Why re-watching your favourite TV is GOOD for you! Expert reveals the hidden benefit to your viewing obsessions
An expert has revealed the hidden benefits of rewatching your favourite TV programmes or films over-and-over again.
Psychologist Wendy Dignan, from Cheshire, has explained how watching a movie, series or single episode that holds a special significance for us on multiple occasions can actually help enhance our wellbeing.
She described the practice as a form of escapism, telling FEMAIL: ‘We become absorbed in TV shows we identify with the characters and become a part of their world and reality.’
She said: ‘It becomes a form of alternative alternate reality for ourselves, and a form of escapism to a better place, possible to a more comfortable place and the characters become friends, they become family, they become a connection to the wider world.’
Going deeper Wendy observed that we cannot control or predict our day-to-day lives, but we can pre-empt what happens next in our favourite TV shows or films.
Cheshire-based psychologist Wendy Dignan told FEMAIL the benefits of re-watching our favourite TV shows, films and series and how it can enhance our wellbeing (stock image)
Watching the plotlines progress provides a sense of control, according to Wendy, because we know that these programmes will work out well in the end, while life isn’t necessarily always so straight forward.
Wendy said: ‘And it sometimes takes us back to a safe happy time, either when we used to watch the show, or it absorbs into a time when we were at our happiest.’
This type of nostalgia is therapeutic and can have a positive impact on our brains, as a recent study suggested the emotional complexity of nostalgia requires the brain to practice emotional regulation.
While most people would associate nostalgia with good things, part of the nostalgic experience is that ‘bittersweet’ feeling of longing or absence that comes with it.
As such, our brains have to balance both positive and negative emotions at once, which has an overall soothing effect on our emotional state.
Wendy suggested that re-watching old shows, during the pandemic in particular, became a thing of safety.
She hypothesised: ‘People probably ritualised watching familiar shows in a way to normalise the world.
‘The shows have stayed the same, and the characters were predictable, all bringing about a sense of safety and normality.
‘And a world at the time of the pandemic was not normal or predictable. So I suspect that was a thing during COVID.’
She added that as humans we are ‘social creatures’ who like to belong ‘to a pack.’
‘We’re sort of hardwired from an evolutionary process to belong to a pack. In a world which encourages less face-to-face contact, with computers and zoom and social media.’
That need to belong to a group is still there but it is not as easily met nowadays in a technology forward world.
However, we can achieve the social groups we crave through the familiarity of characters in a show.
Wendy explained: ‘All giving a sense of wider connection to the bigger world out there in an easier way to access without the complexities of modern day relationships.’
Finally, according to the Cheshire-based psychologist, there is a sense of relaxation in re-watching our favourite TV shows.
She said: ‘It doesn’t require any effort to follow a plot or keep up with characters and plotlines.
‘It’s very relaxing, and you can totally disengage and just relax. It’s like that mindless TV that you watch that you’re not quite sure what happened.
‘But you know, you’ve watched the show, but probably couldn’t talk about the storyline.’
Unpacking this further she referred to ‘car crash TV’, using the Kardashians as an example.
She said: ‘ You know, that fulfils that familiarity, in the fact that you pretty much know what’s going to happen in an episode, you can absorb yourself into this almost fantasy world.
‘But it doesn’t require much effort to keep up the plot lines, and almost watching a show that you know, probably what’s going to happen and can maybe even recite the lines back to front, that provides the same familiarity.
‘It doesn’t require any brainpower to watch it and therefore it’s very relaxing.’