Listen to this post on Youtube: https://youtu.be/WnZutkxUvUk
A few years ago, a post went viral in the subreddit “r/showerthoughts”. It said: “Spicy food is like BDSM for your mouth”. I think about that post a lot. It helps me when I have a hard time understanding people, particularly because my tolerance for spicy food has changed over the years. I thought about it again recently in regards to emotional tolerance.
I’m not sure whether I’m an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) or an empath (or maybe both), but I feel things more than others do, in the same way that medium salsa can be spicy for someone with a low tolerance for jalapeños.
I narrate audiobooks, and although I’m generally pretty selective about what I will or won’t narrate, I can’t read every book in its entirety before taking on a project. I can tell a potential client that I don’t narrate horror, or suspense thrillers, but since books don’t come with an emotional stakes rating, sometimes I end up with titles that at first glance look innocuous, but that leave me curled up in the fetal position. The irony is that my natural ability to put myself in the shoes of the protagonist who is having her heart ripped out makes me darn good at my job.
When I watch movies and TV shows, I usually play it safe and stick to comedy, but sometimes, due to peer pressure or FOMO, I forget about my low emotional tolerance, and I unintentionally expose myself to dramatic content that is way outside my comfort zone. I was selected to be on the nomination committee recently for one of the major movie awards, and although I wasn’t being paid, I took the job very seriously. I didn’t watch every movie- there were far too many, and it wasn’t a requirement, but as long as the movie wasn’t a straight up horror film or known tragedy, and I got a free screener, I watched it. Unfortunately, more than once, I regretted that decision, and vowed to never watch another biopic. (They don’t make many biopics about people who have happy lives).
Some people complain about trigger warnings. I wonder if these same people complain about ingredient lists on packaged food. I’m not saying that we need to have a detailed explanation of triggers on all of our content, but using spice as an analogy sure does help me to understand how we are all the same, just with different emotional thresholds.
So now when I find myself wondering “why would anyone want to consume such emotionally masochistic content?”, I just remember that to them, as Nicole Kidman says in an AMC Theaters ad, “Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this”.
Thanks for reading!
Rebecca H. Lee
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