To ask you to help me get over something horrific I heard on the radio, I can’t stop thinking about it

[TeaCoffeeCakeGinWine]

One evening last week, I was listening to a programme on Radio 4. It featured a forensic pathologist who was talking about death. I joined it halfway through and it all seemed fairly innocuous and interesting enough listening while I was pottering in the kitchen.

Without warning, the woman started talking about some work she did out in Eastern Europe around 30 years ago, following a massacre involving women and children. She went into quite some detail about what happened and the work she had to do.

It was absolutely horrifying and I have found it incredibly upsetting in the week since. At the time I didn’t cry but the following evening I had a totally uncontrollable crying episode in front of my husband Ever since, it keeps coming into my head, very visibly. I can be fine and then suddenly there it is and I feel floored and devastated. I know it sounds like I’m being dramatic but it has affected me really badly, I can’t stop thinking about it and feel upset all the time. Please can anyone recommend any way I can work through this

I have a very sensitive nature and things I’ve heard/read over the years still stay with me, I once (stupidly) read a book about the medical experiments doctors and surgeons performed on Jewish children in the Second World War, that still haunts me. Bad things will always affect me greatly as I tend to over think but I just try concentrate on all the good people in the world and the good they do.

I remember watching "Threads" (nuclear war in Sheffield) when my kiddies were very small it terrified me for ages. Read about those boys in Thailand its one of the best heroic news stories for ages - about people joining together to help selflessly true heroism and team effort- that is the other side of human beings

madeleine thank you, I will look that up

I totally empathize with you and I've been the same at various times in my life. I do think being a parent heightens this. However the worst of mine happened from about age 11 to late 20s. When I was young it was POW camps.

As I've got older I've found it's more directed to "stories" of cruelty to animals. I am filled with a mixture of terror (at the thought of someone doing harm to my own pets) and rage.

There have been a few things on MN about animal cruelty that have deeply upset me.

really separate yourself from it.see it then as grieving for them not in the middle of it grieving for yourself mixed up in it.and allow it to come allow yourself to really feel for them.and say it "those poor people im so sorry for you."literally put your hand to your chest and say im sorry for those poor souls.but keep it them and you.
then use re-inforcment to turn it around and include you and say"how lucky I am to have people I love safe around me.im so lucky to have these people I love"
keep it them and you.let yourself feel for them.but don't become intwined in it.you didn't cause this.you could do anything about it.but feeling for them means you a lovely kind and compassionate soul.there is nothing wrong with it but you cant keep it on and make it your own because that wont help anyone.
and know that the familys of those in pain would feel so touched to no someone who doesn't no them has been holding them closely in their thoughts.

The only way to 'get over it' is to deliberately think of or do something nice to counter act it-I have learnt this from dealing with horrible stuff previously. It doesnt solve it, but does help.

Poor you.
I actively sought out books about things like this and the like when I was a teenager so read thousands of pages about them and it is interesting how some of us are upset and others not by this kind of thing.

We somehow need to help people be more resilient and able to cope with thinking about sad things but this has always been an issue. Even in in world war 1 there were similar issues.

Where I work, a lot of people have died (medical facility, it's ok!) and one of the staff told me she keeps emotion under control by remembering that the patient is not 'hers' to lose or grieve over, they belong to someone else. There are certain individuals who affect us - we often have known them for quite some time over several visits. We get sad when they die, have a quick 5 mins with tears, and then get on with those who are alive and needing us to help them right now.
Can you concentrate on those who need you now, who belong to you? That will be more help, if you can rationalise it, so you focus on the living, who you can help, not the dead, who - sadly - you can't.

I hope all this doesn't sound harsh. You are obviously a caring and empathetic person, which is lovely, until you let it weigh you down too far.
My first thought on reading your OP was that you should come and work with us, that would soon desensitise you!

I have to avoid things like that on the news and in the media. I even stop watching films if I think they're going to upset me. I've stopped thinking badly of myself for it, this is just the way I'm made.

Re this particular situation - you will get over it. I'd suggest deliberately replacing the thoughts about it with something else when they come into your head. It may feel wrong to deliberately put the suffering of other people out of your mind, but the way I've rationalised it is to realise that my unhappiness is just adding to the total of unhappiness in the world, without helping anyone.

