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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode, as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s.
So as you guys know, each week on the podcast, we basically just try and get a little bit more sense of this decade that we are living through, from untangling, you know, attachment style, dating, dream jobs, figuring out, quarter -life crises, all of those things.
It's all part of like the beautiful, messy business of growing up.
But sometimes a topic takes my fancy that is not unique to our 20s, but yet, is so fascinating and has so much psychology behind it that I cannot help but do it.
and today is one of those topics.
We are heading into slightly murkier waters today and we're talking about true crime, why we love true crime or this idea of morbid curiosity.
True crime podcasts, true crime books, true crime movies, and shows.
They are one of the leading sources of entertainment.
They are a billion dollar industry.
people love to be exposed to fear and to tragedy and to horror and gore and it seems so counterintuitive.
Why as humans as a species that spends so much time pursuing safety and the comfort and love do we have this kind of darker side of us that is so curious about things that are so tragic and so awful it turns out that liking true crime doesn't mean that anything is wrong with you.
In fact, liking true crime is actually quite adaptive.
It helps us understand fear.
It helps us process danger.
It helps us make more sense of a very unpredictable and chaotic world.
And on a psychological level, it actually may even provide A, some kind of anxiety relief, but be a sense of control that is otherwise really hard to obtain it seems very strange I know that something so scary could actually provide us with so many benefits and actually leave us feeling positive slash entertained slash relieved but when you look into the psychology and even the science of it.
It's incredibly fascinating.
True crime also I think is a very nuanced, moral domain, a moral area.
There's so much humanity in how we handle true crime content.
And I think that a lot of us would understand this feeling of becoming quite desensitized to it and feeling like these days you can hear about the worst day of someone's life on TikTok or you can tune into my favorite murder and listen to the story of someone being brutally killed and that's just a normal thing.
There's so much true crime content out there.
We have to be careful that we continue to have our humanity intact as we consume it and that we continue to understand that these are real people with real families with real emotions and real pain who have been through this.
And their stories are not just for us to listen to or consume on a long car ride.
There's also this other area of this whereby when we consume too much, we can actually feel like the world becomes heavier because all we are thinking about and listening to and the information we're giving our brain is that the world is big and scary.
So how do we know when we have consumed too much true crime content.
How do we know when to stop?
And how do we know that this doesn't make us a bad person?
Even if you feel very drawn to gruesome awful things?
These are all the questions and it's going to be a lot more questions that we're going to answer today, but I really want to dive into this topic of the psychology of morbid curiosity, where the urge comes from to know about crime, how it works, when does it peak and how does it serve us versus emotionally drain us?
this is going to be a very fascinating topic, a little bit unsettling for sure, but also I would say kind of comforting and if nothing else, very, very interesting.
So without further ado, let's talk about the psychology behind why we like true crime.
The Fundamentals Let's start, as we always do with the fundamentals with the basics.
What is morbid curiosity?
because it is a major precursor to enjoying true crime and horror content.
At its core morbid curiosity is basically the tendency to seek out information or experiences related to dangerous, disturbing, dark or threatening topics and that could mean death.
That could mean violence.
That could mean illness, supernatural threats or even bodily harm, basically, all the things that scare us and fascinate us in equal measure, we feel drawn to.
And it sounds really counterintuitive, right?
Why would we voluntarily engage with things that scare us, especially when so much of our ordinary life is spent avoiding fear?
Researchers actually say that we are driven to be curious about morbid events because as humans, we have this inbuilt need to explore novel stimulating things that excite us in some way.
And if you're thinking excited might not be the right word here, it is worth noting that feeling excited isn't just something that happens in response to positive experiences.
Excitement actually is just activation of extreme interest, so it can be in response to negative and alarming events as well as cheerful or positive ones.
So to understand this further you need to know this name, Dr. Colton Shkrivener.
He is a leading researcher at Arizona State University and he primarily focuses on true crime fascination and the psychology behind it.
