Why We Re-Watch the Same Series: A Psychologist Explains | Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi
- Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A.
- Jul 13
- 7 min read
MBC1 — SABAH AL KHAIR YA ARAB · February 2021
Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A., DHA Licensed Clinical Psychologist, joined the hosts of MBC1's Sabah Al Khair Ya Arab during the COVID-19 pandemic — a moment when millions of people across the Arab world were at home more than ever before and reaching, again and again, for the same familiar series they had already watched a dozen times. The hosts wanted to know: why do we do this, what does it tell us about our psychological state, and when does it cross a line?
What We're Actually Looking For When We Watch
When people turn on a series or a film, the reasons are layered. Entertainment and escapism are the obvious ones — but two other needs are quietly driving the choice, and they matter more than we tend to acknowledge.
The first is stress regulation. Watching something absorbing after a long or difficult day is a genuine physiological intervention. Research published in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind (Rieger et al., 2018) found that entertaining media — particularly content that generates positive engagement — measurably supports psychophysiological recovery from stress, reducing cortisol and promoting the kind of psychological detachment the nervous system needs to recuperate. It is not a passive habit. It is the body reaching for a tool.
The second need is social. Many people living in cities like Dubai are far from their families. The background noise of a familiar series is doing something real: when you put on Friends or another classic you have already seen a hundred times, the characters create a kind of ambient social presence. There is warmth in a room that is technically empty. During a pandemic — when that warmth was stripped from daily life almost completely — this function became even more essential.
What It Means When You Re-Watch Something You've Already Memorised
This is where the clinical picture becomes particularly useful. When a person consistently returns to things they have already seen — to the point of knowing the dialogue, knowing what happens next, deliberately choosing predictability over novelty — the nervous system is communicating something worth understanding.
A fatigued nervous system does not want new stimulation. It cannot comfortably process new information, new narratives, new characters. Re-watching a familiar series offers engagement — enough input to keep boredom at bay — but at a much milder, more manageable intensity than anything new would demand.
The cortisol dimension of this is supported by established anxiety research. Dugas and colleagues' foundational work on intolerance of uncertainty — one of the most robust models in anxiety psychology — identifies a core dimension they call desire for predictability: a strong, measurable preference to know what will happen next, which is directly associated with anxiety and worry. People high in intolerance of uncertainty find ambiguity not merely uncomfortable but genuinely threatening. Choosing a film whose ending you have already seen is not irrational — it is a very efficient way of managing cortisol by eliminating the uncertainty that would otherwise spike it.
Anxiety, at its core, drives people toward control — over their environment, the people around them, the situations they face. When that anxiety is chronic and sustained, the resulting exhaustion produces exactly this kind of controlled preference: familiar food, familiar routes, familiar shows. If you notice this pattern becoming pervasive across multiple areas of your life, it is worth taking seriously as a signal.
Can TV Be Therapeutic?
The honest answer is: within limits, yes — and the research is specific about what those limits are.
Pleasant, familiar content does create a genuine state of psychological security. When the mind registers safety, the nervous system settles, cortisol falls, and the body that has been braced begins to soften. Rieger et al.'s research confirms this: hedonic entertainment — content that is enjoyable and pleasant — amplifies recovery experiences more effectively than neutral or intellectually demanding content. So the instinct to reach for something light, warm, and already loved after a hard day has real physiological logic behind it.
What television cannot do is substitute for the deeper forms of regulation the nervous system actually needs. It creates a temporary state of calm. It does not process what has accumulated.
The Male Brain and the Remote Control
One of the hosts noted something she had observed: that men seem to find real peace in front of the television in a way that looks almost medicinal. She was right to notice it.
Research on the testosterone-cortisol relationship — documented in detail by Mehta and Josephs in their dual-hormone hypothesis (Psychological Science, 2010) — establishes that these two hormones operate in an inverse dynamic: when cortisol is chronically elevated by stress, testosterone is suppressed; as cortisol falls through genuine relaxation, testosterone recovers proportionally. For many men, the act of settling into something engaging but unstressful creates exactly this shift — the stress response begins to ease, and with it, the hormonal balance begins to restore. The man watching television after work is not being passive. He is, in a meaningful physiological sense, recovering.
