By That whole day, my daughter was playing her favourite song again and again. Unfortunately, that was the song that I hated the most. I had to listen to it, without choice. A few hours later, my daughter asked me, Amma, you said you don’t like this song, so why are you singing it? Only then it struck me that I was singing that song. I was humming that song unconsciously. Do you have a similar experience?
Whatever we see and hear, subconsciously gets registered in our minds, even though we don’t concentrate on it much. We are sometimes not even aware of it. Sometimes we don’t even realize that it’s bothering us in some way.
Throughout my life, I was afraid for my safety and my daughters. I was afraid of dark, lonely places. I was afraid of bushes. I was afraid of stand-alone houses. I was afraid of staying alone at night. From where did I pick this fear? Not from my experience, not from what my close circle experienced, but from horror movies I saw, many of them when I was a kid. I was unaware that it would disturb me as I grew older. I also remember one of my friends sharing her experience of watching a serial killer movie, that she was mentally affected for more than a week and was just crying the whole week.
Movies give the visual presentation of the scenes that are difficult to erase from our minds for a long time. We go out for movies, and spend our money, calling it entertainment. But it sometimes gets rooted deeply inside us causing anxiety later in our lives. Not only movies, what we read, what we talk, what we listen to, everything matters, whatever the source may be. Stay away from information that bothers you, stresses you and depresses you.
Be thoughtful when you take your kids to movies, and also check on what they constantly feed their minds with. It may look like everything is okay. It’s unclear how these embedded thoughts will impact their future life.
After repeated suffering, now I understand that horror, thriller, and crime movies are not my kind of movies. Nowadays I carefully analyze the reviews and pick only feel-good movies that will suit me.
I have started walking away from things that make me anxious. How about you? Are you still listening to the song you don’t like?