DAE feel triggered by children being harmed in media?
This might sound a bit weird but kids being harmed or mistreated in mainly live action content with real child actors does really bad things to my mind, I always want to cry whenever I see it.
My Mom had to have known I hate this sort of thing because I go on about it all the time (but then again she doesn't really listen to what I say sometimes) but last night she showed me a clip of some horror movie where a bully (sounded like he was twelve or thirteen) got his ear ripped off and was chased down by a robot and got hit by a truck and I had to hold in all urge to cry or just get up and walk away. I don't care that he was a bully, he sounded like he was in so much pain and he didn't deserve to die like that. I don't know why my mom (who I've been on good terms with since I was fourteen) came and showed me that, how she was expecting me to react, as if I revel in the pain of children and how they "get what they deserve".
And it goes really far; even if it's meant to be comedic like "You Can't Do That on Television" it puts me in a downer mood because it just looks like real children being abused by their parents and put in dungeons. Drake and Josh, Malcolm in the Middle, Roseanne, Bernie Mac Show, the fucking War of the Worlds movie where that poor little girl kept getting abused and harmed throughout the film because of her self-absorbed, neglectful parents; anything with either live action child abuse or live action children being inconvenienced or tormented regularly makes me either angry or sad. Cartoons aren't nearly as bad most of the time because they're clearly exaggerated and unrealistic, kids in cartoons usually don't look or sound like real kids.
I think this might have come from getting hit and screaming and crying without comfort all the time as a child (some things have stayed with me for years later, like my Dad chasing me down to my room to strike me when I was eight or my Mom becoming exasperated and annoyed or yelling whenever I would cry). Things could get very harrowing when I was a kid and so many of those things still stick with me all those years later. When I was a kid I always wanted someone to hold me and hug me when I cried and I never got that. I actively search out clips from shows and movies where children are at peace and being doted on and they're enjoying it because they make me happy but those are very hard to come by unfortunately. Everything I've seen with children has them either being abused, annoyed, lectured, yelled at, humiliated or punished and even in "nice family" shows like The Brady Bunch I feel the parents are cold and punitive.
I'm somewhat fine with children being put through hell in content if it's presented as "they have to survive and win" and if there's a satisfying payoff and happy ending to what they endured, though even still it makes me really worried and upset when it happens.
Sorry if this feels really long-winded, I was feeling bad and needed to get this off my chest. I was just wondering if anyone else felt this way or if I'm just saying it wrong or being overdramatic, I don't know what. All I know is I hate seeing kids in pain.
Posted Nov 10, 2025, 12:12 PM UTC