How can I stop myself being so sensitive to violent scenes?

I don't think you need to fix anything. A long time ago, I decided to stop watching crime and police procedural shows like Law and Order and CSI. I really liked these shows before I went cold turkey off of them. It all started with a month long hiatus my partner and I took from tv all together. When we turned the tv back on, I was suddenly astounded by the violence. I work a job where I read about and deal with bad things happening to people all the time. I realized I had been dealing with this stuff at work and then coming home and entertaining myself with the same stories. So I just stopped. Now, many years later, I don't even have network cable. I stream tv, but only shows I seek out to watch, not whatever's on. So I mostly avoid violent shows. I do watch plenty of movies; some with violence. But I hide my eyes and wait for the bad parts to be over. Usually my partner is around to tell me if it's okay to look again. And if it's a scene with disturbing sound, I just get up and walk away from the tv until it's over. One thing I know for a fact is that my mental health is much improved since deliberately choosing to sensitize myself to this stuff. My anxiety is much much lower, my startle reflex is less sensitive, and I'm less afraid all the time. You said in the last line of your post that you don't want to feel upset about it anymore. I think the best way to do that is to make a deliberate choice to keep those images out of your mind and feel good about yourself for doing so. When it starts to feel like a choice you're making for yourself instead of an intrusive negative reaction you'll be able to stop criticizing yourself.

I'm just like you, but I have made the explicit decision to feel these things. Although the fiction may be triggering my reaction, the fact is that there are people in reality who go through similar experiences. My empathy for the fictitious characters is a stand-in for my empathy for the real people. I don't want to diminish those people's deserved empathy, so I make no attempt to diminish my empathy for the fictional people. I'm too worried that it'll make me less caring, less human. If anything, I recommend that you put your efforts into protecting others from this sort of violence, especially children. I've chosen to do that by enrolling my daughter in a Waldorf school which encourages families to protect their children from media violence, so that not only is she largely unexposed to this, her friends are too. And as far as experiencing joy and awe, there are way too few people who let themselves feel this, and it makes for a cynical and dark world. Please, don't dull these experiences. Please. You're not alone, and it makes you beautiful.

First, this question and many of the answers may be relevant to your interests: http://ask.metafilter.com/171232/Why-do-i-think-Things-have-feelings How do I stop being so over-sensitive about seeing fictional things that upset me happening to people? Honest question: What are the underpinnings for this desire? Is it because your perception that you are oversensitive makes you feel alienated and lonely, or are you simply trying to eliminate a source of unnecessary pain and discomfort from your emotional repertoire? If it's the former, you are absolutely not alone! If it's the latter, removing or limiting your exposure to painful stimuli will be much, much easier than trying to force yourself to tamp down your feelings about it. I could have written this question but I've always experienced it as an excess of empathy, not oversensitivity, and while it does get uncomfortable and even quite raw sometimes, I've decided that I would much rather be "too sensitive" than remotely desensitized. I am also easily moved to tears by great beauty, wonder, and mystery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Field always does it for me) and psychologically destroyed by even obviously fictional representations of living beings in pain and particularly people begging for their lives (can't even be in the same room as someone playing GTA, for example). Yes, it's annoying to be genuinely upset when my roommate plays Call of Duty and I catch a stray digitized demise out of the corner of my eye, but as others have already said, my mental health is much improved when I just cut these stimuli out of my life altogether, so that's definitely what I would recommend. Aside from being more unruffled in general, I don't perceive any real benefit to repeatedly exposing my heart and mind to cruelty, torture, or brutality, even the fictionalized kind. (Caveat: I love terrible 1980s slasher movies, but only the ones with hilariously bad special effects and super-duper fake Kool-Aid blood.) So I can't watch Game of Thrones. It isn't the end of the world. Something that has helped me a great deal with this aspect of life is that before I watch any new-to-me movie or TV show, unless it's something that is obviously A-OK -- Animal Planet's "http://animal.discovery.com/tv-shows/too-cute-kittens" is always a good one to keep open in another tab if you're reading an upsetting news story -- I run it past http://doesthedogdie.com/ and read the http://www.imdb.com/swiki/special?ParentalGuideHelp to see if there's anything I will find distressing. I'd rather be spoiled on a hundred plot points than see something that will leave me gasping and tormented by nightmares for weeks on end. tl;dr - This is actually a beautiful and beautifully human trait. Please take good care of your soft and gentle heart and it will take care of you, too.

