Playing videogames is another drug with which to escape reality. But at least it gives you something to do rather than spending all your time dwelling in depression, which is why I have around 2800 hours playing Heroes of the Storm.
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.
> Playing videogames is another drug with which to escape reality.
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.)
> Playing videogames is another drug with which to escape reality.
"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.
After some very long bouts of self reflection, I've found that I have 4 primary emotional needs: social connection, satisfaction derived from accomplishment, breadth of information to learn, and excitation (something that gets my heard pumping and the adrenaline flowing).
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.
Nicely put, and this is exactly what I dislike about video games. Adrenaline pumps, my heart goes crazy, I sweat and grip the controller till my hands turn white, and I feel totally overloaded.
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
This sounds very intense and it'd certainly turn me off games. I hope this doesn't read as condescending, but have you considered trying some games that aren't based on that feedback loop? Like grand strategy or management games? Few of the deep games that I engage with for a long time have the cadence you're describing.
Yes I like strategy games but I was responding to the type of game that gets adrenaline flowing. Timing games and shooters. Even old prince of Persia was too much for me :)
Your four emotional needs ring true to me. I’ve also spent a good chunk of time playing video games. Can I suggest trying out mountain biking as an alternative source of adrenaline? IME it’s possible to balance the risk if you stay conscious of what you are doing and confident enough to skip a challenging feature when you’re not feeling it.
Thank you for the recommendation, I'll definitely look into it, I've been trying to find an activity that will get me more outdoors so perhaps biking has what I'm looking for.
Also when it comes to video game addiction it's always just psychological addiction, not actual physical addiction. Often correlated with stress or boredom, and when that's removed it's usually not too hard to adjust back from what I've seen.
> Unfortunately, it's not really a permanent solution as intrusive thought and memories begin to show up during downtime.
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.
I've found it helps by forcing focus on a narrow task. In these tests they used tetris, but rockband or guitar hero is similar too.
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.
Good to read I am not the only one. Been depressed for a few months now and HOTS (especially ARAM, which is really fast-paced) helps me on the bad days to put my mind on ease. On the bad days I always feel more relieved and less stressed after a couple hours of HOTS. I hope Blizzard won't pull the plug on this any time soon, till then: see you in the Nexus sir!
I can relate to this, super happy HOTS is working for you! Always love seeing another fan of the game, it feels criminally like a missed opportunity for Blizzard. As a chronic anxiety/depression patient, I sincerely hope this has helped you stay afloat during the trying times life for been for us lately. I'm curious, is the same therapeutic effect present in League/DOTA for you, if by chance you've played those before?
Good to hear it's working for you too sir! I only tried DOTA in college, so don't know about that. LoL I tried but it wasn't that satisfying as HOTS though. Although my preference was always HOTS over LoL. I can imagine LoL has the same effects for someone who likes LoL better. I've met others who gain the same results with completely different games so I believe it all comes down to doing something you enjoy.
it's not really a permanent solution as intrusive thought and memories begin to show up during downtime.
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.
Diverting your attention doesn't help long-term. Read about EMDR, it may be related to this video game concept. If so, the effectiveness will depend on the game as well as how much you engage the traumatic thoughts during play.
I remember when dealing with depression an felt like I didn't have control of my thoughts at times. Doctor told me to "do what you liked to do before it was this way, even if you don't like doing it now".
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.
Seems to me it's retraining the network that it is sufficiently far from the source of the trauma which can't happen until experiences fill in -- not to be confused with just time passing; experiences are the unit of time in the mind
I have the same experience. I was locked at home playing games, gaining weight and loosing friends.
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.
I did this after a traumatic brain injury, and ended up playing too much video games, neglecting other aspects of my health.
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.
I haven't really been able to play it since, although I think that has been more about the evolution of the series turning into a more ... teen drama as far as maturity goes.
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.
