Is anyone becoming more sensitive as they get older?

[WallabyWay]

I've always been sensitive but increasingly I've found myself avoiding more and more shows and films. I tried to watch the 1991 version of Cape Fear last night, which I knew was a disturbing movie, but I really couldn't bear to watch a woman being raped, tortured and terrorised in detail.

Does anyone else have the same problem?

Oh yes yes. I no longer watch the news. I read the papers though. I also don't watch anything with women or kids being tortured.

I recently rewatched that movie and fastforwarded quite a bit. It's a great movie. but tough to watch.

No I feel the opposite. Almost like a little numb from it all. Not that it doesn’t affect me but I don’t have such visceral reactions.

On the contrary, I feel much tougher.

That film….one of the scariest bits of it is how their marriage starts to implode and Juliet Lewis is trapped in a house with the tension of feuding patients and a stalking serial killer after them all.
Sorry….I realise this thread isn’t about Cape Fear.

@AllThatTwitters You make a very valid point.

And yes, I agree OP. I am much more averse to violence and cruelty, and also a lot more sentimental - crying at schmaltzy videos in a mortifying manner etc etc. I think that it’s part of realising your own mortality and how vulnerable we all are. On the plus side we get to stay up as late as we like 😀

I found the tension between the couple almost as unsettling as Cady's deeds.

Me too. I actually wonder now if it was because my parents had a lot of conflict and I totally got how the daughter was feeling!

Yes, I feel like this. I'm so sick of VAWG and TV/books that glamourise or fetishise it. I used to love a good thriller but I have no desire to read yet another book where a woman (or women) are killed violently by a man. I also don't watch or read anything where a child comes to harm after having my DS but I don't think that's hugely unusual. My DH is even more sensitive about that than me.

That sensitivity occurred when I became a mother, I balled my eyes put watching Interstella the other day but all round I'm far more cynical and my tolerance for BS recedes each year I get older.

No, less so.

Nope, definitely less so as I've got older

I’m the opposite. I was never exactly someone who cried over sad films, but life experience has definitely toughened me up a lot, and I have now become as cold, hard & cynical as they come.
I realised this when I caught myself laughing at one of those tear-jerking charity adverts with starving children or donkeys or whatever. Which is not something I’m at all proud of.

Yes I’m the same OP. Partly I’m more sensitive but partly I refuse to watch upsetting things anymore. When I was younger I felt I had to watch the latest horror, and would just passively sit through stuff even though it gave me nightmares but now I just refuse/ change the channel or walk out and don’t care what anyone else thinks! I’ve also stopped reading books half way through when they introduce something unnecessarily sad/ gruesome (for me the triggers are sexual violence/ kidnap/ animal cruelty/ child abuse). I think there’s enough upsetting things in real life so why voluntarily subject yourself to more in the name of entertainment?

Yes me. I feel scary / depressing / crime shows/films put ideas in my head that I would otherwise never think of