When Your Life Feels Like a Movie: and How This Can be Normal.

On a cold winter morning during lockdown, walking up Fitzroy Street in St Kilda, the scene was striking. Pubs were boarded up with fading advertising material blowing in the wind. Shops had closed permanently. The remaining cafes served customers through small glass windows, like a drive-through rest stop. The occasional person passed by, masked, walking quickly in the other direction. The thought that arrived was almost cinematic: before the virus, this street buzzed with energy. Now it resembles a post-apocalyptic district from a thriller. Cue dramatic music.

It is a strange realisation when the texture of your daily life starts to feel like a film set. But it is more normal than you might think.

Why a crisis changes how reality feels

When we experience a stressful event directly or even indirectly, the brain responds by altering its own functioning. Neurons fire more rapidly in certain areas, heightening alertness and sharpening attention to potential threats. Adrenaline is released, which reduces strictly logical thinking in favour of faster, more intuitive responses. The amygdala, the almond-shaped structure in the brain responsible for processing danger, becomes activated. Because it is also the emotional centre, we begin to experience and interpret events through feelings rather than cool analysis. Time can feel different. Environments can feel strange or unfamiliar. The quality of experience shifts. This is the brain doing exactly what it is designed to do under pressure: prioritise survival over reflection. You can read more about how stress shows up in the body before we are fully aware of it.

The peaks and quiet moments

A global pandemic, or any sustained crisis, follows a rhythm that does feel somewhat narrative in structure. There are peaks of intensity and anxiousness, moments where the stakes seem impossibly high. Then come the quieter stretches: the monotony of staying home, the reflection, the sadness of an indefinite pause. This alternation between intensity and flatness mirrors what we recognise from dramatic storytelling, which may be part of why the lived experience can feel so surreal. We are wired to make sense of experience through pattern and narrative, so when life itself starts to resemble a story arc, the brain reaches for the familiar frame. Our post on when stress becomes the baseline explores how this prolonged activation affects the nervous system over time.

Thinking differently is part of processing stress

If during a stressful period you have found yourself thinking in ways that feel strange, more emotionally charged, less linear, more vivid, this is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that your brain is processing an abnormal situation with the tools it has available. Feeling more than thinking is what the stress response is designed to produce. Once the acute stress subsides, the brain begins to rebalance, and you are able to make better sense of what you experienced. This is precisely why talking about stress and frightening experiences matters so much. Putting words to what happened is part of how the brain integrates and recovers from difficult periods.

Final thoughts

If your life has felt at times like something out of a film, you are not losing your grip on reality. You are responding to genuinely difficult circumstances with a genuinely human brain. Keep talking to the people around you, and know that this too will pass. If you would like support in processing what you have been through, our team at Contemporary Psychology in St Kilda is here to help.