Part 1 of Self-Reg Through a Filmmaker’s Lens

Self-Reg Videographer Aaron Peacock Explores Key Self-Reg Concepts in Different Movie Genres.

I’ve been behind the camera here at the MEHRIT Centre for over a decade now, recording and editing courses, webinars, and live events like the Self-Reg Summer Symposium. That’s the unique way I’ve learned Self-Reg; through a process of osmosis, constructing course content with Stuart and Susan as the colony of squirrels spied on us through the bay window.

This might explain one of the novel ways I apply my Self-Reg learning. Outside of the MEHRIT Centre, I’ve written and directed TV shows and short films, often Horror, Comedy, and Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and I frequently find myself thinking the same thing; If these characters I’m creating had a little Self-Reg knowledge, they’d have a lot easier time dealing with the barrage of slimy plot problems I’m throwing at them. 

So, with my favourite holiday Halloween fast approaching, and as a self-appointed spooky movie aficionado, I thought I’d break down a hypothetical horror movie through a Self-Reg lens. 

Let’s start with the set up of a pretty run-of-the-mill ’80s horror flick. A group of teenagers canoodle at a dilapidated summer camp on a remote lake amongst the evergreens.

Spying on the kids from behind a towering pine is our classic ’80s horror movie villain. He’s wearing a vintage leather lacrosse helmet and brandishing your weapon of choice: a weed whacker, a croquet mallet, or maybe just a very sharp spatula. Let’s call our movie “Terror at Camp Shanker.” Things are about to go down!

Whether you love a good-bad horror movie or you’re someone who’d rather hide behind your popcorn bucket, we can all agree that these types of movies are built on stressors: stressors that build tension, make us queasy when something violent happens, and, of course, the final stressor in the ubiquitous closing scene when you think the killer has been dispatched, but he’s missing from his final resting place, lying in wait off-screen for the sequel.

Let’s do a little Self-Reg experiment and use the Five Domains of Stress to look at all the classic ’80s horror tropes in “Terror at Camp Shanker” through a Self-Reg lens!

Exploring the Five Domains of Stress Through a Self-Reg Lens

The Biological Domain

This domain encompasses the physiological stresses that affect the brain-body system and its use of energy. These include sleep, hunger, illness, pain, temperature, movement, sensory input, and other physical demands.

At the camp, our teenagers are huddled around the fire to keep warm because the only thing colder than our monster’s gaze is that icy chill off the lake. Bobby and Luanne came to the camp together and are huddled under a blanket, but Peggy and Henry are both single, sitting on either end of a long log, shivering in the night air. They’ve been on the road in a puttering, beaten-up car since eight in the morning and are both exhausted.

Peggy and Henry are closest to the woods, but their biological stressors mean they’ve got no idea that old Helmet-Face is just over their shoulders.

The Emotion Domain

The emotion domain includes the stress associated with experiencing strong emotions, both positive and negative, such as excitement, fear, frustration, worry, loneliness, and shame.

I think we can assume Bobby and Luanne are excited, nuzzled up under that blanket, hormones ablaze. Henry feels lonely, looking on: things aren’t too hot in the romance department for him. Peggy is frustrated for a similar reason. Luanne said the fourth person on the trip was the kind of guy she’d really dig, but Henry is a bespectacled computer geek. No offence to our bespectacled computer whizzes out there; this was the ’80s, after all.

The Social Domain

The social domain includes the stress involved in social interactions, relationships, belonging, and reading and responding to social cues.

This is where we come to Helmet-Face himself. He was never good with other kids. In fact, when he was a kid, it was his difficulty communicating, taking turns, and managing conflict that left him ostracized at this very camp and led to both his return to the abandoned camp all these years later and the maladaptive coping strategy that is his sharpened spatula.

The Cognitive Domain

The cognitive domain includes the stress involved in thinking, attention, learning, memory, problem-solving, and other forms of cognitive load.

Helmet-Face leaps out of the woods, growling like a bear and swinging his spatula like a bear holding a spatula.

The teenagers are on their feet, screaming at the top of their lungs and dashing away from the beach towards the safety of the cabins. Their plan is to make it to the visitor’s centre by the camp’s front gates, where that rusty payphone might still have a dial tone. However, the twisting forest paths are like a labyrinth.

The teenagers are completely unfamiliar with where they are, and all these decisions are being made as fast as possible. So, rather than processing all this information, they duck into one of the much-closer bunkhouses: the one that only has a single door with a broken lock.

The Prosocial Domain

The prosocial domain includes stress arising from empathy, moral concern, injustice, and sensitivity to the needs, emotions, and distress of others.

The teenagers are trapped. Helmet-Face towers over them. He reels back his spatula, ready to strike. Helmet-Face has never had any friends, never felt like anyone else, and this has driven him to become the cliché before us. He’d rather get rid of all the other people than even try to understand them, let alone care if or why they’re screaming.

But then Peggy speaks: “I love lacrosse too, Helmet-Face! My parents even have Toronto Rock season tickets!”

Helmet-Face pauses, spatula still held high. A flurry of images rushes through his mind: him and Peggy eating stadium dogs at a lacrosse game, faces painted with giant red maple leaves, each in their favourite player’s jersey. It’s suddenly a lot easier to empathize with these teenagers, especially when one of them could be a… friend?

The same images rush through Peggy’s head, and she smirks. This big, broad-shouldered bear is the exact kind of guy she wishes Luanne had set her up with.

But alas, the moment passes. Helmet-Face turns away and barrels back out into the dark, leaving everyone uncharacteristically alive for the sequel.

FADE OUT

Understanding Stress Behaviour Through Shanker Self-Reg

So, what’s to be gleaned from this Self-Reg experiment? For one, a Self-Reg lens can be applied everywhere: to our art, our music, and our movies. It’s a fundamental way to understand all the facets of human nature. Everything is driven by that push-and-pull relationship between energy and tension.

And two, looking at the situation with soft eyes, it’s just possible that all that bad behaviour from the Michaels, Jasons, and Helmet-Faces in our lives can actually be reframed as stress behaviour.

For further learning, check out the 5-Domain Framework 101 with Susan Hopkins, a self-directed course where you can become a stress detective and explore the unseen energy-zappers that fuel frustration, shutdowns, and the behaviours that challenge us the most.