feeling exposed
When discussing trauma and phobias, it’s important to first understand how our bodies process fear. The automatic response is the familiar fight or flight: We either stay and face what scares us, or we flee in an attempt to avoid or escape the danger. This response is driven by what doctors call the sympathetic nervous system, a collection of neurons woven from the spine to the rest of the body. In situations of perceived danger, this system triggers involuntary responses—increasing heart rate, raising blood pressure, sending extra blood to muscles—so we are ready to respond to the threat.
When we realize that a threat is no longer present or is not real, the associated parasympathetic nervous system takes over; it helps us calm down and promotes the body's "rest and digest" response. This instinctive response may contribute to the feeling of relaxation after the threat has passed. This relief is part of a study researchers are conducting using exposure therapy.
Extensive research supports the effectiveness of exposure therapy. It has been found to be particularly helpful in treating anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Treatment works by retraining the amygdala - the fear center of the brain - a process that activates it through exposure to feared objects or situations. For example: If someone has a phobia of spiders, a therapist would have the person intentionally engage with spiders by imagining them, handling real spiders, or even experiencing them through virtual reality. With repeated exposure, fear subsides.
The benefit of a controlled fear experience like this is that it occurs in a safe environment. Terror occurs under the gaze of the therapist, in situations that can be manipulated and ended at will. Horror movies may have similar therapeutic effects: A 2018 study found that horror fans may enjoy being scared because it helps them feel in control or control their fears from the safety of their living room couch or a darkened movie theater.
As early as the 1950s, Martin Grotjahn, a professor at the University of Southern California School of Medicine and Freudian psychoanalyst, believed that horror movies were "self-administered psychotherapy for American teenagers." In the 1990s, a case study discussed how a troubled 13-year-old boy used horror movies for therapy. "Modern horror films serve many of the same functions for adolescents that traditional fairy tales serve for younger children," the researchers wrote at the time.
Recently, a 2020 study concluded that horror movies are the best stimulus for inducing fear. Research shows that parts of the human brain process horror movies as if the threat is real, which primes the body to react in the same way it would in real life—with increased heart rate, dilated pupils, and increased blood pressure.
John Edward Campbell, a professor of media studies at Temple University, says that after watching a horror movie, we often experience pleasure due to the subsequent sense of relief. Zlatin Ivanov, a double board-certified psychiatrist, agrees. The brain's ability to calm itself down after watching a scary movie is neurochemically pleasurable, Ivanov said, "because the release of dopamine associated with the 'rest and digest' brain response increases feelings of well-being." "
Another possible explanation for the positive effects of horror movies is the excitement transfer theory popularized by Dolf Zillmann, dean emeritus and professor of information science, communication, and psychology at the University of Alabama. Essentially, the theory is that the fear we experience when exposed to something scary (such as watching a horror movie) intensifies the positive emotions we feel later.