He actually developed something very useful in this conversation called the morbid curiosity scale so he wanted to know okay some people like this kind of dark content some people like this what are the different categories of dark horror crime content that people like and what kind of person feels drawn to each of them so he broke it down into four main categories dangerous animals shark attacks poisonous snakes that kind of thing people who like violent interpersonal events, so crime, murder, assault, criminal psychology, true crime series fans, that's the one they, that's the category they
fall into. Next, supernatural threats, so people who like ghosts, demons, the occult, paranormal activity films, those kind of things.
And finally, bodily violations, so autopsies, medical anomalies, graphic injuries, car crashes.
Not everyone's morbid curiosity is the same.
I personally hate supernatural movies.
I will not watch one, but I love podcasts and documentaries about animal attacks, specifically this one called Tooth and Claw.
Like it has been the top of my Spotify wrapped every single year.
I'm fascinated by it.
You on the other hand, might get super creeped out by that and are just not even interested in at all, but really love medical shows or really love, you know really graphic pimple popping videos.
The way that we experience excitement and thrill from different morbid events is going to differ between each of us and some people might not even have it at all.
Different types of morbid curiosity though those different categories seem to correlate with different psychological traits.
So people high in openness to experience, for example, they are more likely to enjoy complex thought -provoking forms of true crime documentaries or dark philosophical fiction.
In this way, I think it's because they have a real interest in what drives humans to do certain things.
There's a real intellectual curiosity there.
But people with different personalities, particularly people who are quite kinesthetic and really understand and learn through their bodies and through movement, they tend to be more fascinated by bodily violations so it is actually quite individual.
People who are really like sensation seeking and are risk takers, they are more likely to enjoy graphic horror, intense gore, very thrill heavy mysteries.
You can see that it really comes back to our individual preferences and our character?
But back to that main question.
Why? It turns out that personality has a lot to do with what kind of morbid content you like but also why you like it.
So linking back to that researcher we talked about before he found that there are certain things that people who like morbid content have in common. So yes they might be driven to different forms of darkness but they often rate or rank quite high in terms of rebellious non -conformity.
So they like to push boundaries, they like to challenge norms. They're also often quite curious.
Very socially curious, very intellectually curious.
And so they are attracted to things that aren't typically discussed, that might be a little bit taboo, that also are very fascinating because of how complex they are.
You know, this idea of why do humans hurt other humans it's not something that has a simple answer every case is going to be different every person's motivations are going to be influenced by different experiences and different things and so people who are quite socially curious see the minds of these individuals as a challenge.
Another really compelling explanation comes from evolutionary psychology.
So from an evolutionary perspective, morbid curiosity likely developed as a way to help us navigate and survive in a very dangerous world.
You've got to remember, these things exist for a reason, you know, if morbid curiosity didn't have a purpose, it wouldn't be as common as it is.
But in early human history, you know, being able to learn from threats without having to directly experience them would have been incredibly beneficial.
If you watched someone else eat a poisonous burrow, you knew to avoid it.
If you heard a story about a deadly predator lurking nearby, you knew to steer clear of that area.
Our ancestors would simulate those threats in their minds as a way to develop survival strategies.
It's basically a primitive version of high stakes observational learning.
So nowadays, we do that through consuming certain forms of entertainment.
And this is where the concept of threat simulation comes in.
Morbid curiosity serves as a kind of threat learning system.
We're drawn to frightening and graphic content, because on a psychological level, our brain wants to gather information about how to survive.
So that would have been really adaptive previously for helping us to understand threats from a safe distance.
Nowadays, we really seek out knowledge and danger about the current human condition.
Not because we enjoy suffering but because we wanna understand it more so that we are more prepared.
And that kind of feels comforting and provides a little bit of relief.
There is some further value to consuming this content as well.
And it was really revealed during COVID, during the pandemic.
These researchers were looking at who was doing better, who was coping with what was a very scary time, who was coping with all the loss and also all the uncertainty and all the fear and they found that it was people who scored higher on the morbid curiosity scale.
