Dear Prudence,
My mom and I are very close and have been most of my life. If she witnesses something awful like an animal being hurt or killed, she tends to give all the details. A few years ago, I started dealing with my anxiety. I suffer from intrusive thoughts and images, and I’ve realized a number of these images come from her descriptions of what she’s witnessed. Over the last year, if she’s started to describe something awful, I ask her to stop and say I can’t hear it. Sometimes she takes this in stride and sometimes she gets upset, but it always stops the conversation. I feel bad because I know this must be a way for her to process what she saw, but I cannot take it. I know her boyfriend also asks her to stop when she does this, so I know she doesn’t have someone else to talk to about it. But I just can’t take the visuals—it makes me so upset. Is there a better way I should be handling this? Am I in the wrong and should I just find a better way to deal with my anxiety about these things?
—Anxious Listener