Gut-wrenching betrayal///Why does it hurt so much?///French espionage aka BACKSTABBING

[ApistMutant20k]

Wanted to put this into words for a while but my circle of friends don't really read a lot of fiction so, I turned to here. When reading/watching anything, universally across all media I remain emotionally detached from the characters and events taking place within a story, with one exception. Betrayal. Now this is not a constant, whatever the piece of media is has to be competently told, so this has happened only a smattering of times in my life.

As stated previously; betrayal is the only thing that gets an emotional kick out of me and to an unusual degree. Certain scenes of betrayal/backstabbing has left me tossing and turning for sometimes weeks and often I cannot bring myself to continue whatever story it was that caused this (dropped a few great works early because of this). Obviously reacting like this is irrational (a line of thought that always happens in retrospect) but it is such an overwhelming feeling in the moment that I often just drop the 'media' and totally shut down.

Was wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar, or if this is some known phenomenon that I am unaware of. In this end it might just be an embarrassing inability to master my own emotions or a medicore psychoanalysis of myself.

 

[Brapuccino]

Sounds kinda like some unresolved issue, but then I'm no psychiatrist. Have you experienced great betrayals in the past? Have you done any introspection on your persona as a whole? I feel like the more I understand my past, the more I understand my current self and my behaviors throughout life. Not that I've really "fixed" myself, mind you, but I suppose that's part of the constant struggle of being alive.

All that being said, I dropped Yawara when it entered its "misunderstandings" arc.
"Noooo, haha, it's not what it looks like!!!", feels like such a cheap way to generate drama/interest in a show, and many will abuse it to pad things out. Ain't nobody got time for that.

 

[willhelpme]

There are various levels to this but your starter for ten could be that someone in your lineage was on the receiving end (or the doing) of said smiling villainy and this activates Patterns of resonance that influence your present moment reactions via a surge of emotions that you find difficult to deal with as they are obviously potent and hidden outside the scope of your standard awareness hence why they may be inherited.

The fact you feel you can't freely speak on this with those you claim know you best shows a level of artifice must also be at play in those relationships and I'd guess you keep them at a distance on certain planes of interaction which loops back to the original point I mentioned. Either that or you're too over available and helpful as that is the opposite swing of the pendulum.


Did you know that when rats are trained to run in a maze their descendants do much better than the control group in the experiment even though they're both fresh and neither had seen the place they're dropped in and made to race? Same thinking behind what I said but applied to humans and I do have actual clinical refs to this as well but its not something the mainstream wishes to acknowledge so they brush it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't happen.

Anyway, thats your starter for ten. Feed it and water it. See what happens.

 

[ApistMutant20k]

Sounds kinda like some unresolved issue, but then I'm no psychiatrist. Have you experienced great betrayals in the past? Have you done any introspection on your persona as a whole? I feel like the more I understand my past, the more I understand my current self and my behaviors throughout life. Not that I've really "fixed" myself, mind you, but I suppose that's part of the constant struggle of being alive.

All that being said, I dropped Yawara when it entered its "misunderstandings" arc.
"Noooo, haha, it's not what it looks like!!!", feels like such a cheap way to generate drama/interest in a show, and many will abuse it to pad things out. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Late reply///

Like anyone I've experienced some pretty awful moments of betrayal in my life but that is not the only category of 'tragedy' I have been through. Just for the sake of an example; I don't have the same visceral reaction to a motor accident despite having somebody close to me being involved in one.

'Unresolved issue' could be a few things as you said however, I'd argue this is more a case of some neuro-gobbledigook going haywire that is causing this. The brain fixating on 'betrayal' could be replaced by anything else.

 

[幽邃森林]

It's normal for betrayal to invoke intense emotions of hate and anger in both the victims and witnesses.

I think the explanation is as simple as you don't like to get pissed off.

 

[赤い男]

Destroy your traitors.

 

[Some_porcupine]

classmate told me to say hi to girl (was very convincing)
he was into her, he was with her, they are married now
ultimate cruel prank; everyone laughted and mocked me
(i wrote her letter or poem)
she denied me
not saying i was humiliated or startled, i laughted it off
just little embarrassed and maybe shocked (liar!)

 

[big_ping07]

interesting thread that made me feel kinda shitty.
i used to be a vindictive person that would monitor the "strength" of relationships based on my ability to betray them. if they hurt me, i will betray them and hurt them tenfold. the stronger our bond, the more the betrayal should hurt. and i would use this to my advantage. my possible retaliation would loom over them.

but now i feeeeeel this:

Certain scenes of betrayal/backstabbing has left me tossing and turning for sometimes weeks and often I cannot bring myself to continue

i feel like an absolute dickwad for thinking the way i did. i get SO uncomfortable when i see betrayal in media now. the disdain i have for the backstabber knowing that backstabber could be me.
luckily, i wasn't enough of a dickwad to actually betray anyone. phew. but thoughts like "i know exactly how to ruin their day. how to ruin their week. their month. their year. their life" crossed my mind often. now i deal with those feelings way better and actually know how to communicate my hurt lol. there's gotta be something in my past that made me think this way, but i've been unable to pinpoint it. some kind of power complex. i'm a tolerant person and allow people to do shitty things to me. when those shitty things add up, i want to seek revenge. i want them to feel my pain. but, with that want, i realized my tolerance is not a virtue. it needs to be kept in check because it's unhealthy to allow the negative effects of people's actions weigh exponentially more than the positive. i had to learn that a relationship built on revenge is not the same thing as a relationship built on love.

admittedly, this all has made it hard to get close to people. lots of unlearning and relearning must be done. just glad i caught on before it became an unfixable issue. hurting people isn't cool. getting the last laugh is a sin.