So, they liked horror, they liked true crime, who were more psychologically resilient.
Why was this the case?
Well, because they had already rehearsed their approach to fear and They were familiar with crisis narratives in that sense their curiosity about these things beforehand had almost mentally prepared them for the unknown.
Like, they had most likely simulated and been exposed to crises over and over again in their mind.
And so that gave them a psychological toolkit to draw from when real fear kind of arrived, kind of being inoculated against it in a way.
You know, you get a vaccine and the reason a vaccine works is because it exposes you to a small amount of the virus that is not harmful, and then you're protected when you do encounter it, these individuals had been inoculating themselves with scary content, building up, like this almost immunity.
This kind of threat learning, it's not that something is wrong with you.
It's actually very adaptive.
This is what this is saying.
It's an emotional armour for a very chaotic world.
There's also some fascinating neuroscience behind this as well.
If you dip into the brain of someone who is consuming, let's say, a serial killer podcast or watching Criminal Minds, what you will see is several regions lining up.
The first one is the amoeba, which is our brain's fear center.
It becomes active. Of course, this part of the brain becomes active because it's responsible for detecting threats and initiating your fight or flight response.
but we also see the activation of this part of the brain called the insula and this is a region involved in processing empathy.
So it can also be quite a human experience but the fascinating part that they also would see is that although these brain regions were lighting up in general other parts of the brain were also quite active.
So we actually felt quite safe.
These individuals had this danger response, but it wasn't overriding other responses in their brain.
It was almost borrowing the intensity of these experiences that they were watching on screen or that they were listening to for entertainment.
And almost is like a training ritual for it's, for our brain.
Right? It's like you go to the gym to stretch a muscle.
They were watching this true crime content and it was like, Their brain was practicing its fear response whilst also not shutting down the rest of the body.
It's a gym for our emotions.
And a 2013 study at the University of Amsterdam, it did find that horror movies, true crime, they do trigger arousal, they do get our heart rate going, they make us tense, there's faster breathing.
But this alarm reaction is actually mimicking actual danger.
In some part of our brain knows that we're okay.
It knows that we're physically safe.
You'll still get the adrenaline.
You'll still get the thrill but there was also this weird sense of satisfaction, walking away, feeling that you have conquered the fear.
And that is what kept people coming back to this form of content.
It was giving us a safe way to experience unsafe things, tricking us into thinking that we've done something brave But these people never actually left the room.
They never actually went outdoors.
There's actually been some research into this being quite good for people with anxiety.
You know, morbid curiosity offers the strange but meaningful form of comfort.
And some of you even reached out to me and said this, when I posted that I was going to do this episode, one of you DMed me and said, I have such intense anxiety, but I love true crime content.
I love learning about danger because it makes it feel knowable.
It like shrinks its power.
And, you know, that's actually quite a revealing thing, right?
It's the sense that if you understand the monster, maybe you can survive it.
If you've read the story, you can rewrite the ending.
and so watching true crime almost in a way is providing people with a sense of pseudo -control that in a very chaotic world we typically don't actually get.
Let's talk about how gender plays into this as well because something that may or may not surprise you is that women consume true crime content at a much higher frequency than men.
We're all over it. In some cases it's been estimated that around 80 % of the audience for true crime is women.
I know personally as a woman I constantly hear about gender -based crimes and I'm constantly thinking about my safety in a way that I know my boyfriend and my male friends and my dad and my cousins do not, and i don't know about some of you but I find myself consuming a lot of true crime content where the victims are women.
Obviously because crimes against women are so high and the rates are so much higher, but also because when I hear stories about women I immediately pay attention and I feel instinctually more drawn in and that's not a coincidence.
Research has really found and shown time and time again.
Men are really interested in supernatural horror and aggressive content, women are drawn to true crime, serial killers, and murder.
Because their interest is stemming not just from curiosity but also from kind of a survival learning mechanism place.
