Are Horror Movies Healing For Trauma Survivors?
The horror genre might not sound like a vehicle for therapeutic healing. Especially for trauma survivors, wouldn’t voluntarily exposing yourself to the grotesque, perturbing, and macabre feel more harmful than helpful?
This is how I used to think, and full disclaimer: horror films are not for everyone. For some folks they could be triggering with little benefit - I always suggest going with your intuition.
As for myself, I was wary of the horror genre, convinced it would be too overwhelming. Eventually curiosity took over, as I gently creaked the door open to the demonic realms, gradually exposing myself to more intense terror with time. Eventually, it graduated from a fun, adrenaline-fuelled form of entertainment to something more, though I couldn’t quite pinpoint why. I’ve since heard similar sentiments from clients and friends, many of whom are trauma survivors. This post aims to explore the reasons why horror movies can be healing, both from my clinical perspective as a trauma therapist and a horror fan.
Horror Can Help You Face Your Fears in a Controlled Setting
A key marker of trauma is that the survivor did not have control over what happened to them. Lacking agency is part of what makes the experience so devastating. One of my specialties is complex trauma - this is when someone experienced many instances of trauma (for months, years or even decades), often starting when they were children. As you can imagine, rather than experiencing the world and others as safe, they experienced them as scary.
When fear is coupled with a lack of control it can make for an anxiety-laden life. From a nervous system perspective, when we have anxiety we go into fight or flight mode, and become on guard for threats to safety. This can be adaptive when there is a genuine threat to our survival. For many with trauma though, the fight or flight response becomes overactive in the present, even when the trauma is in the distant past.
Scrivner, a leading expert in the science of horror has a body of research suggesting that the genre can be therapeutic for the anxious among us, in part because of a shift in control. That is, horror gives you the opportunity to face your fear while simultaneously wielding the power. You enter the portal to a dark underworld with full consent, the ability to pause or exit at any moment, all while armed with your comforts. You get to feel scared and safe simultaneously right here in the present. Learning to feel safe in the present moment is foundational to healing all types of trauma.
You can also take small gradual steps towards facing your fears, opting for tamer films first. This is similar to how exposure therapy works for the treatment of issues such as anxiety and PTSD, wherein a therapist guides you to gradually expose yourself to the fears that are holding you back. In retrospect, this is how my foray into horror started. I dipped my toes by watching films with a sprinkling of horror, like the comedic Cabin in the Woods or the cult classic goth film the Craft before crossing the threshold to pure horror. Had I plunged into Hellraiser or Hereditary first, I would have likely given myself insomnia and little to no enjoyment out of the experience. This gradual increase in exposure lets us explore fear in manageable steps—a crucial element in finding the sweet spot where fear and enjoyment align.
Research supports the idea of this horror sweet spot. If the fear is too overwhelming, it can be distressing; too mild, and the thrill fades. In a recent study, they also found that physiological arousal had a similar pattern, suggesting that the adrenaline rush has a sweet spot too. With time, I felt like my sweet spot moved up, as my threshold for being scared increased. There’s an accomplished sense of satisfaction you get, knowing that you can now rest soundly after a frightful film compared to the beginning of your saga, when your amygdala would have been firing on all cylinders.
Who knew facing your trauma-born neuroses could be kinda fun?
Horror Can Give You a Safe Container to Confront Other Emotions
While fear might be the most obvious emotion associated with trauma, it is certainly not the only one. Trauma often leaves a survivor with intense emotional memories - the feelings that were too overwhelming to experience in the moment which get frozen in time, and triggered easily in the present. This is why folks with trauma often get triggered not just by smells, settings or people that remind them of what happened, but also by situations that could set off the emotions that were elicited at the time. This is especially true for those with C-PTSD - there are often many incidents early in life that elicited intense emotions which were not safe enough to be felt at the time. After all, children don’t have the brain development yet to process what the heck was going on, and lack the power needed to fight or flee.
Beyond fear, there is often shame, guilt, grief, confusion and rage, just to name a few. Horror films can create an ideal playground for experiencing these emotions through the characters depicted. There is a safety in having enough distance from the emotions to be with them. My favorite podcast, This Jungian Life, in their episode on Horror – Why can’t we look away? , echo these sentiments, suggesting that it can feel safer to experience the more disturbing elements of the human experience through horror because they are displaced from the self to the fictional stories and the characters that occupy them.
This draws parallels to working in the therapy room. I often support clients with c-ptsd to create separation from intense emotions with parts work whereby they view the emotions as different parts of themselves, allowing them to develop enough distance to safely be with their feelings. In this work I also engage with their imagination as well, which can help contain the intensity of the feelings. When there is even a little bit of distance, it’s surprising how much easier it can be to feel one’s feels. The separation is what helps keep our mindful, noticing brain (sometimes referred to as the wise mind) online, so that we can be present with what is, even if it feels uncomfortable.
