Sensitivities starting to really affect my head

castaway_lady

Basically things are creeping into my head lately too much and creating anxiety and sadness....like last week someone I've worked with for the past year died suddenly and it's blown my mind. Yesterday I was scrolling through the news on my phone and came upon a piece on animal cruelty and it causes an immediate spike in sadness and anxiety and invades my head. Im not suffering from depression overall, Im extremely happy with several aspects of my life for some time now but I seem to have whopping sensitivities to stuff like what I mentioned, in particular the latter. It causes me to lose sleep and cry and really gets me down. I adore animals, have a tonne of rescues that live with me and have no capacity at all to deal with bad information on such. Mostly I can deflect information on bad stuff on humans but lately not so much. It's all eroding my sensitivities and getting me down. I nearly feel guilty for my happiness.

Also I think my powers of concentration and patience are reduced too.

MrWalsh

I have to say I really relate on the issue of news stories on animal cruelty. Even writing this post memories of awful things I have seen and read in news media are popping unwanted into my head. I have on occasion been upset for days over some news item about animal cruelty.

Im sorry I dont have a solution for you, I try to just think of happier things and take pleasure in my own pets and spoil them.

magicmushroom

I don't have a solution either, just wanted to add that you're not alone.

Animal cruelty makes me feel so awful - if I'm scrolling through Facebook and see something unexpectedly I will go to bed thinking about it and feel an incredible, deep sadness that can stay with me for days.
If an advert comes on TV I have to turn over straight away, it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I also have rescues living with me (3 cats) and about 3 strays that visit my garden that I'm minding! They have a nice big kennel with straw and hot water bottles.

Human cruelty doesn't get me so much but recently I visited the Imperial War Museum in London and the part about the concentration camps caused me awful dreams and terrible sadness for a good while after. I struggle to think about the way those people were treated, all at the hands of other humans.

I often wish I could turn off my sensitivity to these things like other people seem to.
However, I guess it's sensitive people that try and do some good - I often think, if every person I know adopted one animal from a rescue centre, what a difference that would make. Their biggest problems seem to be that they're broke and can't go out drinking this weekend though, I do scratch my head sometimes at people's views on 'suffering'!

mojesius

OP I could have written your post. I feel overwhelmed and helpless with the amount of animal cruelty i see on the internet, in news or in life. It makes me really upset and stays with me. My mam has rescue dogs but sadly I can't as I'm out at work for pretty much 12 hours a day.

So I do some volunteer work on weekends when I can and donate relentlessly to local rescues. Hoping in a few years to be living in the country where I can take loads in

It can make you depressed but you should try to focus on the fantastic things you have done to help animals (or people for that matter) in need. You do make a huge impact already! The world is a cruel place with a lot of nasty, uncaring people. But there are good people too. What cheered me up a few weeks ago was spending an hour watching YouTube videos of dog rescues in the states and the transformation they went under (all happy endings).

I think while there is a lot of animal cruelty, especially associated with 'cultural traditions' and the usual crap, I also think people are becoming more enlightened and conscious about ethical animal treatment.

You're a caring and sensititve person, it's not a flaw, but a lovely way to be.

Edit: YouTube channel is called 'Hope for paws'

IlmoNT4

I have the same problem OP, If I read anything that involves cruelty to animals it really upsets me, makes me cry and I cant stop thinking about it...Then I start to think, what a totally crappy world we live in.

My advice is to stay away from new sites and facebook....

Aimeee

Plus 1 to avoiding the facebook pop ups. I'm same as yourself btw. You're not pregnant by any chance? I'm asking as I remember when i was pregnant with my first child i was totally overwhelmed by any sort of animal cruelty. It was the beginning of the overwhelming feelings. (That was a fair few years ago too).

Recently I've stopped all the fb stuff and had to unfollow the friends (many of whom I really like) who keep sharing the cruelty to animals stuff. It's very difficult these days. We are too connected, news 24 hours a day. There's no reprieve. Take a break from media and take solace in the fact that you are doing the best for those in your care. You can't fix the whole world. Plus these issues have been around forever, just that now we hear/see it all. It is sad but at least you're in a position to help as best you can.

Rubberchikken

i am a total coward where animal cruelty is concerned. cannot not deal with it (images/stories ect). so i generally avoid them.
we have a rescue dog who means the world to us, and we'd have tonnes more but just don't have the space/time.

i understand how you feel. you're a sensitive person. that's good, btw. but you need to learn to not let everything, e.g. the colleague's death upset you too much.
easier said than done i guess, but with some support you'll get there. talk to your gp if you find things are too upsetting.

and be proud of yourself for being a caring person. the world need plenty of those. take care

Semele

I feel exactly like this at times. I have had frequent periods of depression in the past and for me a huge warning sign that my mood is on the downturn is that I become preoccupied with horrible thoughts of animal cruelty- a news article I've read years ago can pop back into my head with such force it actually makes me feel sick and dizzy for example.

What I have found useful over time (and I'm a mental health professional here so this is a mixture both of my own experience and what I've learned in my training) is practicing mindfulness. There are great apps (headspace is a famous one with a free trial period, but there are totally free ones and you don't even need an app or cd once you get into it).

Our brains associate the strength of the emotion connected with a thought as an indicator of how important that thought is, so ironically the more horribly distressing a thought is, the more it lays down stronger pathways of retrieval and is thus more likely to pop up again and again. And then of course every time you think about it again, and feel awful, you are again strengthening the power and availability of that thought, even though it's the exact opposite to what you want to do!

I found that mindfulness (which trains you to observe your thoughts without making a judgement on them or trying to change them) actuall allowed me to remain calm when those distressing thoughts popped up. Instead of tensing up, feeling sick/upset and trying to push the thought away, I got better at just letting it wash over me and pass naturally- noticing how it made me feel but not reacting to that. Over time, as per the process I described in the previous paragraph, I was able to think about those things with much less emotion attached, which meant that as far as my primitive brain was concerned it wasn't an important thought and so it didn't hold onto it in the same way!

I hope that makes sense!