I Do Believe I Had The Vapors

[bloodyrosemccoy]

"Have a Bad Day" Day
Birthday - President James Garfield (12th President)
Pasadena Doo Dah Parade (Calif)
Discovery Day (Puerto Rico)
National Holiday (Monaco)
Volkstrauertag (Germany)

 

Right, so here’s an odd question for you: if somebody else starts hyperventilating—even on TV—do you ever react by hyperventilating along with them? I tell you, I’d make a lousy doctor: if I got an emergency room patient in with like an asthma attack or a panic attack, I’d probably pass out before I could do anything useful, because I’d sync up my breathing with theirs.

 

Trouble is, this also happens once in a great while with more dreadful things in movies. I panicked during the first scene in Jaws, which is fairly innocuous as far as horrible deaths go but which features the character doing this weird wheezy gaspy screamy thing when she is getting gnawed on that just had me freaking out.* A few weeks ago in class my sadistic Anthropology and Popular Culture teacher showed us a dryish documentary narrated by a British guy that monotonously explained why MTV video women are not good role models, and then for reasons unexplained segued into that infamous gang rape scene from The Accused that required major counselling for all the actors involved.  I sort of synced up my breathing with Jodie Foster shrieking at that point and lost track of the point of the documentary.

 

Tonight I nearly passed out while I was, in fact, not watching Hostel.

 

Josh and Liz were watching it.  I was sitting on the couch reading Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids because I’d sworn to spend at least a little time enjoying it this weekend, and I had earplugs in so’s I wouldn’t get distracted by the basic premise of the movie, which appeared to be: Tits!  Tits! Tits!  Slow deaths involving power tools! Periodically I’d glance up and make a comment about the action, but mostly I was interested in Pratchett, and then this girl started screaming right through my earplugs.  I’m not sure what was up with her except that involved losing an eye** and excruciating amounts of screaming, and I only realized I’d matched my breathing to hers when spots started dancing in front of my eyes.

 

“I think I’m gonna faint,” I said.

 

Neither of the other seemed unduly interested, so I got up, deliberately lurched around the coffee table, lay down on the floor, raised my feet for a moment, and tried to stop breathing like I had just been assailed with chainsaws and blowtorches.

 

It’s always a little embarrassing when I do that. I’ve passed out totally before a few times,*** and I think they were all justifiable.  Also, I suspect it runs in the family. But still, it’s such a pansy thing to do.

 

Also you have to go change your damn shirt, because another fun aspect of a vasovagal reaction is clamminess. As if I don’t have to put up with that enough.

 

 

*And my dad, who is not in the running for Captain Sympathy, refused to turn down the volume.

 

**Not of itself a particularly faintworthy notion for somebody whose favorite childhood games included Go Get Pa In The Field Because I Just Dropped The Scissors Into The Baby’s Eye.  No, I am not making this up. Once I argued with my brother over who could drop the scissors on the baby doll.

 

***There was the incident in the shower, the incident with the brain surgery, and the incident where I was six and goddamn flew out the back of a suburban in the middle of a rollover car crash.  I do not recommend passing out in a shower or in an operating room, but I sometimes wonder if the loss of consciousness is what saved my life in that car crash, since doubtless I would have been tenser if I was awake when I hit the ground.

Comments

[chibicharibdys.livejournal.com]

Ick. Hostel. Slasher/horror movies makes me queasy.

[viizou.livejournal.com]

The mere trailers and clips for Hostel made me uncomfortable. And eyeball-related gore scenes send me into panic-mode.

I do react somewhat physically to scenes of violence in reality, on film or video. This morning, I watched that video you linked to concerning the library tasler incident (which is an outrage), and I felt nauseous. But my reactions are definetely not comparable to yours.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

When I was 13 and I'd hear a tree being cut down with a chainsaw it used to make me feel almost like I was being sawed in half myself. And when a real person is hyperventilating next to me, yes, I often start reacting the same way, which makes me a poor anchor for the person who needs me. And who sometimes gets panic attacks as a result of mine too.

I could never watch most movies with gore in them as a child because I'd always identify with the person suffering. This has changed a little about a few things since then - I enjoy Mortal Kombat and Kill Bill and Ninja Scroll and all that - but a few specific kinds of scenes still get me where I'm soft and squishy. Explosions from the inside, violence to animals, things having to do with bones or internal organs, any kind of sexual violence.

I start seeing spots, getting light-headed and wobbly on a semi-daily basis and I've fainted a few times because I stood up too quick, was too hot or "forgot" to breathe for too long (I was sitting or standing when it happened, at that), but not over the kind of thing you describe, as squeamish as I used to be and still am for some things.