This brings to mind the classic horror movie, Carrie. She is a victim of high school bullying and an abusive fanatical mother. Carrie’s wrath and telekinesis prove to be a lethal combo, culminating in a vengeful blood bath prom night. It’s not uncommon for survivors at some point in their healing to be met with rage of how they have been wronged, and even fantasize or wish that those who abused them are dead. This might sound disturbing, but many survivor direct their anger inwards at first, blaming themselves for what happened to them. Being able to take the anger off themselves, like a burdensome cloak, and put it on its rightful owner is often a big breakthrough in the healing process. Relating to Carrie’s rage could be a way to feel validated and vindicated in experiencing an emotion that is often too taboo to express, particularly for women. In her personal essay, Mel Ashford reflects on how watching horror movies like Carrie after experiencing an assault helped her move through her emotions and re-discover her power.
While violence isn’t the answer, the rage still needs to be heard and moved through. It’s often necessary to listen for the nuggets of wisdom in the Carrie within us in order to move forward. Rage is an important messenger, and when it comes to trauma, sometimes it just wants us to send the blame back to where it came from while reminding us that it is not, nor was it ever, our fault.
Horror Can Pave the Way for Personal Growth
While horror may support us to explore and process intense emotions safely, it also opens the door to something deeper: the potential for personal growth. While growth can seem dramatic, like a rebirth, it can also be more subtle. When it comes to growth in trauma therapy, I think of ending trauma-based cycles or patterns.
A study in 2022 on American horror enthusiasts grouped them into three categories: adrenaline junkies, who get instant enjoyment, white knuckles who report personal growth, and dark copers who report both. How do the 'white knuckles' and 'dark copers' among us find personal growth through horror movies? There wasn’t enough data in this study to draw any conclusions as to why, but I can speculate. While watching horror alone likely won’t lead to a dramatic transformation, if the viewer is open to it, I think it can foster awareness, and perhaps even motivate change.
For me, Ari Aster’s Midsommar & Hereditary come to mind. Aster described Midsommar as ‘a breakup movie dressed in the clothes of a folk horror film.’ In the movie, Florence Pugh’s character, Dani, is stuck in a relationship with an emotionally neglectful partner, yet often takes responsibility for their issues. As the story takes a dark and surreal turn, the horror elements amplify the underlying toxicity of the relationship, and subsequent intensity of the breakup. We don’t know exactly what compelled her to love someone who doesn’t reciprocate, but as a therapist, I know that we often choose the familiar, even if the familiar is harmful. That is, until we can recognize the pattern and choose better next time. If the familiar is rooted in a long history of neglectful relationships, or traces back to early childhood trauma, choosing better can take time. Maybe sometimes you need to see your patterns dramatized in a character on film for it to hit home, and spark reflection.
While Midsommar delves into themes of relational neglect and abandonment, Hereditary confronts trauma within the family, exploring how pain and loss are passed down through generations, haunting individuals like a supernatural force. Intergenerational trauma can feel like a curse - it gets passed down, mutates, gets passed down again and this cycle repeats itself until one brave soul down the DNA line is ready to face it. Within the backdrop of a malevolent ancestry, there is a crushing dinner table scene where the mother played by Toni Colette emotionally devastates her son. Anyone who has experienced emotional abuse from their parent will likely resonate with that scene, and perhaps have a greater understanding of how trauma gets passed down. Intergenerational trauma can feel invisible and elusive in its normalization within the family. But, when externalized in a movie, I wonder if it helps others, like it did myself, see the forest for the trees.
Horror movies don’t just allow us to face our fears and confront other dark emotions, but also see how trauma has led to patterns in our lives, and possibly even motivate change or a perspective shift. I’ve had clients share exactly that - scenes from films that invited them to confront unhealthy trauma-borne patterns they had now seen in a new light. In her personal essay, ‘How Horror Movies Saved My Life’, Kate Sullivan shares how, after an assault and cancer scare, resonating with survivor protagonists fighting for their life helped her realize that she wanted to stay alive too.
While the protagonists in film might not always face a promising fate, we, as the viewers, are afforded more choice. With that choice comes agency. Trauma survivors often felt helpless at the time of injury, or perhaps even much of their lives. While horror movies alone likely won’t catapult someone from feeling utterly helpless to embodied in their empowerment, it can help illuminate little corners in those dark alleys, and that’s a worthwhile start.
References
Andersen, M. M., Schjoedt, U., Price, H., Rosas, F. E., Scrivner, C., & Clasen, M. (2020). Playing with fear: A field study in recreational horror. Psychological Science, 31(12), 1497-1510. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620972116
Ashford, M. (2023, May 17). How horror helps trauma. Blood Knife. https://bloodknife.com/how-horror-helps-trauma/
Lee, J., Connelly, L., & Shumsky, D. (Hosts). (2021, October 28). Episode 135: Horror – Why can’t we look away? [Audio podcast episode]. In This Jungian Life. https://thisjungianlife.com/episode-135-horror-why-cant-we-look-away/
Peters, S. (2019, July 3). Ari Aster wants Midsommar to be your favorite breakup movie. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/ari-aster-wants-midsommar-to-be-your-favorite-breakup-movie/
Scrivner, C., & Christensen, K. A. (2021). Scaring away anxiety: Therapeutic avenues for horror fiction to enhance treatment for anxiety symptoms. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7uh6f
Scrivner, C., Andersen, M. M., Schjødt, U., & Clasen, M. (2022, August 9). The psychological benefits of scary play in three types of horror fans. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000354
Sullivan, K. (2022, October 11). Horror movies saved my life. Club Mental. https://clubmental.com/horror-movies-saved-my-life/