensitive to violence

If you take Elaine Aron’s self-test for High Sensitivity, one of the questions is “True or False: I make a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows.”

When I first took the test, I answered “false.” I wouldn’t watch things with what I considered excessive violence, but I would watch the occasional Criminal Minds episode and I had seen too many R-rated movies to count on one hand (but just barely, and most in a film class at college). Even so, during our yearly re-watching of The Lord of the Rings, I’d leave the room for most of the Battle of Helm’s Deep and if I was watching Henry V on my own I hit the skip button for Agincourt.

Now I think I’d answer “true,” mostly because I’m becoming more aware of how violence affects me and I’ve stopped trying to pretend that it doesn’t. I had to stop watching Criminal Minds because the nightmares got too bad (and even after I quit, they came back after reading Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue). I wish I hadn’t seen X-Men: Days of Future Past in theaters because the battle scenes were so dark and raw. I’d still see it, but I’d have enjoyed it more on a smaller screen since I’m much more interested in character development than in impressive battle sequences. And now more recently, I find myself troubled by Guardians of the Galaxy.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who flinches when a character gets stabbed, punched, kicked, shot or otherwise maimed? That there’s other people who think even superhero movies could do with fewer explosions, mayhem, and destruction?

I suppose one solution would be to give up watching moves, but I’ll still go see Avengers: Age of Ultron for the same reason I let my sister talk me into seeing Guardians of the Galaxy. Marvel films are addictive. And hopefully in this one, there won’t be so much casual violence.

Empathic Feeling

Marissa

I realized Tuesday night when I was reading Fire by Kristin Cashore and crying into the bath water that I wasn’t crying because I felt sad a character had died. I was crying because someone in the book felt sad that this character had died. Once I thought about it, I realized that at least half of the times when fiction moves me to tears, it is in empathy with the characters rather than my own feelings being affected. In other words, I’m crying because the character is crying, not because of what moved the character to tears. Sometimes it is both (Ender’s Game, for example).

This feeling other people’s feelings (fictional and real) is something I didn’t have much of a grasp on until I discovered my Myers-Briggs type and started reading what other INFJs wrote about being overwhelmed with the emotions of others. Adding high sensitivity to the mix only heightens this (here is a wonderful article about Elaine Aaron’s research on the Highly Sensitive Person).

A Range of Empathy

The extent to which INFJs report feeling other people’s emotions range from an awareness of how others are reacting, to not being able to remember the last time you experienced a feeling that belonged only to you. “You feel it, I feel it,” an anonymous INFJ wrote. I may not be quite ready to claim my feeling of and for others reaches that extent, but I share her decision to try and avoid encountering strong negative emotions (e.g. a news story about child molestation, a film where a family is torn apart, real-life conflict) because of how overwhelming it is — emotionally as well as physically in terms of headaches and stomach pain.

Managing Feelings

In INFJ Coach’s series of blog posts on “10 Steps to an Amazing INFJ Life,” part two is “Manage Those Pesky Emotions.” Her article is mainly about dealing with our own emotions when they surface, but the comments point out that this is only part of the problem. One commenter named Jennie wrote that she asks herself,

“Is this my emotion that I’m feeling, or is it someone else’s emotion?’ Many of us INFJs are emotional sponges for the emotions that other people are feeling. Our NF gives us a very high degree of empathy, but sometimes taking on other people’s emotions can be too much to handle.

The other side to this is what INFJ writer Cheryl Florus points out in Personality Junkie’s INFJ Strategies for Dealing with Emotions: Part I. Because an INFJ’s feeling is extroverted, we often have an easier time understanding the emotions of other people than our own emotions (for more on function stacks, see this post). We feel emotions strongly, but need to make an effort to learn how to experience and express them in a way that doesn’t seem overwhelming or uncontrolled. Often, writing down or talking about our emotions is a way to get them outside us so we can look at them more objectively (I keep a journal and talk to my closest family members). Sometimes, until I’ve done this, I’m not exactly sure what it is I’m feeling, let alone how it should be expressed and dealt with.

What about you? Are you an INFJ with experience feeling other people’s feelings (or a non-INFJ who does the same thing, because I’d love to hear from you)? Or are you someone who has never had this happen and thinks we’re crazy?

More Favorite Quotes

Marissa

More Favorite Quotes from marissabaker.wordpress.comI was hoping to write a somewhat lengthy post today, but found I ran out of time to finish it. I didn’t want to just skip posting today, though, so I thought I’d share a few of my favorite quotes which were not yet listed on my Quotes page. These are all one’s I came across for the first time on Pinterest. I’d read several of Hans Christian Anderson’s writings before, however, and he is an author I like.

“Every person’s life is a fairy tale written by God’s fingers” — Hans Christian Anderson

This next quote is by Kurt Vonnegut, and I’m afraid I must confess I’ve never read any of his books. I like this quote, though, so I’ve included it here.

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” — Kurt Vonnegut

I was determined not to become a Tom Hiddleston fan and join the ranks of the crazy Loki fangirls. Then I started reading quotes from him (like these two), seeing interviews, and learning about his work helping children. I can admire a guy who likes kids, respects women, values humility, and describes his apartment as wall-to-wall bookshelves.

More Favorite Quotes from marissabaker.wordpress.com

“Stay hungry; stay young; stay foolish; stay curious. And, above all, stay humble because just when you think you’ve got all the answers, is the moment when some bitter twist of fate in the universe will remind you that you very much don’t” — Tom Hiddleston.

“This generation has lost the true meaning of romance. There are so many songs that disrespect women. You can’t treat the woman you love as a piece of meat. You should treat your love like a princess. Give her love songs, something with real meaning. Maybe I’m old fashioned but to respect the woman you love should be a priority” — Tom Hiddleston