It's difficult to pinpoint, really. Kind of a generalization, but I feel something, and am experiencing what I feel is the correct response to the situation. And I wasn't always able to do that before. It's like a connection was made. Before I would watch funny movies, but I would rarely laugh, or even recognize the jokes. Watch a sad movie, but be unmoved. I would understand, this is funny, this is happy, this is sad, etc. But would have almost no response.
One of my girlfriends hated it! "How can you not find that funny!? Why aren't you laughing?! We can't even watch movies together."
I went through a movie watching phase for a couple of years. Usually at least one per day, often two or three per day for maybe three years.
And at some point something must have clicked. Now movies make me laugh and cry, sometimes. It still doesn't seem to be as easy to get a response out of me as it seems to be for other people, but some things started to change.
And for lack of a better word, that makes me happy.
(I even found a character that I really relate to!)
Plenty of the time it's still kind of a bland analytical procedure for me. I found at some point that watching movies seemed like it helped me understand social interaction a little better. It's literally watching a group of paid professionals act like a specific thing together, and some of it seems transferrable. People do look like that and act like that with each other in real life sometimes.
So that's at least part of an answer, that may not be the best possible explanation.
Something like that, anyway.
Although, for different reasons (maybe), action movies have always given me an adrenaline response, and that isn't nearly as strong anymore. And I've never been able to watch horror or gory movies. I really can't handle it with them.
It's almost like the extreme response has been available, but the subtlety was not. Which I guess kind of makes sense.
Anyway, I get carried away.