In her book Reality is Broken Jane McGonigal states “Compared with games, reality is too easy. Games challenge us with voluntary obstacles and help us put our personal strengths to better use.” McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. Penguin Press. cmc.marmot.org. While I do not necessarily believe video games are easier than real life I understand what she is trying to communicate. Games are almost always goal oriented and accomplishing goals whether virtually or in life typically fill us with a sense of accomplishment which is often connected to positive emotions such as excitement and happiness. According to a study named Gaming Your Mental Health: A Narrative Review on Mitigating Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety Using Commercial Video Games the two most prevalent mental health disorders are depression and anxiety. They demonstrated that “Commercial video games serve as a useful corollary and easily accessible tool for decreasing the severity of symptoms of depression and anxiety. Commercial video games are usually either freely available or available at a one-time, relatively low cost. In addition, commercial video games possess many important features needed (eg, schemas, controlled in-game scenarios related to specific mental health issues, design, user engagement, and immersive state of flow) to make them effective as a preventative tool or for supplementing traditional therapies in the treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders” Kowal M, Conroy E, Ramsbottom N, Smithies T, Toth A, Campbell M. Gaming Your Mental Health: A Narrative Review on Mitigating Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety Using Commercial Video Games. JMIR Serious Games. 2021 Jun 16; 9(2):e26575. doi: 10.2196/26575
Video games for me have always been an escape. They were always there for me when people were not growing up. I believe games have an amazing ability to improve our mental health by keeping our brains stimulated. Have you ever watched a movie or TV show and you disassociated or struggled to pay attention to it due to intrusive negative thoughts? I certainly have. Lets just say I saw Wakanda Forever in theatres but I didn’t really “see” it since I was going through an existential crisis for 3 hours. If I was playing a game this 3 hour long panic attack probably would not have happened. Idle hands lead to a higher risk of negative thought patterns that can lead to more emotional pain. Playing video games requires us to be engaged. Let’s say you are in your head and you can’t pay attention to any kind of narrative, well just play Call of Duty multiplayer or Diablo and you’re good. You are still succeeding at something. For example, I’ve been playing Call of Duty for 20 years now. I can be going through a death spiral in my head but it rarely affects my skill at the game. Said death spiral slowly goes away as I focus on my twitch skills and get into God mode. A movie or tv show is not going to do this. If I am in my head, a movie is just a series of images and sounds, so I just feel worse about myself since I essentially failed the movie by not actually watching it. It was a waste of time and that never feels good. Games keep us young by honing our coordination skills and training our brains to focus on the present.
“Be present”, that is what my teachers told me and that is what most therapists will suggest you try to do. Focus on the here and now as you can’t change the past nor can you control what comes in the future. The thing is therapists that encourage this are right, you are most likely to be at your healthiest when you don’t think about the past or worry about the future. Focus on the things you can control and things may start falling into place for you. You might feel more calm and less anxiety, and your relationships will flourish. By nature, games encourage this here and now thinking. If I want to beat a hard boss in Elden Ring I have to devote the entirety of my being to beating the dang monster. Looking at you Radhan in Shadow of the Erdtree.
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