Stressed Out

I'm in the middle of reading a scene in a book where the hero is being coerced, through threats and intimidation against himself and the other hero, into doing something he doesn't want to do. It's one of those scenes where the villain uses his physical strength coupled with a weapon to force the hero to do something he finds distasteful and abhorrent. The hero, as you can imagine, is very stressed about this and worried about the other hero at the same time. Whilst I'm reading this scene, I could feel my stress levels rising with the hero and I became very anxious. I could hardly bear to keep on reading and yet also felt compelled to continue, to find out how the hero was going get out of the situation or whether he would have to do as the villain ordered. In the end I was quite thankful when my daughter's gymnastics class finished and I had to stop reading. However, I'm still feeling the stress of it, because in the back of my mind I'm still involved in the story and worried about having to go back straight into that stressful scene. In some ways I wish I had been able to read on past that part before having to stop reading.

I've always found this when I read books where the bad guy gets the upper hand and seems to hold all the cards and the poor hero (or heroes) is at the mercy of the villain. I get so that I can barely continue and I want to skip ahead because my emotional investment in the characters becomes just too much, too involved. My heart starts pounding and my anxiety levels go through the roof.

This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend the other day about the film Bridget Jones' Diary. She'd watched it recently when I'd loaned her the DVD and when I asked her what she had thought of the film, the conversation went a bit like this...

Me: What did you think?
Her: I didn't really like it, to tell you the truth.
Me: Oh? Why was that?
Her: I found it almost too embarrassing to watch. The way that she made a total fool of herself all the time really stressed me out and I kept wanting to stop watching or leave the room.

I didn't find the film at all stressful. I sympathised with Bridget's plight and although some parts of the film did contain some socially awkward sections that made me squirm a little, I certainly didn't get anxious or want to leave the room.

In some ways this shows how us humans are all wired differently. I expect there are plenty of you who could read the scene I'm reading and feel only a mild sense of peril for the heroes, or watch Bridget Jones' Diary and be either collapsed with laughter at the situations in which she finds herself or curled up in embarrassment.

So what about you? What gets your anxiety levels to spike? Is it the same as me, or something else? Perhaps the threat of an unknown assailant, or a ghost story or even something as simple as an argument between the heroes or their families.