How Cult Documentaries Got Me Out of a Rut
Hello from the Seattle-area where we are deep into the SAD dark times. This time of year is hard for me, as it is for many other people. Some days like today, it seems like the sky never really lightens up and then we’re back in darkness by 4pm. It gets very depressing, especially with all this rain we’ve been having lately making it more difficult to motivate myself to go out on walks. This time of year I really have to pull out all the stops when it comes to being kind to myself, because it can be a really difficult season for me and many others. I try really hard to feed myself well but don’t berate myself for relying on comfort foods when I need to. I try and exercise and go for my little mental health walks, and if worst comes to worst at least do a session on my walking pad.
But one trap that I seem to always fall into this time of year is binging the same few shows I always watch. Sometimes I’ll sprinkle in a comfort movie for a different flavor, but trying new shows this time of year really isn’t something I do often. And as I’ve mentioned before, I think that comfort shows are a beautiful thing to have, but for me, when I find myself consistently reaching for them and not trying anything new, I know I’m in a bit of a mental hole.
Recently, when I found myself reaching for comfort shows over and over, it made me face the fact that I was using them a crutch to not try anything new. I have needed some new content to consume as I am big on TV as a way to relax, but I found myself going back to my old reliables: Friends, Gilmore Girls, and Sex and the City. Too much of a good thing can be bad sometimes, and when I realized that, I knew I needed to push myself out of my comfort zone a bit.
I am someone who has always gravitated towards docuesries, particularly of the true crime sort. When the Twin Flames Universe story came acrsos my radar on a podcast and then via Netflix, I decided to try it out. It helped that as a timely piece of media, a coworker had also started watching it, so I had someone to rehash it with. And then, she turned me onto a docuseries that I had also been wanting to watch for years— Stolen Youth on Hulu, the story of a small cult at Sarah Lawrence. So with 2 docuseries lined up, I decided to abandon my nightly Gilmore Girls rewatch and dive into some creepy cult content.
It is a funny thing to go from a comfort sitcom to a very dark and sinister docuseries— and you might be wondering how that shift is possible. But for me, sometimes going for something in the exact opposite genre can help me snap out of a funk. When I remember this, it’s easier to push myself to start it, because I always seem to feel better after watching something new. It gives me something new to think about, and I think that cult series in partiular scratch an itch that many humans have— curiosity about why people are the way they are and how so many cults pop up and gain massive followings.
Other than the shock to the system feeling that these series provide, they also seem to jumpstart my brain to want to consume more difficult media. Like I said, nothing wrong with comfort shows at all, but they’re not particularly challenging for the brain— at least the ones I gravitate towards— and I think that is why it can feel like when all I’m watching is ‘easy’ TV all the time, I don’t feel very good. For me, I need a variety of types of media, some challenging and some comforting depending on the day and on my mood, and when that is out of balance, I feel off-kilter too.
So even if you’re not the cult-docuseries type, I recommend starting a show that’s out of your comfort zone in some way. For me, it feelsl like a shot of espresso— a change in my routine that wakes me right up out of a funk. Now, with all the media choices out there, it can sometimes get overwhelming to know what to choose, and that type of paralysis is often what gets me stuck in the first place. But I think that there’s something to be said for just picking something and trying to stick it out. Trust me on this one, you never know what weird new docuseries might help shake you out of a funk.