I recently went to a Muay Thai fight in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I’ve never seen boxing or fighting in real life before. I was looking forward to an interesting night.
I know I am sensitive to violence in movies, so I wondered if seeing people hit each other would bother me. And yeah, it kind of did.
As I watched the fights, I had some weird thoughts going through my head, like:
- That guy has a friendly face. He looks like a nice person.
- I hope he’s ok.
- I wonder if he hates fighting but has to do it for the money.
- Maybe the boxing gloves make the punches not hurt so bad.
- I hope they are getting paid a good wage for this.
One guy really overpowered his opponent. He was punching him so hard and fast over and over that I just wanted it to stop. I don’t like to see someone getting hurt.
I kept thinking about the fighters’ feelings and thoughts. I leaned over and asked my husband what he was thinking–if he ever felt bad for them or wondered what they were thinking. Not really, he says. He was just enjoying the fight.
High sensitivity strikes again! 🙂
I totally agree! Once I was sick with influenza and i stubbed my toe, but although I could feel the impact, I couldn’t feel the pain, but oddly enough, that made me more aware of what I did, and to make sure it didn’t happen again. This sense of injury felt so much more natural to me, like nociception!
This is how I have to think about pain in order to make ANY sense out of it. The somehow natural inability to consciously control sensitivities to everything, including pain, and the pain of knowing others are suffering, does not feel natural to me at all.