One of the results I’ve noticed from my decade and a half of therapy is that there are things that bother me now that didn’t bother me in the past. As far as I can tell, it’s a result of me being more in-tune with my own emotions and removing the callouses that had formed around my trauma so I could actually process it and properly heal. All of which means that certain actions in video games bother me more than they used to. Or that certain TV shows I once found fascinating at best and interesting at worst are more than I can stomach without some amount of emotional fortitude (which I am still running short on these days). Which is why I started and then quickly stopped rewatching Dexter when I ran out of stuff to watch on a really depressed day. Turns out watching a show all about a guy who ties down, tortures, and then murders people is too much for me to handle without feeling anxious and bad. Who would have thought that casually exposing myself to one of my own trauma triggers would be mentally distressing? What a surprise.