Second Exercise - Describe What You Observe

Here I'm being asked to watch some video content with the sound turned off and to describe what I see. I'll also need to watch out for any judgements and interpretations I make, as the point here is to describe just the facts. The book suggests that being factual about difficult situations I'll encounter in the future will help me to get less distressed. It will also create some distance between the facts and my interpretation of them. I can feel sceptical feelings surfacing so I'm going to gently squash them down for the moment.

Given I've just come back from a trip to Vienna, I'm going to watch the trailer to the Third Man. The exercise asks me to comment out loud on what I see, and not to make any interpretations such as 'fantastic film!', 'what a fine camera angle!', and so on.

Okay, I've just watched the trailer and said things out loud such as 'Ferris wheel', ‘graveyard’, ‘cat’, ‘hand in grating’, ‘best film ever made’, and so on. The one thing I noticed was that doing this switched off most of my other thoughts.

Now I'm going to watch a whole scene from The Third Man and see if that's any better. It isn't, really. I should have chosen a Tom & Jerry clip. I fact, that's what I'll try now.

This is more successful. Lots more to comment on, and I pause the clip at the point where Jerry speeds away in a motorised car pursued by a robot cat.

Given I tend to dissociate in highly stressful situations (‘this can’t be happening!’) I'm not sure that I'm ever going to be able to manage this level of observation under pressure. But I suppose there's no harm in trying.

I'm going to move on to the next exercise and see what that brings.