Watching shows on abuse

Watching shows on abuse
O

onlyakid

Should survivors watch the daytime talk shows when the subject of sexual abuse comes up? Or is it a bad idea?

I was watching the weather this morning on one of the morning shows on TV and I saw a promo for "40 year old mom accused of having sex with underage boys..On the next Larry Elder..Today at 9 on CBS2 (local NY CBS affiliate)"

I taped it and was watching part of it at lunch, I couldn't tell whether he was trying to either discredit them, not ask softball questions so that people who maybe were up in the air on the issue wouldn't dismiss the show, or maybe he was just using the kids (16-17 at the time of the incident).

Just wondering if these kinds of shows are more triggering than they are worth

Jason

**edited to explain that 17 year old kid says that he was drunk when the incident occured**
 
Some shows on abuse have been helpful to me. Some just trigger. There was an made-for-TV movie I saw called "Family Sins" about two boys who are so intimidated and controlled by their father that one of the boys starts acting out. It was a very honest look at psychological abuse ending with the whole family in therapy. That was theraputic for me. It was a look at how it was for me, how things could have been different, and the blame for the children's problems was obvious: it was dad.

Other shows just seem to exist in order to exploit the shock of our situation. They don't strive to help--just make the whole family look stupid. That's not helpful to me. Generally, when it retraumatizes or gets into more detail than I'm comfortable watching, I turn it off.

That's just me. Do whatever helps you. I think that's what it's all about.

ForeverFighting
 
Hi, somehow I missed this topic! You can see a small video of the Larry Elder show here. https://larryelder.warnerbros.com/this_week_on_larry.html I think Larry did not ask as hard a question as he should have.

On Dr. Phil today, he had "Is My Son a Sexual Predator", https://www.drphil.com/show/show.jhtml?contentId=3108_sexualpredator.xml This was easily the hardest show I've had to watch! The second half of the show is tomorrow! Both the mother and dad are SA victims, the son in question has said that he is a SA victim, and has also said he is a lier. Tomorrow he is taking a lie detector test. The person giving the test is one of 50 certified to give tests to Sexual Predator's. I feel real bad for this family.
 
I saw the second part of the show today, the son failed the lie detector test. The question on whither he was molested by a woman at age nine came back inconclusive. On whether he molested his younger sister, it came back that he lied. watching the sons face I could not determine if he was sorry over what had happen, or was just scared as to what would happen to him next. I can't remember if they asked about the other 26 people that supposedly molested him. It was very hard to watch the emotions on the faces of his mom and dad. Dr Phil is suppose to be looking in to help for the son.
 
For me it depends on how strong I am feeling. I can't always take it, or just am not in the mood to deal with it. Sometimes I surprise myself and watch a whole show on abuse, never that day time trash though. That just handles the issue to sensationalistic for me. It has to be handled right.
For some reason it is harder to watch about boys who have been molested by men. Strange considering my abuser was female. The recent spate of women teachers abusing their male students leaves me strangely ambivalent. In part I know something of the experience, but because for the most part they are so much older than me(when I was abused)it just does not hit at the heart of me. And it may be that I am back to fighting depression that I am disconected.
But right now my general feeling is I do not want to watch any of it.
 
I can't stand those talk shows. Their motives are pretty thinly veiled under the guise of trying to help people. They profit from the suffering of others, and I won't support it. It's like your therapist treating you for free, but bringing in some nut with popcorn to watch the session and pay for it.

There are the Lifetime-type movies, which are often emotionally manipulative, designed to take bored housewives on an hour-long emotional rollercoaster. They provide some small positive closure at the end, but still a somewhat tragic overtone to keep them tuning into the next one to get their fix again.

Then there are real people trying to get a message out about their experiences, etc. They don't want to profit, etc -- they want to share their experiences for the benefit of others, to let them know they are not alone for example. That stuff rarely makes it to TV.
 
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