We all have at least one movie or television show that we could (and do) watch over and over again and love it no matter how much we watch it. We could see the same scenes a thousand times over and they would still bring smiles to our faces. It’s what we turn on for background noise while we do more menial tasks like wash dishes, fold laundry, or cook dinner. It’s what we turn on at the end of a long day when we don’t have the attention span or energy to try something new. It’s what we might turn on to fall asleep to, if we maintain such habits.

It’s an all but proven fact that to the traumatized mind, rewatching the same movies and television shows is extremely common, favored for its consistency and the fact that we already know the series of events and how it all ends. We won’t be taken by surprise or unexpectedly triggered by something we’ve already seen. One does not need to have experienced trauma in order to have a “comfort show” or two, but it holds more utility for those of us who have.

There might even be more utility beyond what I described already.

Recently my daughter had to take some antibiotics for about a week, and she didn’t like the taste of it. She was getting a little worked up over needing to take it, and I told her that I understand that taking medicine can be difficult. I told her about a trick that I use that helps me to get down the pills that I need to swallow twice a day (I take four in the morning and four or five in the evening, depending on the day of the week, then a couple more at bedtime). I told her that I think about a scene from one of my favorite television shows, and it distracts my attention from the medicine enough that I can swallow the pills without thinking too much and getting too worked up about it to manage it. She asked me what scene I think of, but it was hard to describe to her, so I suggested that when she take her medicine, she think about manatees (there are a couple videos on YouTube she likes to watch about manatees to learn more about them). Well, for the week she needed to take this medicine in morning and evening, she talked herself through thinking about manatees in order to swallow and it worked quite well, just as well as thinking about a specific scene from my favorite comfort show works for me. (Hooray!)

Here is where it does get just a bit weird, though.

What is my favorite comfort show, you ask? It’s Everybody Loves Raymond. That’s not necessarily weird, it’s a great show that’s both hilarious and hilariously relatable to anybody with some crazy family dynamics. There is humor and heart too. There’s plenty of conflict and an overbearing narcissistic mother and constant disregard of boundaries…which is why I feel like maybe it’s a little weird that it’s my comfort show. You’d think I would find all that extremely triggering! The family is Italian to boot, just as my mother and that whole side of my family is. You’d think it would hit too close to home for me. But it doesn’t really seem to bother me in that regard at all. I have all of the seasons on DVD and later bought them all on AppleTV when digital media became more of a thing.

The icing on this comforting and weird cake is that particular scene I make myself think of in order to more easily swallow my meds. It’s the scene in the last episode of season 6 where Debra and Marie have had a disagreement that blows up into a full-blown feud, and Debra has a moment of remembering some good connections she’s had with Marie, and goes to try to talk to her, to no avail. So then Debra screams to Marie that she doesn’t know what she was thinking coming over to talk to her, because the last month of them not talking has been the best month of her life. And then it ends with a cut to Robert lying in bed swigging some anti-nausea medicine because he’s feeling sick with stress from all the fighting.

The scene that keeps me calm enough to swallow my pills is a huge argument between two characters and how it affects a third character? What…?

I guess there’s a part of my brain that still finds comfort in the familiarity of a screaming match.

Per my therapist’s instructions, I am working harder at not being too judgmental of myself. If Everybody Loves Raymond is a show I really enjoy, I should just let myself enjoy it. I don’t need to think so hard about it. Hopefully, my writing here about it comes across more as both perplexed and bemused but self-respecting too. If that scene with a big argument is a useful tool for me to be able to take care of myself, then so be it. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a movie or show you love, as often as you like.

Everybody loves a comfort show.