Oh my, I watched a PETA video (could only watch about 5 minutes) of dogs being skinned alive in China. It haunted me for years. I even had nightmares of my DC being tortured. Even now, many years later, I can still see the images in my mind, and I feel the tears start.

Good luck OP, I hope you feel better soon.

Thank you so much for your replies, they are incredibly helpful.

kateandme thanks, I will try that. It’s good to have a practical strategy.

blue thanks as well, that’s anhelpful perspective.

I avoid, as best as I can, things like this as they haunt me but one of the best thought exercises I found to help when something like this overwhelms me is to ask myself is...

"Is this happening to those people now"?
"Are they suffering right now or is it over for them"?
"Is my grief helping them or am I just contributing to the overall suffering in the world by obsessing over their experience"?
"What can I do, if anything, to help lessen the suffering of people in their position"?

I've come to realise that whilst my emotional reaction is natural and just part of being a human being, to allow it to have a deleterious effect on my life is no use to anyone, especially those who suffer such horrific fates. It neither changes anything for them in the past, nor empowers me or anybody else to make positive changes for the future so I try and focus on the fact that it is over for them, however horrific it may have been, they are beyond it now and at peace.

Thank you dickTERFin these are all words I need to hear.

Well said, dickTERFin

I've had this with a few different things. You just have to push it away until time passes, the horror will pass x

I have been through the same fairly recently after coming across some information on Facebook regarding a child’s death. What happened to him was truly horrendous and i couldn’t stop thinking about him and his family and getting upset about it. Even now months later it pops in my head and I have a horrible sinking feeling but generally as time has passed I think about it less.
So rubbish some of the things that go on in the world.

I can empathise too. I sponsor peta and can never open the letters they send me, I just think about them for weeks after and I get so upset. I also can't stop thinking about that little girl who was recently murdered, every night I keep triple checking my windows are locked (even in this heat) as I'm worried someone will take my daughter. I think it might be anxiety related, some of us are more sensitive. If you can, just try and avoid news etc, it's always sad.

ohhhh op. you may never get over it as such.i think its partly a processing thing. i am guilty of being overly emotionally sensitive re;media reports,papers,books,first hand recounts...yet in real life i have developed(possibly as result of trauma)an ability to have no reaction relevant or otherwise. I did this exact reaction post info after watching ww2 footage.it was interesting as (poorly educated i guess) meant previously oblivious.thing is,the grieving is valid. you just need time to adjust to the non-sensicle in it all. x

It sounds like that could have been Professor Dame Sue Black as she has just published a book about her life as well as moving from Dundee University.

Having read the book, I can assure you that she was focused on justice for the individuals and their families, as well as giving them the respect and dignity that they deserved. I really don't know how she did it. The immense work that she put into identifying individuals in a family so that the only survivor could bury his family was incredible and meant the world to that man. While what was done to them was vile, she worked to return them their names and dignity. I don't know whether that would help to think about whenever you remember?

Oddly, I am OK with human forensics but cruelty to animals and abandoned animals haunt and affect me.

I have learnt to turn over / off very fast radio/media when something upsetting comes on. It's a finely tuned skill.

Paws, me too. l find l break my heart over them, it is so bad now my DH cuts anything out of the paper so l can't see it .

toomanypaws yes I think that was the woman I heard. They were asking her how she was able to do some of the work she does and this was the example she gave, about this massacre. She talked about everything you said, an absolutely incredible person. You are right, she did a wonderful thing for those poor people.

Sometimes, the things going on in the world seem all quite overwhelming. I’m going to crack on with a bit of meditation.

I wondered if it was Professor Sue Black as well. She did a lot of work in Kosovo, identifying victims in mass graves.

I had this over something I read years ago, to do with the treatment of Jewish children, after being separated from their parents by the nazis during WW1 . My dds were very small , which made it even harder. Years later I still wish I had never read it, as there is nothing I can do to help those long-ago children.
I understand how you feel op. Sometimes things happen , or have happened, that are very hard to bear, even with distance and time between us and the terrible event.