Rec | FINALLY READING THE BELL JAR

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i’m on chapter 3 and it’s tame so far, although i do find myself already relating. should i be scared? should i be in a good mental state while reading this? will i be in a worse one after? any comments or concerns are appreciated.

@havagreatday

1d ago

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@mattshawsome

I reread it last year and it made me love life more.

20h ago

@FFH

you will definitely be in a worse mental state after. personally i read it when i was in a good mental state and it put me in a little bit of a funk. if i got to do it over i'd read it in a bad mental state, but whether you think that's good for you or not is very personal

1d ago

@dani_z_baybee

I’ve had this on my nightstand for weeks debating all of the same things!

1d ago

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@luckystar

Feb 5, 2024

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Finding comfort in a movie that matches your anxiety

I’m not sure how old I was when my family rented Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” but I never forgot certain images from it: crows gathering on the playground; seagulls blotting out the blue sky over a children’s birthday party; a farmer staring straight into the camera lens (straight at me) through bloody spaces where his eyes should have been. It was probably somewhere around the attack on the schoolchildren that I left the room, and I never returned to finish The Birds until this year, following a trip up to Bodega Bay, where the film is set (only about an hour or so from where I now live). Bodega Bay seems proud of its legacy as the backdrop of this enduring story of avian mayhem. And there was a certain charm to the place that made the idea of The Birds seem more whimsical than terrifying. So, I decided it was probably time to finish what I started all those years ago. Two things surprised me: The first was how a movie with such a ridiculous premise, one that is so easy to mock and seems ripe for parody, still delivers a palpable feeling of uncanny dread. And second, what a near perfect representation this film is of certain feelings I’ve had in the year since I arrived in northern California. I recently began having anxiety attacks for the first time in nearly fifteen years. My struggles with anxiety and depression were a more immediate presence in my life when I was young, but with time and support and insight, their looming presence has lessened. The circumstances and pressures that caused these forces to return with such immediacy into my life is not the point of this post. What I want to get at here is something that is known by many fans of horror films, but might seem strange to those who steer clear of them altogether, and ask questions like “why the hell would you decide to scare yourself when life is frightening enough already?” It’s a good question, and one that I think takes more than one person to adequately answer, but for my part - at this moment in my life when panic and fear seem closer at hand, and my ability to control them feels too often outmatched - it can be truly comforting to recognize my emotional and psychological experiences within a piece of art. As someone familiar with anxiety as both a steady presence and a sudden consuming one, I find it calming to watch those same sensations unfold on a screen in the elevated scenarios of genre fiction. I can turn to psychology and therapy and neuroscience to better understand these feelings, but horror, when done well (and hell even when done charmingly poorly), offers scale models of these experiences, safe and even entertaining ways to engage with them, and in so doing, lessen the threat they pose. There are many layers to the appeal of horror, but to see certain heightened feelings reflected back at you is certainly one of them. They can tell you, now and then and in indirect and fantastic and even silly terms, that you are not the only one who feels this way. More in my substack “Angle On”

@withnickotte

Oct 25, 2024

🫂

Short answer- yes

long answer- you’re not alone. and if your fears persist and impact your ability to try to live a meaningful life, I would really suggest talking to someone about it like a friend or a therapist. i say this a lot and I’m not even much of a Dune fan but— fear is the mind killer. for yourself, for the people you love, for the sake of even just switching it up sometimes, learn to draw upon your courage and practice it. you won’t regret it and I believe in you! 💛 (also according to my partner the bird flu is probably least of your worries at this point, unless it becomes another swine flu, idk tho)