To be this shaken up over it?

[Flojobunny]

This is not a thread about a thread, I don't think, but someone linked a story on Sophie Hook (a girl who was kidnapped and murdered) and there was no warning and it was very graphic and I was physically sick and have been unusually traumatised and shakey today.
Does anyone else get like this? Am I losing my mind?
The James Bulger case is the one that if I think too much about I get quite ill over but this one has left me in tatters, I couldn't sleep last night and feel so shakey today.

What a stupid, fatuous comment. The passage of time doesn't make the details of a horrible crime like this less distressing.

Thankyou so much for all the supportive comments. I think I'm feeling over emotional generally at the moment. I am already under gynae team to have ovaries shut off and removed because I'm struggling with PMT related mood swings so maybe its all just culminated and reading that last night just hit breaking point. That's why I am so thankful for MN, as a single mum I don't really have anyone in RL to speak to.

I felt like that the time I was stupid enough to read the details of what happened to James Bulger. Every time it comes up in my mind I struggle to blank it out and I'm sure I took it a thousand times worse than I would have before having children. I can't even talk about it to my husband because I'd have to explain - this post is the only time I've acknowledged how much I have unwillingly dwelled on it.

Sometimes something just catches you particularly sharply for no good reason.

I was going to ask if you were hormonal at the moment as it sounds a very hormonal response in some ways. (Our first suspicion that I was pregnant this time was when I started sobbing at the early rounds of the X factor.)

I think the other problem is that you have identified with it with your dc. Dd was born 10 years - pretty much to the day - after James Bulger so I have struggled a bit with the 10 year anniversary and knowing that she is exactly the same age.

You somehow have to remind yourself that much as it is horrible it is not happening to your child. And focus on how thankful you are of that and so enjoy your child.

I've been deeply distressed over a story like that before. However I do have anxiety problems aswell and the little girl who was murdered was the exact same age as my baby daughter.

It helped me to actually talk about it and with time I stopped having such an emotional reaction to it.

I am the same as you OP, I think it's quite normal to feel like this when hearing awful stories about children. Things effect you more when you have children as you imagine if it was your child. You are a sensitive caring person, that's all

I break out in goose bumps if I hear The Little Drummer Boy-Brady and Hindley had it playing in the background while they tortured and murdered Lesley Anne Downey aged 10.
I doubt anyone who heard any of those tapes can hear that song without a massive reaction and it was 40+ years ago now.

Thankyou, it has helped to verbalise it and to know most parents feel similar.

The James Bulger case makes me feel sick too, it wrenches my guts to even think about it especially now I have young children myself.

I don't think YABU. From time to time, if I am feeling particularly sensitive, reading or hearing stories about children who have come to harm (James Bulger for example), deeply disturbs and upsets me, to the extent that it will play on my mind for a couple of days. It will make me feel very emotional and more anxious than usual. Then it is forgotten again. I am not always an anxious person, but if I am feeling a little bit fragile to start with, then I might be more deeply affected.