Computer game play reduces intrusive memories of experimental trauma (2015)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
My experience has been that negative thoughts and memories are less likely to occur while playing, especially if you have to communicate verbally with teammates in order to succeed.
Making creative works using your hands is another non-digital outlet which keeps the mind focused.
Unfortunately, it's not really a permanent solution as intrusive thought and memories begin to show up during downtime.
Perhaps, but that isn't what this research (and the related research it builds on); this is about a specific kind of task (Tetris is the specific instance studied in this and some of the other research, but there is some on closely related, similar tasks) and how its use closely after traumatic events prevents formation of intrusive memories from the trauma, and how (combined with particular other techniques) it can disrupt established intrusive memories from past trauma.
> Unfortunately, it's not really a permanent solution as intrusive thought and memories begin to show up during downtime.
In the form studied, it actually is a solution with permanent effects.
EDIT: “Tetris is highly-effective, unsupervised, self-applied first aid for psychic trauma” is actually a very big deal (as is the supervised treatment result for established trauma.)
"Escaping reality" is as old as humanity, I don't see why we need to think of it as a drug, or even a negative thing. Are books drugs? movies? plays? stories told around a fire? Video games are just the latest (really awesome) iteration of that.
Obviously there are some disclaimers. Some games are designed like a drug, or like gambling, and some people are more susceptible to addiction. But I think in general, we need to stop feeling guitly about taking part in something that we enjoy.
Most things in my life that I occupy my free time with can meet those needs, art and music fill the first three, programming meets the middle two, but only gaming fills the 'excited' factor. I have yet to find any other activity that isn't dangerous which gives me the same rush as winning a game of dota2 or overwatch (or what have you). What's more, games not only fulfill my need for excitement, they also fulfill -all- of the aforementioned needs to a decent degree. Sure, I won't feel as accomplished finishing a setup in factorio as I would finishing a piece of music, but the difference really isn't all that great. And for breadth of knowledge? Games are designed to be grok-able, whereas many more existential domains are full of hard or nuanced problems. Lastly, (multiplayer) games are just as social as my other life pursuits if not more so.
Guess what I'm saying is that I've had trouble finding a suitable replacement for games, they really can serve as an omni-activity. Despite all that, they still give me a fair portion of guilt when I devote time to them. I can only assume that is my parents' sensibilities which have been ingrained into my conscience. As a result I've quit them multiple times, and the jury's still out as to whether I personally view them as a vice that needs to be severely moderated, but what keeps me coming back is that need for a rush. Nothing else gives it to me in such a balance of low risk / high reward.
Put me on a mountain bike on a crazy descent, in REAL danger, and those same fears lead me to the highest highs.
Maybe it's just the cadence. I want 5-10 minutes of intense fear focus followed by good long period of relative safety to bask in the conquest, but video games just keep pouring shot after shot of adrenaline.
Not a scientist, but it feels like what I want is endorphins -> adrenaline + endorphins -> endorphins, and what video games gives me is adrenaline + endorphins -> adrenaline + endorphines -> arenaline + endorphins
if you are fan of blizzard games then this is your game, most of the known heroes are in the game trying to gank each other
Hospitals can definitely use it as a protocol to help prevent or minimize the establishment of the traditional semi-permanent traumatic stress disorders, though.
Traumatic stress can often cause depressive symptoms, but this technique isn’t directly addressing depression - it is addressing the prevention of traumatic stress disorders in the first 24 hours after a traumatic event.
There's some evidence to support anxiety being tied to rumination, thought loops, hypervigilance and such. If you're able to force yourself to focus on a narrow task I think that can help relieve some of that in a way that lingers for a bit. Makes it easier to reframe stuff.
Sometimes breaking the cycle is enough to stop things. Other times it's enough to give the reprieve needed to for other methods to take hold. And, yes, sometimes it's just a temporary thing and removing it brings back the bad stuff. Videogames can do any of the 3 above roles though.
Maybe the most trivial of games. Even naughts and crosses has deeper implications than the physical mechanics.
Most games have a grand appreciation of reality like reading Frankenstein or watching The Lighthouse.
Perhaps it's the low stakes context that makes them more accessible, and thus informs our understanding of things outside that context.
For me that was video games. So I played final fantasy and other games a great deal and found that the issues I was thinking of often did start to fade over time.
I don't know if it was the fact that the task required my attention so much or a sort of zen experience I could get with the game ... or just time passing, but it felt like it worked.