Our interest in true crime is really stemming from the fact that these narratives speak to real gender -based threats that women are more statistically likely to face.
And in this way morbid curiosity often reflects real -world hypervigilance.
For women stories about danger can feel really personal and so we want to understand what happened we want to understand how it happened we want to know what the signs were in hindsight because consciously or not we are trying to protect ourselves.
True crime yes on the surface looks like entertainment it's actually more about risk assessment it's not just why did he it, it's how can I avoid this happening to me.
Again, linking in the fact that true crime might be a proxy for a greater sense of control and for a greater sense of preparedness I guess.
Of course, there is also a fine line between curiosity, preparedness, and exploitation.
You know, when it is done respectfully and when true crime is considerate of any victims involved, these experiences can offer really powerful opportunities for reflection and education.
The tricky part is when they begin to become sensationalized or commercialized.
We need to become cautious of when the suffering of real people becomes entertainment, because when this happens, we risk turning empathy into a real spectacle.
I had an amazing woman on the podcast a few years back talk about navigating extreme trauma and her name was Amy and her mother was really tragically murdered by her brother and then that same brother tried to organize for her to be murdered by fellow inmates who were about to get out whilst he was still in prison and that was her real life that was her daily experience of fear and grief and loss and she was so open in sharing about what true crime content meant to her and how there is a very fine line between talking about true crime for the purposes of awareness, solving cold cases and then
just for entertainment and what she said to me was there are a couple ways to really tell whether what you're consuming is good or bad.
Firstly does the podcast or show talk about the families?
Does it contain their permission to talk about the case?
Do they bring the family on?
Do they victim blame or do they solely blame the perpetrator, the person who was responsible?
Do they bring attention to cold cases or just to cases where there's been a big trial or there's been some big jury finding or you know a big splashy front -page news cover?
Do they donate to gendered violence charities?
Yes or no? Do they make jokes about the experiences or are they really just focused on the facts and the truth.
These are important questions to ask if you wanna keep listening, if you wanna keep watching, if you wanna keep reading about true crime in a way that preserves your humanity, because I don't think it's bad to wanna know, it's actually profoundly human as we've discussed, but also can only be profoundly human if it contains compassion and empathy.
Because if you are just consuming to be like, oh, I hope this doesn't happen to me, or, oh, well, that's interesting, and I'm bored, and I need a thrill, I don't think that's kind way to treat what is someone else's life and someone else's death perhaps.
Okay we are gonna take a short break but when we return we're gonna explore actually why our morbid curiosity typically peaks in our 20s and also how you can find some balance with the amount of content out there so stay with us.
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So let's zoom in on why true crime and horror consumption actually peaks in our twenties according to research. I have been thinking about this all week cause I had no idea that this was the case until I started to really research this episode and then I found all these fascinating statistics that basically said that the biggest audience for true crime is yes women of all ages but people in their 20s make up probably like one of the second biggest groups.
I think the reason why in this decade we are so drawn to this kind of stuff is because there is a lot of instability during this period, there are a lot of existential questions, there's new independence, for many of us it's the first time we truly become aware of our mortality and not in an abstract sense but in a real tangible way.
This is the decade of a lot of firsts and a lot of, you know, the first time we face a lot of existential questions.
We move out, we lose loved ones, we see injustice up close, we gain independence but also anxiety and suddenly the idea of death or danger or grief, it isn't just theoretical, it's real and with all of that comes the question, what does it really mean to just face the worst?
And am I going to be capable when it happens?
Morbid curiosity becomes a way to confront these questions without having to live them.
You know, by watching, listening, reading, and imagining, we test out different scenarios.
You know, what if I was in that situation?
How would I react? How would I survive?
How would I feel? There's also a deep need in our 20s to figure out how the world works and morbid curiosity is part of that.
It helps us learn about the worst case scenarios so that maybe we can prevent them, or at least understand them.
It's kind of a bonding experience.
There is a social side to this as well.