My anecdata to the contrary. I feel like I've spent about 6-8 hours of my day on average, playing videogames for the past >20 years (I know, healthy, right?), and even during gameplay I still think of all the worst embarrassing moments at school and the shit one of my parents put me through, and the mistakes I've made at work... No doubt games have a suppressive effect pretty often, but whatever my mental process is, those memories always end up floating right back to the surface.
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 once saw something quite wise, which is the difference between a self soothing and self numbing. Self soothing is an activity you can do to handle a stressor you have at the moment and then you can move on from. But if you have to continually perform the behavior and never actually move on, you’re just numbing and putting off the processing part of pain/trauma.
I have that same issue with playing the piano. I think the problem is that your mind necessarily needs to flail around in the creative process in order to progress unless you're playing the simplest piece on the piano or Tetris on the computer. As such, it becomes increasingly likely over time that your creativity will stumble into something you didn't want to relive and then everything comes grinding to a halt.
I'd imagine that the most brainless casual games would avoid this sort of thing.
As a child playing the piano became a very weird experience (in hindsight). I'd need to practice until a piece became ingrained in my memory, and the only way I could play a piece would be to not actually think about it, and think about something else. As soon as I thought about what I was playing, I'd forget how to play the song. I wouldn't even know where I was, and could only pick up again either at the beginning or major points in the song. Weird.
I had a very traumatic experience at the start of 2020. I remembered reading studies like this in the past, so after it happened I played Tetris on my Switch for a couple of hours.
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.
I honestly have the same studies in my mind and the same plan of action should I ever be subjected to a traumatic experience that warrants it. So well done you, glad it worked
Thank you! I'd definitely recommend people keep it in mind as an option for potential future experiences, and to try Tetris specifically, because that's what the studies seem to all use.
Since everyone is posting their anecdata here's mine having to deal with chronic pain and the stress of lacking a diagnosis for its cause:
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.
Sounds bad what you are going through. Hope it gets better and you get a good diagnosis. I known that if it isn’t easy to diagnose doctors can be useless in general.
There's some overlap here with the therapy technique called EMDR (used to treat acute PTSD). Both EMDR and the Tetris study involve thinking about the traumatic event while experiencing bilateral stimulation.
Studies on bilateral stimulation look really promising as a tool to manage trauma:
I haven't considered Tetris, but I'm researching the effects of Osu! (a rhythm game that requires heavy eye-movement and tapping) on people's public speaking anxiety. I can pretty conclusively show that people who stream with the tag "Depression" and "Anxiety" on Twitch speak considerably more while playing Osu! compared to other games - sort of like this paper but with live streamers https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26100455/ - my interpretation of my data is that people streaming with tags that suggest they are more likely to experience speaking anxiety, speak more while playing games that require heavy bilateral stimulation because they are desensitized to their anxiety.
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.
A theory I found plausible was that EMDR was the brain rewarding you for moving away from a stressful situation, and the eye darting is something you do while moving through a physical space.
This made me think of the various games that move through 3D space. Interesting that Tetris also triggers this.
(1) Research on this has consistently used "Tetris"; who knows if you'd get the same effect from, say, "Xenoblade Chronicles". (e.g. people might not manage the controls, get sufficiently engaged, etc.)
(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.
This sentence from the abstract basically covers your first point:
> 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.
Not feeding people is stressful for the whole experience.
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.
The best method I know is "have a fight with your spouse".
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.)
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.
Um, this sounds dangerous and unhelpful in actually making long-term lifestyle and relationship with food changes necessary in losing weight and keeping weight off.
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.
> "Reducing my diet? That sounds stressful, I think I'll have another real or imagined blow-up with the missus instead. Maybe we could expand this to group bullying sessions."
Yeah, it seems like it would be far more effective just to count calories instead of enduring emotional abuse. I had a bad relationship where I lost weight as well, but that was because it was an unhealthy one that cause a lot of emotional harm.