The only downside I felt was how not "in the world" I was at that time. Not really socializing much and etc in favor of drowning myself in video games.
Ultimately I think it helped me cope, but I also was aware that it was a very alluring sort of way of life to work, school, escape into video games, and nothing else.
So I stopped playing games and started to live again. First I was not in the shape to meet people a lot. It was too exhausting to concentrate on them. So I started running and exercising regularly. It helped me cope with uncontrolled mind. Tiring myself physically really improved my mood and sleep. After half the year I felt so fit that it also boosted my self confidence. This also helped me to look attractive for other people. I stoped looking like nerd wasting time with games, but I started to look like fit guy full of energy ready for anything.
Computer games felt the same as medication. It did not help me to recover but it just helped me not feel shit about myself and kept me at the same place.
Can't say that overall it was a net positive experience, although it did get my mind off the trauma and the traumatic memory and it did help moderately with depression (I am not depressed now, about a year later)
> Ultimately I think it helped me cope, but I also was aware that it was a very alluring sort of way of life to work, school, escape into video games, and nothing else.
Ah yes, that's generally the conclusion I came to as well. I'm scaling it down as of this moment, personally.
It was never drama free, lots of personal stories and reflections, but it felt like those topics were somewhat more balanced against a larger story / mature / etc. After a while everything seemed to get more immature / sappy / etc.
I think I'd add 2 suggestions (not a scientist, but I think they're worth considering): 1) it matters whether your mind is fully engaged in the game, or you have some room to bring in these shitty memories (for example, I played quite a few idle games, or MMOs that involved a lot of waiting) and 2) if you still find yourself reliving this shit during gameplay, maybe you're better off seeking other escapes (*let's not get destructive though, ie cocaine/heroin/meth), or doing productive things (sublimation in psychology) and slowly tackling this problem yourself using gradual accomplishments, building your confidence, breaking down events one piece at a time, etc.
I'd imagine that the most brainless casual games would avoid this sort of thing.
While I did deal with high levels of anxiety for a few months after, I haven't dealt with flashbacks or intrusive memories at all. At this point it feels like a distant memory that I don't really think about at all anymore.
N of 1, but it seemed to help in my case. When possible, I plan to do the same following traumatic events in the future.
All things considered, I think I'd rather not find out if it helps in my case :(
Video games distract me like a cat gets distracted by the laser pointer. And when it's time to go to bed and get a shut eye all my worries, anxieties about the pain and unemployment come flooding in and I haven't slept more than 5 hours for months. And when I was younger games helped me with the lack of friends and cope with stuff like my parents being divorce and getting bullied. My grades fell apart too.
So yeah, video games like all other reality escapes work, but if you ask me I'd rather get a diagnosis, a treatment and a job than shove my face in the next big game release again. I'd rather play video games the same way a casual/social drinker drinks alcohol, and not like someone doing it to avoid something that's painful.
Studies on bilateral stimulation look really promising as a tool to manage trauma:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5061320/ (note the before / after section)
Is there anyone else looking at or any other material on the subject of EMDR + video games? I can't find anything on the subject, which is kind of ridiculous considering how obvious the link is.
This made me think of the various games that move through 3D space. Interesting that Tetris also triggers this.
(2) "Experimental Trauma" looks like a problem for the Human Subjects Review Board. I've been thinking about a weight loss plan based on inducing a psychogenic fever but I think it would be too rough on people.
> We predicted that reconsolidation of a reactivated visual memory of experimental trauma could be disrupted by engaging in a visuospatial task that would compete for visual working memory resources
The fact that it was a video game wasn't the important part, and completely different styles of game wouldn't have triggered the mechanism they're proposing. From what they're saying, I'd sooner expect things like or Sudoku or Minesweeper to work, rather than Xenoblade Chronicles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Xillia
with all of my characters on autopilot.
> I've been thinking about a weight loss plan based on inducing a psychogenic fever but I think it would be too rough on people.
Have you considered just... not feeding them? We know that works.
The psychogenic fever seems to have effects that last for at least a month (you're not that quick to refeed) but it is only stressful (but extremely so) when you initiate the experience.
We've managed to initiate it in two people a small number of times but we're nowhere near a protocol that would be repeatable.
If you have a good imagination you can amplify your emotions and reach a "fever pitch" even if you don't have anything real to fight it.
This raises both of our body temperatures for about 48 hours, I lose about 5 kg over the next two weeks (the weight loss continues after the fever is not noticeable) and kept it off.