Sharing scary stories, true crime obsessions, late night TikTok rabbit holes.
it can be such a bonding experience and there is the kind of vulnerability in admitting that we're scared or fascinated by this dark stuff and then hearing someone else say yeah I also am fascinated by that and let's talk about it together.
You know, it's just something that bonds people and that fascinates us and that I think brings us together as this human species of like wow do you this complex emotion, I do too.
Here's something else to consider, I think morbid curiosity isn't just about fear, it's also about identity and in our 20s when we're constantly trying to figure out who we are, sometimes these examples of people being murdered, people being killed, these terrible things, gets us to really ask the question of what do I value, what do I want in my life?
How do I relate to the world, what do I see as justice?
What do I see as revenge?
What do I see... what do I want?
And there's just all these big questions and it's incredibly rich and you really end up acknowledging a lot more about yourself and how you see the world than you think and I know you're probably listening to this thinking like are we talking about the same thing like true - I just listen to true crime because I'm bored at work yes but there's actually more to it than that.
Let's now talk about another essential part of this that we've kind of been milling around for a little bit which is where's the boundary?
How do we know what disturbs us too much?
How do we know when we've gone too far?
It's something I have definitely experienced you being exposed to so much tragic awful stuff it actually can create a lot of vicarious stress and vicarious trauma.
This was my experience during my true true crime phase you know I actually felt like my life was becoming more dangerous and more scary I became more suspicious I became more hypervigilant even though none of these things were actually happening to me.
But it did make me apprehensive it made me anxious it made me feel heavy and you have to remember you know you are what you expose your mind to you and your brain have a two -way relationship and the information and the content that you feed it matters it influences our mood our mindset our stress levels our outlook on life and so if you are going to work and every single day you are putting your headphones on and listening to how joe murdered sally and how Igor chopped up seven people that is the lens through which you are going to see the world.
You're going to see the world as dark, humanity is cruel, people are mean, violence is normal.
When we start doom scrolling and compulsively watching violent content you might also have the opposite reaction of feeling very numb to tragedy and entirely desensitized.
When that happens what you're experiencing is something called compassion fatigue, and this term was originally coined by a psychologist called Charles Figley and he was actually using it to describe the emotional exhaustion experienced by care workers and people who work with trauma victims, so therapists, nurses, aid workers, and he was seeing this thing where, you know, people would come in and they would be, they would not have any limbs and they would have been through these terrible things and the nurses would be like impatient with them almost and like not affected by it at all.
And this is how he essentially realized that when you were exposed to too much terrible stuff, your compassion can actually run out.
And obviously watching horror film is not equivalent to being a frontline, you know, care worker.
But I do think it's important to recognize the impact of how readily available horrific media is to us now.
Because we have smartphones, because of the algorithms, we are constantly exposed to other people's pain to TikToks and news reports and Instagram videos of just some of the worst things happening in the world right now and if you pick up your phone first thing in the morning that's the first thing your brain is seeing.
Compassion fatigue is really not something that we want to mess with because it is very, very difficult to get out of.
It is very difficult to break free from much like burnout.
Compassion is such a human part of us, and when it's switched off, it means that something like really significant has kind of switched in our brain.
It means that there has been an extreme trauma or it means that we've kind of, I don't want to say lost upon about humanity, but definitely the empathy centers in our mind have not been working properly for a little, for a little while.
There is only so much pain that you can absorb as well.
Like, it's not like you have gone in there and switched your brain off, it's not like it's your fault.
This is your brain trying to protect you and saying, okay, we need to preserve a sense of safety and a sense of justice and a sense of fairness and a sense of kindness and comfort and this content isn't helping us so we need to switch off our reaction to it entirely to preserve this equilibrium, this paradox, right?
We consume this content to feel more informed but if we're not careful it can end up making us feel helpless or actually making us be completely closed off to any lessons.
So here's the question you need to ask yourself.
After you consume this kind of content, do you feel more curious and connected or do you feel more anxious numb or fatigued?
