Have you just finished a series or even a movie and you feel the lack of its heroes as if they became your friends?
Does their story occupy you as if they were part of your life just because you watched them on screen for hours?
For some, it goes beyond the feeling of missing out, it reaches a feeling of inner emptiness or they may develop "post-movie depressive syndrome".
What is "post-movie depressive syndrome"?
And why do some people get it?
Why do we feel emotionally empty after watching movies and series?
"Over time, we can develop an intimate relationship with these characters we follow as we become aware of their thoughts and feelings and share jokes, hard times or their victories. As we follow their story, we live in a knitted world full of emotion, and when their stories are over, we feel the sadness of losing a friend." .
This is how the psychologist and founder of the California Center for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Anxiety described Kevin Voss about his summary of the secret of emotional attachment to the characters and stories of series and movies, stressing that the wonderful nature of fictional stories can make real life boring and bleak, so some people prefer to continue the life they saw on the screen.
On this point, said psychologist and author of "Depression Totally Hidden: How to Break Free from the Ideal that Hides Your Depression" Margaret Rutherford, we do not usually experience exciting events in our daily lives, which are full of boring routines such as brushing teeth, going to work and finishing housework, which are They are all things that do not capture the imagination or curiosity like dramatic stories do.
While other psychologists believe that feelings of emptiness and depression after engaging in something enjoyable, indicate your great enjoyment of the experience and that you have become a part of it and can provoke your feelings and weaknesses, and after the end of this experience, reality seems empty of the feelings that were aroused, according to the magazine "Mail Magazine" ( MEL Magazine) American.
That is why some artistic stories are an escape from the boring life, or even the bitter reality that a person lives in real life, and the mere end of the story that provoked his feelings, means returning to this boring reality again, a feeling he may hate, which makes him feel the lack of heroes who forgot him boredom This reality, as well as the feeling behind the feeling may be just curiosity to complete the stories in a certain way, or the viewer's feeling that there are details and other information that still occupy his mind about the hero.
like that;
We may find parts of our characters or feelings that we miss in the characters of the work, so we feel connected to these feelings that are on the screen in front of us, in the sense that dramas and stories may be a way to feed our feelings about specific things that already exist or are missing.
We may find parts of our characters or feelings that we miss in the characters in the work (pixels)
Post-movie depression syndrome.
There are relatively recent concepts that review some of these theories;
Such as "Post Movie Depression Syndrome" and "Post-Series Depression", as you define that concept as: the sadness that a person feels after watching a series or movie or reading a long story, and it afflicts him When he feels the story is over but he doesn't want it to end.
A feeling is formed such as longing for the situations and words experienced by the characters who in one way or another fused with their story as if there are no limits, and this feeling of lack may lead to re-watching or reading the work, perhaps the person notices an additional detail that he did not notice the first time, or at least tries to restore that The feelings he experienced the first time, and this feeling prevents him from enjoying another story or watching a new work quickly.
Transcend the feeling of emptiness after the artwork is finished
The aforementioned psychologists and others believe that remembering one's positive things in his real life can help him not to get attached or exaggerate the association with characters from fictional worlds and their stories, with the need to reflect on the attractive aspects for us in the artwork, because it often either evokes a missing feeling in life. Realism or another reinforcement is present.
There is nothing wrong with feeling sad as long as the person does not drown in it and leave it to fade away on its own quickly, and this helps to take a break from this type of movies, series or books, so as not to reinforce the feelings built by the experience and the story that the person is attached to away from his reality.