If I were trying to make it repeatable I'd assemble an encounter group and either have the group gang up on an individual or create a moral injury situation, maybe both at the same time. (e.g. the latter is the most repeatable way to produce harmful stress but the damage is also enduring, if somebody who was in the crowd felt guilty about participating or being complicit in the bullying that's the worst kind of stress you could give someone.)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
Tibetans claim to have a way to do it.
I have gotten uncomfortably hot when I visualized a phoenix and merged it with my avatar in the physical world but I tested it and it doesn't raise my core temperature.
It is very easy to use biofeedback to control your peripheral temperature (that's what a "mood ring" is good for) but core temperature is harder. I measure core temperature with a thermometer that goes under my tongue but maybe I could get one of those in-ear thermometers to be wearable in a meditation session.
Additionally, ganging up on an individual explicitly as a weight loss plan sounds like a great way to develop an eating disorder, given that simple exposure to the pressures of instagram is known to do this to girls.
What? O.o
As an addendum, the only thing I don't like about my M1 Mac is HL2 doesn't work on it other than through Crossover Office and even then it's extremely glitchy. If anybody has suggestions to get it running well I'm all eyes.
And an article that looks like it's covering the same or similar research: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/04/09/5230114...
Seems to me that it sort of started with legit PTSD from Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans after 9/11. And then it got taken up for a little in some feminist circles -- first like, "women who've been raped have PTSD", and then "a bad date leaves you with PTSD", and then, "to be born outside the privileged categories gives you PTSD" (so you can be forgiven for whatever bizarre behavior). But then it died down. Until recently, when there was a big resurgence on a bunch of news outlets -- "trauma, trauma, trauma".
I wish I could trace this meme backwards to the source.
Clearly people think they can get an advantage out of this idea.
Interestingly, it also covers the absurd lengths the militaries of various countries went to to suppress the idea of trauma arising from the world wars (e.g. ‘shell-shock’ could appear in no US army document for any reason, until the 70s I think).
It's possible I'm being ignorant here, but I'm convinced that, while modern PTSD and the broad class of phenomena known as "shell shock" do have a lot of overlap, there was also something qualitatively different, something physical, to do with the brute force of pressure waves that hit soldiers in WW1, that, say, Gulf War vets didn't usually experience (though of course, sometimes they did). You can find videos of the poor bastards who came home from WW1; they seemed to suffer not just from a kind of mood and anxiety disorder, but from some kind of full-on nerve- or brain- damage -- Parkinson's type stuff. Like, it was well known (but seldom said out loud) that the pressure waves would destroy men's testicles. That's serious. Now think about what a concussion does to your brain, or the slurred speech of a heavyweight boxer (or the more recent NFL concussion scandals, which seem to have been forgotten). I have a feeling that not all "PTSD" is the same -- that, on the one hand, there's chronic adrenaline overdose, and on the other, there's actual concussive damage. But hopefully I never have to develop any real expertise in this subject.
Sounds like this is the sort of thing your book recommendation would elucidate. Thanks for that.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=t...
During the pandemic I went down the rabbit hole of the fitness industry. You will find thousands of videos on YouTube/memes on forums that teach people that they can get over an ex by just focusing on getting shredded and developing a killer physique. To me that is akin to what this study suggests: avoid the trauma by distracting yourself with another activity. While self-improvement is commendable, I don't think avoidance tactics are the best way to treat the root cause of the problem though.
Ultimately, sure, you need to sit down and open up the vault you've put this pain in and deal with it. But it's a lot easier if you don't get consumed in a wave of remembered fear and stress every time you even think about touching that vault. This article suggests that distracting yourself with Tetris soon after the painful experience helps avoid that happening.
It really used to be about "dealing" with trauma. Now AFAIKT many psychologists believe that the end result matters the most. If you suppressed your trauma and now you feel fine and functioning, who cares? This is especially true for sever trauma, whatever works works, suppersion is OK. (We have plenty of lifetime examples. e g., Many Holocaust survivors and veterns who actively run away from reliving or even thinking about their experience, and conducted an healthy life)
I'm not saying someone should avoid treatment, only that we should not dismiss suppression as an illegitimate tool. It works for many (not for all of course).
Sometimes it is perfectly fine to not lift every stone to see what is crawling underneath, and quite alright to let sleeping dogs lie. The operative word is "sometimes", and a professional counsellor might help define when that "sometime" strategy is best applied. It is not avoidance; it is strategic limiting of analysis.