After consuming this content, do you feel fearful or do you feel powerful?
Do you feel scared or do you feel neutral?
Have you ever had a moment where you have listened, read, watched some form of true crime content and thought to yourself that isn't that bad, or thought oh I should be responding to this more intensely than I am.
This might be a sign that you need to take a step back.
If you're morbid curiosity leads to empowerment, understanding, even I guess respectful advocacy, that's one thing.
But if it leaves you feeling hopeless, detached, like the world is a terrifying place, or like nothing could ever affect you like you are stone, that might be a sign to step back.
Start by really asking yourself why?
Why are you being drawn to the story or this video is it curiosity?
Is it fear? Is it boredom?
Is it validation? Notice how you feel in your body after watching or reading something intense?
Are you exhausted? Are you wired?
Are you stressed and does that actually leave you feeling good or is it something that you would rather avoid?
Is there a way to learn about these things in a more neutralizing, perhaps safer manner?
For example would it be better to read a news article rather than listen to a podcast or read a Wikipedia page rather than to watch the documentary?
I remember when the Lucy Letby trial was going on in the UK I don't know if anyone's familiar with this but she was a midwife a nurse who killed a bunch of babies.
I listened to the podcast about it what they would report every single day what was happening in the trial and I remember being like, okay, this is not healthy.
I obviously I'm drawn to this for whatever reason, but listening to two hours of episodes per day back to back of every single detail is not the smartest way for me to be learning about this and I'm feeling very desensitized to what is going on.
I'm also, I'm feeling equally desensitized as well as kind of upset and numb.
And so I started just reading about it on the news and I gave myself a little bit of a break from it, like I wasn't allowed to read what happened to the case for a couple of weeks and by the time I came back to it, it was done and I actually felt like I was happier and I was lighter afterwards.
And I felt less irritated perhaps because I wasn't, you know, sitting there hearing about some of the worst crimes ever committed at my desk constantly.
Try as best as you can as well to limit passive consumption.
Now trust me, I know firsthand how hard it is to not just want to switch off for a while and mindlessly scroll Instagram I get it, especially after a stressful day.
But I do think it's important to seek out well -researched, respectful content rather than just letting the algorithm feed you the most sensationalist stories.
If you see content that is that, say not interested, block the account.
And honestly ask yourself, if this was my sister, if this was my parent, if this was my friend, would I be okay with how they're being portrayed here?
Because if the answer is no, don't give that person that podcast, that TV station, that show any of your views or attention, because it really does just promote that increasingly sensationalization of someone's life trauma and tragedy for money like they're making money from this they're making money from the worst thing that ever happened to someone I also want you to balance this heavy content with lightness you know try watching something funny every once in a while even if you find it boring compared to your usual true crime go for a hike call a friend bake some cookies literally last week
I did an episode on how to make your life more fun which you can listened to for more ideas, but sometimes if you are a true crime lover you don't realize the toll it's taking until you take a little step away and you're like wow this is what it's like to live in the lightness.
Remember as humans we weren't meant to know all of these details about everyone's lives.
We weren't meant to be able to pick up our phones and Google a million different cases and all the different pieces of data and all the different details and we weren't meant to be able to be this aware of what was happening all over the world we were we have evolved to exist in tribes of you know no more than 500 people and to know details about no more than 500 people's lives so you have to be careful in not overwhelming your brain with so much intense and just extra stuff that it doesn't have time to even be present in your own life it's okay to say I don't need to know more about this right
now it's not gonna benefit anyone I'm gonna make a different choice I'm gonna tune into something else and just set boundaries with the content like that is a form of emotional self -care and just remember your humanity you know it is actually fine to consume true crime content I really hope that that has come through like it is a natural human curiosity, it is evolutionary, it is linked to a need for control, it is linked to anxiety relief, it's super normal to wanna know more information for information gathering and for preparedness, but desensitization is not a badge of honor, you don't need
to watch so much that it doesn't impact you anymore.
