Good morning(?) interwebs,
So I'm writing this stream of consciousness style while sitting in bed at 3:30 in the morning because roughly an hour ago I listened to a creepy pasta story and wanting the benefit of actually sleeping without the cons of having to have my eyes closed or dreaming. In order to get myself more comfortable I have been watching a bunch of Ze Frank and TED talks, but this has only led me to hear my own thoughts in Ze's voice and phrasing. Not a terribly good sedative, but a great motivator to go blog.
I've been allergic to horror in pretty much all forms since I was a kid. I didn't go near it except when I saw pieces of it accidentally while tuning in for something else. And I wasn't even comfortable with the tame kids stuff, I was uncomfortable with "Goosebumps" and "Are you afraid of the dark?", the latter probably owing to the fact that I was, and still am. sort of. It mellows out most of the time, but when I've seen something that disturbed me, I find it comes roaring back and I need the lights to always be on around me. That and opening closed doors to dark places becomes a terrifying experience as I picture what might already be detecting me on the other side and preparing for an ambush in that first blind moment.
As I've gotten older though, It has become more manageable. Much like pain tolerance, the familiarity of the sensation and the perspective of more intense emotions allows me to ignore it more easily. I find myself remembering a comment by Susan Arendt about watching a lot of horror movies and playing horror games, and finding that over time, they had a sort of inoculating effect. Confronting horror through experiences that are intense, but ultimately safe. The mind gets used to these feelings and is therefore better to manage them in the real world.
And in relating this back to games, I thought about a classic game design skill: learning through analysis of your own emotions. It's tricky to do, since you need to thing about what you are feeling and why at the moment when you are feeling it, and you still have to have be feeling it at the same time. But if you can get good at it, it's a great way to study experiences in all forms and figure out what about them is compelling or off putting. And I find this has also been the technique by which I manage this fear. As I'm walking down the dark hallway, which I know is empty even though my mind keeps conjuring things to be in it, I am aware of my fear of the dark, the things my mind is conjuring and the physical sensations. And that helps me label them and put them in a box to study instead of feeling. There's a kind of distancing there, as if I am in fact in a horror movie, but my consciousness is outside sitting on the couch, watching it all on a screen and knowing it is a movie and not real.
The whole thing also reminded me of a conversation from earlier today. (or yesterday I guess.) One of my co-workers children was getting shot, and the nurse was surprised to see the child intensely, and calmly observing the shot rather than looking away or crying. Here to there seems to be a calming effect from observation. I think it's a combination of increased apparent control and distraction. Now that you are observing, you expect that sensations will soon be traveling to your brain and you will need to pay attention to them and make mental notes. This sort of observation and distraction can also bee seen on those unfortunate occasions when you need to remove a sliver from your skin with a needle. Not being a surgeon, I find i usually tear up the area of the skin with a lot of misses, but the experience doesn't feel anxious because I expect the pain, and as the source of the pain, I can stop damaging myself at anytime. On the whole, it's a far less distressing experience than having the same thing done to you by someone else.
I think I've gone on long enough with this, but before I go, I should probably explain why I am still awake and watching youtube videos this late. I left some personal project work to this point in the week, still hoping to sneak most of it in before friday when the global game jam starts. Then I realized this morning that my evening was already occupied by an event I'd almost forgotten about. When I got home, I still wanted to get it done, so I downed some tee to stay awake and got down to work, by which I mean watching youtube videos with the attention of working at some point. And then I came across the aforementioned pasta, and the rest I've told you.
This was fun, but I really need to get to bed. Good ni............