Hmm. I am exactly like this, and have been as long as I can remember (since I was 3 or 4 at least) and I never considered it a negative; or wanted to change it. More, I (personally) think it kind of a weird byproduct of our age that scenes of intense physical or psychological pain DON'T initiate a stronger response in the majority of people. I think it's a pretty unnatural level of desensitization, to be honest. So yeah, perhaps you and I lie more on the "extremely sensitive" side of things, but I don't see that as a bad thing. FWIW, I am *not* the type of person who cries at "sad" scenes easily or is generally emotionally malleable, so it's not as simple as that. Even if I know exactly how they staged the scene (per xingcat's suggestion) it still deeply disturbs me, because it triggers the realization/rememberance that stuff like (X) DOES or HAS really happened in the world, that this is an actual human experience that the actors are replicating, and that to me is profoundly disturbing. And frankly, I think, should be.

I like Capri's approach - there's something heartening about hearing that someone finds violence so troubling that he can't look at it. Obviously, as others have said, if it's hampering you in life, it's worth developing coping mechanisms, and given how little we know you, therapy is probably the right move. But don't call yourself oversensitive - violence and humiliation *are* awful and you are, fundamentally, right to abhor them.

Two things. I echo therapy, not because there's anything inherently wrong with your reactions, but because they bother you so much and you clearly feel like there is Something Up that you can't get your arms around. Whether or not anyone else thinks that's true, it bothers you, and therapy is good for managing things you've tried to adjust and can't. Second, there are definitely people who are just very, as you say, sensitive generally. I cry easily myself at times -- not all the time, but sometimes. And I powerfully dislike certain particular kinds of violence in movies and on television. Because I watch TV and movies for work, sometimes there's kind of no choice, and you know what I do? I cover my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears. I know that sounds crazy to some people, but I do it, because I don't need to make myself upset. Don't be shy about looking away from what makes you miserable. Don't feel obligated to make yourself into someone who can watch a scene of a child being killed without feeling affected; I wouldn't ever say being that kind of person is bad, but I wouldn't say NOT being that kind of person is bad, either. Talk to somebody. It might not take that long; it might be something you could talk through relatively quickly with somebody who gets it.

Can you explain why you want to change this? I think that Lesser Shrew gets at the issue-- you can't go through life being so easily emotionally manipulated, particularly (especially) by things that aren't real. Media is always out to manipulate us, and unless one learns to take a step back and judge the issue rationally, we are going to be vulnerable. It's not that the solution to avoid certain kinds of media is wrong, but that encountering these kinds of moments where the audience is being emotionally targetted is inevitable, and we have to learn to master ourselves rather than let others make us feel what they want is to feel.

I deal with this by simply not watching those shows and movies. I know that means I miss out on some good art that other people enjoy, but that's okay. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of lighthearted, bland sitcoms and Disney movies to compensate. ;) I did want to go to the movies last weekend (to escape my kids for a couple hours) and there was literally nothing on the theater I was willing to see. It was all too violent. I always just tell people, "No thanks, that's too violent for me," and nobody's ever given me guff about it. It's a very normal reaction and people accept it. If it distresses you I think talking to a therapist might help, especially if these thoughts are really intrusive, but really, why not just avoid violence used for entertainment purposes? That's a pretty sick form of entertainment anyway.

I have similar strong reactions. It doesn't help me at all to say "this is fiction, these people are pretending," because to me it is not a far hop from there to the fact that many real people did endure, are enduring, everything we see as fiction, and worse, and it doesn't end in two hours. I can't separate it from reality, because it's not separated from reality. If anything, I think that people who argue that it is are just comforting themselves. I am fine with avoiding the stuff. I just don't do it. I used to feel sheepish that I couldn't enjoy stupid horror movies, but I'm over 40 now and I don't give a shit - don't feel obligated to bother with the stuff. I don't really feel I'm missing out. If a movie becomes culturally significant but it's rife with violence, I just have someone explain what's supposed to be so great about it - there's no need for me to see it personally . I don't put myself through it - no need. When I have tried to appreciate some of that stuff, usually I don't find it was worth it - much of what people think of as plot or artistic value only draws its power from the juxtaposition with shock/cruelty/sensationalism. Standing alone as plot, it rarely has much drive. There is plenty of real pain, misery, torture, badness in the world. I don't need to go looking for it and I don't apologize for avoiding it. It does make me feel better to contribute to efforts for justice, as others have noted, and to adopt the intention to use kindness in daily life to counteract the very shitty things the world includes. I guess some of us use shadow-plays to deal with the idea of this dark side, to minimize, frame, and control it. I can't do that, so I avoid them,and turn my attention instead to things that are real, primarily the good things that are real that face, and work to counteract, the bad things.