Distraction (like medication) is a tool that can help the individual get their head above water in those moments, but, yes, presumably that wouldn't be the end goal.
Medication or other interventions may be required before therapy techniques become effective. Video games have fewer side effects than anti-depressants and aren't physically addictive like tranquilizers.
But, the panic/anxiety surrounding the trauma after the fact is often due to resistance of experiencing the emotions/memories associated with the event. Allowing the 'bad' feelings in and going through those feelings is most always going to be healing.
A person with particularly bad PTSD may not want to see a therapist and start rooting around in those bad memories. If the overall anxiety level associated with those memories can be reduced, then maybe the therapy can start.
Depending on the magnitude of the trauma, this may not be an exercise one does by oneself, and in one sitting. It could take some time. That I know of, directly related in the western psychological world is one such technique called 'exposure therapy'.
The repression suggested in this study will guarantee that the emotional reaction will come roaring back to the surface when some strange, probably unrelated situation triggers the memory once again.
I've had 3 instances of extreme trauma in my life. After the 3rd, I heard about this technique. It has been completely transformative for me. N=1 and all that...
I really disagree with a couple of your statements: "The way to properly deal with trauma" there really isn't a proper way imo. Individuals have different ways.
"will guarantee that the emotional reaction will come roaring back to the surface when some strange, probably unrelated situation triggers the memory once again." Not really true, not always. People do successfully repress, and some people have a really negative experience from treatments like the one you suggested.
People are different and their experiences are different.
> The 12-min trauma film consisted of 11 different scenes involving actual or threatened death, as well as serious injury; the film functioned as an experimental analogue of viewing a traumatic event in real life. Scenes contained different types of context; examples include a young girl hit by a car with blood dripping out of her ear, a man drowning in the sea, and a van hitting a teenage boy while he was using his mobile phone crossing the road. This film footage has been used in previous studies to evoke intrusive memories. The film was projected on a 100-cm × 133-cm screen using an NEC LT25 projector. Viewing distance was approximately 175 cm.
The armchair premise is that we naturally orient our identity and sense of self according to memorable experiences, and as a consequence, our most intense experiences (good or bad) tend to become a constant reference point for who are believe we are.
High and low watermarks in our life become defining to an identity, which our ego then adopts and does its job to defend it (the self) from all threats. You can "become," the trauma, and your sense of self, via the mechanism of ego, protects the integrity of that identity against all potential threats to it - even though the experience isn't you. Video games in this study enabled a kind of re-basing of identity from the experimental trauma by providing an equivalent or greater intense experience which memory and identity can rebind to. It's also possibly why psychedelics are thought to "cure" depression, because by using an intense experience to rebase your identity on memories other than the negative ones, you in-effect redirect your ego to protect the right thing about your true self instead of it reinforcing the negative experience that had substituted itself into your identity because it was so intense.
Utter armchair mind hacking, but it's testable. We can treat the ego as a kind of clutch mechanism where you can disengage it to switch gears, and re-engage it to apply the will of self. Intensity disengages it.
If you rethink depression as a kind of mental autoimmune disorder where the defense mechanism for your sense of self (ego) turns its aggression inward, a super intense experience can unbind the ego from that identity long enough for your true self to re-establish its primacy. Suicidal ideation in that framework is a craving for that level of replacement intensity, and not necessarily death itself, just something intense enough to release your ego long enough to switch gears.
Jumping out of a plane, graduating university, having a kid, winning an award, are all examples of positive peak experiences people remember as reference points to locate their sense of self.
What I'm suggesting is the implied underlying mechanism behind the study could be applied more generally to developing more controlled peak experiences that "blow your mind," in a way that dislodges the ego defence long enough that you can overpower a traumatic memory with a current more intense one, so when your ego re-establishes itself, it is protecting the integrity of the new experience as a rebased identity.
Crankery, probably, but if you do find a way to blow your mind and it improves your outlook, video games are fun, but I think we need to find more things that really blow minds.
It seems like there's nothing "special" about video games, here, and that anything that sustains attention over a period of hours ought to work. A few decades ago, this might have been prayer, for example. I would expect reading and coding to work as well.
> We used the traumatic-film paradigm because it is a well-established prospective experimental tool for investigating intrusive-memory development. In this paradigm... participants are shown short films containing scenes depicting traumatic events. Such films reliably induce intrusions over the following week.