As someone who played video games a lot during their hospital stays, this has the ring of truth. I have a lot of intrusive memories but surprisingly 14 childhood surgeries aren’t among them now that I think on it.
I play Half Life 2 to ease depression since I won't tolerate the side effects of SSRI medication. It's the only video game I play and I've beaten it literally hundreds of time. I can fly through the whole thing in about 4 hours on the hardest setting I've played it so much. I don't know why it works and I don't want to even poke at it lest it stop working but when I have an "episode" where everything goes gray I just fire the game up and start waxing head crabs. Pretty soon I'm right as rain.
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.
No. The research used Tetris. Their conclusions are likely to generalize to other similar visual/spatial puzzle games (like, say, Bejeweled), but probably not to more realistic games.
This word "trauma" is really fucking trendy right now. Whenever a thing like this starts, I want to know -- how did it get started? Who was the first person to push this?
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.
_The Body Keeps The Score_ is a good intro to what trauma is and isn’t, its history, and how it differs to PTSD.
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).
That's both mildly surprising, given that "shell shock" was coined way back in WW1, and also sort-of not surprising, knowing how CYA institutions tend to be.
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.
etymonline suggest 'Trauma' moved from it's more literal meaning of 'wound' to encompass 'psychic wound, unpleasant experience which causes abnormal stress' around 1894.
I do think it entered the zeitgeist and now there’s a culture of people who believe they’re irrevocably broken, but this looks like a promising treatment plan for people who have experienced something terrible.
Shouldn't the goal be to deal with the psychological trauma rather than engaging in activities that suppress memories of the trauma?
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.
I've gone through some traumatic shit and some of it just could not be dealt with until I had gained some distance from it. It does still need to be dealt with eventually but it helps a ton if it's not something that actively makes you want to curl up into a ball and hide every time you think about it.
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.
I think there has been a pradigm shift in this regard in the last decade.
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.
You can only deal with psychological issues on a long term basis from a position of relative calm, which isn't going to be the case when the sufferer is in crisis.
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.
That assumes the person currently has the capacity to deal with it. In my own experience, trauma can be too overwhelming.
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.
I think sometimes it might be necessary to create a bit of a buffer between the truama and "dealing with it." When it's still fresh it can be hard to regulate one's emotional state, and it's nigh impossible to "deal" when the thoughts of the situation/event send you in to a really bad emotional state of panic and endless rumination because you either lack the tools for emotional regulation, or utilizing them doesn't even come to mind in the first place. A mind under psychological distress is a messy dark place, and only after the fact do you look back on things and wonder why you spent such a long time suffering instead of working yourself out of it.
Some do need to escape from the reality to get a bit of relief, and can't handle the confrontation directly too much. That is understandable.
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.
Sometimes you have to treat the symptoms so you can get the person functional enough to then start treating the root cause. For example, this is the point of anti-depressants and fever-reducing medication. They don't treat the underlying disease. They just keep the symptoms from killing the patient long enough to do something about the disease.
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.
Sounds like they are actively encouraging suppression. I don't believe this will lead to 'Good'(tm) things. The way to properly deal with trauma, if one wants to heal psychologically and disable the 'intrusive' memories, is to actively encourage the recall of those memories until they become so unexciting that they no longer have a reactive emotional component.
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...
Glad it works for you, but doesn't sound like a generally applicabale approach.
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.
Even though there is controversy around his ideas, I have an armchair theory about why this study yielded plausibly successful results, and it's that Maslow's "peak experiences [0] provides a framework for it.
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.
>We investigated whether reconsolidation—the process during which memories become malleable when recalled—can be blocked using a cognitive task and whether such an approach can reduce these unbidden intrusions.
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.
I really had to dig into it to figure that out 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.
Interesting, and I can definitely see this for tetris, but I doubt you'd get the same result throwing a veteran with PTSD into an FPS .. probably needs a few more experiments to yield conclusion in the title.
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.