At the end, Carol looks into a mirror and says to herself... "I love you" a few times. Do you believe that she really believes/feels it, or is she just going through the motions in an exercise suggested by someone else? Have you ever tried it yourself? If so, how did it make you feel?
shareShe was going through the motions.
No, I've never tried it, too weird. Anyway, don't we all talk to ourselves in our head? Why would you need to vocalise your own thoughts to yourself?
Actually it was this last scene that made me read the end of the movie in a positive light. To me it appeared, only after the final scene, that she was finally making progress.
I visited some stupid pseudo healing center in the middle of a forest last summer, and ignored all the spiritual crap they were throwing at me. But even so, just being somewhere else in a peaceful place helped me a lot. So I feel like Carol might have been doing the same - ignoring all the crap being thrown around, but learning to take a step back from life and recognize herself in the mirror as a person.
And yes I've done that looking in the mirror thing before, only when I was going crazy, but it always helped ground me.