The content matters, though. The same biology works in reverse: research tracking men watching high-stakes sports has found that tense, uncertain outcomes raise both cortisol and testosterone simultaneously — the hormonal signature of competition, not recovery. The key is content that is engaging without being threatening.
When Does It Become Too Much?
A reasonable threshold is around one to one and a half hours per day. Beyond that, research begins to show clear associations with depression. A 2017 study published in Preventive Medicine Reports (Madhav et al.) found that adults who spent more than six hours per day on combined TV and screen use showed significantly higher rates of moderate to severe depression. Binge-watching specifically has been associated with a cluster of psychological symptoms — stress, loneliness, insomnia, and depression — with research published in Frontiers in Psychiatry (2021) documenting these associations directly during the COVID-19 period.
The mechanism is partly about sedentary behaviour and disrupted sleep, but it is also about achievement. The nervous system is designed for activity and forward movement. A consistent sense that nothing productive is happening — that the day passed without anything to show for it — quietly undermines psychological wellbeing regardless of how much stimulation was received.
The structure of Arabic television makes this genuinely difficult to manage. A single episode of a popular drama runs close to an hour, and once the pull of a storyline takes hold, four hours disappear before anyone notices. The solution is not guilt — it is awareness and deliberate choice.
What Actually Works Better
The most effective stress reduction tool available is not a screen. It is other people.
Genuine social connection drives oxytocin release, which directly reduces cortisol. Physiologist Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, whose decades of research on oxytocin are among the most cited in stress neurobiology, documents this as one of the most powerful biological regulators available to us — and unlike television, its effects are lasting rather than temporary.
During the pandemic especially, I kept returning to the same advice: find ways to connect within your immediate environment. Leave a small meal on a neighbour's doorstep. Make a Zoom call instead of just sending a message. Re-establish real contact with people who are physically close to you. These things are not just pleasant — they address the biological need that re-watching Friends is approximating but cannot fully meet.
There is also a layer that goes beyond the hormonal effect. When you know that someone nearby would notice if something was wrong — a neighbour who knows your name, a friend in your building — that knowledge creates a deep, lasting sense of safety. Belonging is not abstract. It is felt in the body, and it changes how the nervous system holds itself.
What to Watch — and What to Avoid Before Bed
When choosing what to watch, lean toward content that is uplifting, morally grounded, and aligned with your own values. Content that disturbs or overstimulates does not disappear when the screen goes off — it continues processing in the background.
Before sleep, stop all screen exposure at least one to one and a half hours before bed. Research on sleep and cognitive restoration — including work by Matthew Walker documented in Why We Sleep (2017) and Charles Czeisler's foundational research at Harvard on light exposure and melatonin suppression — establishes that even calm, low-stimulation screen content interferes with the sleep onset process. The time before sleep is when the nervous system needs to process the day's accumulated loops. If we replace that window with external input, we deprive the brain of exactly the consolidation it needs.
Use that hour instead to write down anything you want to remember or act on the following day. Let the mind settle. The depth of sleep that follows is not a small reward — it is the foundation of the next day's resilience.
About Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi
Ms. Sarah El Nabulsi, M.Sc., M.A., M.A. is a DHA Licensed Clinical Psychologist (License No. DHA-75083705) based in Dubai, and UAE Director of the Transcendental Meditation Organization. She has been featured on MBC, MBC1, Sky News Arabia, Dubai TV, and BBC Arabic, and is the founder of the online courses Anxiety 101 (Level 1) and Master Yourself (Level 2).
Related reading: Why Do Arabs Repress Emotions? A Clinical Psychologist's Perspective
Citations:
Rieger et al. (2018) — movie watching and cortisol/psychophysiological recovery
Dugas et al. — intolerance of uncertainty model, desire for predictability
Mehta & Josephs (2010), Psychological Science — dual-hormone testosterone-cortisol hypothesis
Madhav et al. (2017), Preventive Medicine Reports — screen time and depression in adults
Frontiers in Psychiatry (2021) — binge-watching and depression during COVID
Uvnäs-Moberg — oxytocin and cortisol
Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep (2017) + Czeisler — screen time and sleep
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