Well, that's never happened before...

...or at least not to this extent...my friend and I were watching the news at lunch and a breaking news story came on about a school shooting in Finland and almost immediately I started feeling sick and shaky and my heart rate went up and my friend looked around and said I'd gone really pale...freaked me out, I've never reacted that way in front of another person before! This wasn't accompanied by any memories, either, so it wasn't a flashback...don't know what it was. And I'm still feeling shaky now and it's about 2 hours later and I wish I could just crawl into bed and get away from it all but I need to eat and I need to study and I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow because there's TVs in the union and I won't be able to watch...this is ridiculous! I'm pathetic.

You're not pathetic! It's a built in physical thing as you didn't get closure from your own trauma. Think about all the people watching the TV in the US during 9/11/01 who still have troubles. Watching things on TV where you are "there" but not is not a good idea for anyone! I remember the Vietnam War and watching all that for the first time; war in one's living room is not a good idea. I don't even have a personal incident like you do and I get upset watching the news sometimes when they're doing up close nasty things I can't do anything about. I wouldn't feel like you have the problem, they shouldn't be showing that stuff on TV in the first place!

Thanks, Perna. Guess so...great. That's true, I don't like watching footage of that either and I wasn't anywhere near it! And watching footage of the Vietnam war wouldn't have been good either.

Thanks, but I guess they wouldn't show that stuff if people didn't want to see it... This wasn't even the actual story - it was just writing on the screen underneath whatever story it was they were talking about at the time. I hate to think how I would have reacted if they were actually talking about it. Which is why I'm really not looking forward to going to the union tomorrow, because they have TVs in the entrance that usually show the news, but we always go there in breaks and I don't want to have to stop my friends going there just because I'm not sure I can handle it...guess I'm just going to have to be careful where I look and hope they keep them muted!

There is a "morbid" fascination with stuff. But you don't have to share that. People watch Oprah and Dr. Phil, etc. for that reason, to see the people with problems that aren't them, etc. It's like snake charming I think :-) You can't look away if it's there. So I don't look. I don't like the way I feel about watching the news, there's nothing I can do about any of it. Yes I want to be "informed" but that happens anyway in this international/Internet world?