📺📺📺 DO YOU HAVE CERTAIN SHOWS OR MOVIES YOU WATCH WHEN YOU NEED TO FEEL BETTER? 📺📺📺
When I was trapped overseas by my abusive ex and I had years of waiting for my chance to put my case to the courts, the combination of working on paperwork for my case, looking after my small son, systematically dealing with post-separation abuse, stressing over what it would be like in court, AND not knowing when it would ever come or what the outcome would be…you can imagine the state of my mind, wired and exhausted.✨
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✨It was difficult to sleep or to stay asleep through the night, and impossible to get my mind out the loop of thinking and thinking and thinking down problems over and over. The one way I could give my spiralling mind a break was to watch something.✨
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✨So, when my son was at school or asleep, I’d watch things I’d downloaded earlier through the slow borrowed internet I could access if I put my laptop into the bathroom (where it could reach the wifi signal next door). Sometimes I had DVDs from the library and, at one point, I had the password for Netflix from someone that lived in the same place as me. That was amazing!✨
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🎇After triggering a panic attack from watching something intense, I made myself a “rule” of sorts. I would not watch anything but comedies or things that were not so close to real life that I might empathise too much and feel sadness or danger.🎇
🎇🎇🎇AVOIDING SADNESS AND DANGER? ISN’T IT BAD TO DISSOCIATE FROM REAL LIFE?🎇🎇🎇
✨Actually, dissociation can be an important survival mechanism and I can talk about that another time. But this is not the same thing. In this case, I needed to give my brain a break from what I was going through, but a safe break, and I felt lucky to have access to these things.✨
📺 I watched random stand-up comedy.
📺 I watched Shrek.
📺 I watched the entire 10 million seasons of New Girl and The Mindy Project.
and various other things I could get my hands on. And most of these I watched multiple times.
✨TO ME, IT FELT GOOD TO GIVE MY BRAIN A SPACE WHERE IT DID NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT ALL THE DIFFICULT THINGS FOR HALF AN HOUR OR MORE.✨
✨But now I know there are other benefits I was getting by rewatching shows and movies I already knew to be fun.
When you rewatch something:
✨It can bring back happy memories of the first time you watched.
✨In contrast to the uncertainty you are experiencing, it can provide predicability, which equates to safety.
✨It can help you regulate emotions because you already know how it will make you feel.
✨You are indulging in an art form, and that is never a bad thing.
✨In a world where we are all trying to get OFF screens, sometimes a little is just what you need.❤
✨✨How about you? Have you used tv or movies as a tool in this way?✨✨
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Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash Thank you!