Feeling disturbed, feeling emotional, needing to look away, that is a sign that your empathy is intact.
And you need empathy for almost everything in your life.
And if you switch it off for one thing, you switch it off for everything.
So please make sure that you keep your humanity about yourself whilst you're being entertained.
We are going to take a quick break right now.
But when we return, we have some more listener questions, some more niche listener questions about this very topic, why we like true crime.
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So as you guys know, I've been doing this new section of the podcast where I ask you guys, the listeners to send in your listener questions.
Sometimes topics are just so broad and deep and nuanced that I can't answer everything in the main body of the episode.
So this just gives you guys an opportunity that if you have more specific questions or dilemmas regarding yourself, you can ask them and get answers in the episode, rather than having to wait till afterwards.
So this first question, I thought, was an amazing way to start.
Why do I continue to consume true crime content, even though I know it's going to give me anxiety?
So this is kind of interesting.
It's different to everything else that we've discussed.
Everything else we've discussed in this episode has been, like, it doesn't make me anxious.
It actually provides me with anxiety relief.
I feel excited rather than anxious.
but this is someone who's saying I'm drawn back to this content, even though I know it makes me feel bad.
I think what's probably happening is that you are searching for mastery and you are searching for control.
Anxiety is an emotion that we are endlessly trying to manage, and so when we encounter situations where it's triggered and we can't manage it, that actually contains a lot of fear for us.
And some people choose to avoid those situations.
So if you're scared of flying, really what you're scared of is the anxiety that associates flying.
And so you avoid the trigger, which is the plane.
If you're scared of dogs, really, you're not scared of dogs.
You're scared of your anxiety around dogs.
And so you avoid pets and you avoid animals.
You seem to be going in the opposite direction.
You know you feel anxious, but you're running towards it, probably because your brain is saying, okay, like we can't let this control us we need to continue exposing ourselves in order to feel like we can do something about this in order to not feel beholden to our fear it also seems like you are still trying to gain information so your brain is kind of being pulled in two directions or your mind is being pulled in two directions we don't like this content it makes me feel bad but also there seems to be something necessary and listening to it There seems to be some kind of crucial information.
So I can't look away.
I need you to listen to your body and understand that it is giving you all of the science that this is maybe just not the right kind of content for you.
If you still have that morbid fascination, see if you can consume more big content in from one of those other categories.
So see if you still get that same kind of entertainment or value from supernatural things, from dangerous animals, from medical TV shows rather than true crime.
It might be that you still have this morbid need, but gory, interpersonal violence is just not for you.
Um, and if you find that none of them are, it's okay to just say, Hey, I'm sensitive to this stuff and just, just not engage with it.
Like that's not a bad thing.
You really aren't missing out all that much. If you're still reading the news, if you're still got your ear to the ground, if you're still listening out, and if you still maintain good personal safety.
I don't think true crime content really actually helps all that much. To just see if there's another way that you can perhaps gain that mastery over your anxiety.
The second question.
Why does watching murderers kill not make me feel scared when I'm alone?
Am I a psycho? No, it's just that it's not really happening to you.
So it's actually a good thing that you can feel safe and that you can distinguish between something that has happened to someone else, something that is perhaps fictional and something that is real.
It does not make you a psycho.
It actually means that you have very stable holds over your reality.
It means that you are not letting things that you see on screen influence your personal life too much. It's definitely not a bad thing.
you are definitely not a psycho.
I would say if you turn around and said well then I want to go and murder people and I don't feel weird about it that would make you a psycho.
But you're not actually directly hurting someone or directly seeing someone be hurt.
So I actually think it goes to show that your brain has a really good grasp on the difference between reality and fiction or your reality and someone else's reality.
Our third question for the day, do you think there's link between loving, true crime, and Freud's theory of Thanatos.
Thanatos is one of those words that I've only ever seen written down.
I actually don't know how it's pronounced.
So if I am butchering it, please let me know.
But yes, absolutely.
I'll explain what this concept means if you haven't heard of it before.
Thanatos is basically our death drive.
So Freud really believe that within us there are these two drives.
as the drive towards life — eros — the drive towards survival, love, connection, creativity, passion, and then this drive towards aggression, destruction, chaos, and ultimately death.
And he really believed that human behavior is shaped by a tension between these two forces.
And when you are in a good place they balance each other out.
You have an equal appreciation for both.
When you think about the obsession many people have with true crime though, and the way we consume stories of murder, violence, betrayal, you can actually see that maybe this fascination taps into our Thanatos.
We are being exposed to aggression, destruction, and ultimately death from a safe distance.
And as a result, we're kind of vicariously dancing with this destruction that Freud says we're actually, um, drawn to without having to experience it.
We are like submerging ourselves in the representations of violence without feeling it.
And so it might even give us symbolically a sense of control over our death drive as well.
Like here I am, I am standing like ankle deep in horror and gore and some of the worst things that happened to people.
And I'm not afraid.
And that makes me feel strong and that makes me feel powerful.
That said, I would say a lot of modern psychologists might push back and argue that it's more about curiosity, it's more about empathy, it's more about preparedness and problem solving.
You know, we are drawn to understand the why behind horrific things because you know, it allows us to understand people better and to really explore moral boundaries, it's not because we ultimately want that to happen to us, which is what Freud would actually suggest, but love that question.
Finally, why can I read, watch, slash, listen to podcasts about certain crimes, but not others?
I don't know what a fascinating question.
I would go so far as to say that probably the crimes you can't consume content about, feel perhaps too close to home and maybe there's a sense, a greater sense that they might actually happen to you, you know, murder is not actually that common as much as it dominates true crime content and the news, it's not actually that common. Whereas when we listen to stories or, you know, whatever it is about sexual based crimes or domestic crimes, there is this sense of like, that could maybe happen to me, the rates of that are a lot higher, or maybe you know someone who that has happened to and it's that personal
connection with it that makes it so difficult for you to engage with it in, in any way other than from a place of fear and danger.
So I think that's probably what it is.
If you suddenly had a close friend who tragically died because of a murder case or something like that, you might find that, actually, you couldn't consume it anymore.
So maybe it is that the only way you can is if you haven't personally been touched by it.
But I want to see some research on that.
I really want to do some more digging on an answer for you.
But I think that is actually all that we have time for today.
If you have made it this far, drop a little emoji down below, showing me what you think of this topic, it might be a devil face, a scared face, a knife, whatever emoji best represents the true crime theme of the day.
I hope that I handled this tactfully.
I hope that you felt empathy coming through here.
I think talking about true crime is not something that we can take upon ourselves lightly, it is, it's real and it's happened to people.
And we have to remember that at the end of the day, even if the podcast has a cool cover, even if the host is really fun and spunky, like at the end of the day, that is still a real victim.
And we want to make sure that we are treating that with respect.
Remember, if, if it was you, if it was someone you loved, would you want this person to talk about them that way?
And there are so many podcasts and shows who do it so, so well.
So let's give them our attention.
Let's give them our money, I guess in our time, rather than the shows that don't.
But thank you for listening.
If you've made it this far, make sure you're following me on Instagram at that psychology podcast. Let me know what you thought about this episode.
You can DM me over there.
Let me know if you have anything else you want to add, but until next time, stay safe, be kind to be gentle with yourself.
I had so much fun. Exploring this with you today and we will talk very, very soon.
This episode is brought to you by FX.
FX has a new original comedy series coming out called Adults.
Adults is a comedy that feels incredibly relatable if you find any humor in the struggles of being an adult in 2025, you know, like remembering your full social security number or remembering to drink water or perhaps the humor of having your third existential crisis of the month.
The best part is that all episodes will be ready for your next weekend binge.
Watch FX's Adults, Wednesdays on FX, all episodes now streaming on Hulu.
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