Is playing horror games a good way to get desensitized to fear, or it gonna backfire and make my anxiety worse?
Y'all know the cliche thing: "best way to deal with your fears is face your fears" blah blah
Does that actually work?
I have anxiety and I'm also into horror. I dunno if it's helped, but I don't think it's made anything worse at least.
I don't know but I can say horror video games are not as creepy to me as movies. Maybe its because I can control what the characters do or maybe its the limit of graphics. Im wondering if you do it to do old ones first where the graphics kinda stink so its not as visually scary. Im playing the original halflife and it kinda has monsters and horror without being fully in it. Many of the enemies are soldiers who were sent to tie up loose ends like your character.
Just don’t play at night?
Anxiety isn't necessarily caused by actual fear. Why the hell am I terrified of making a phone call? I don't think consuming horror media would have any effect on it at all one way or the other, TBH.
Why the hell am I terrified of making a phone call?
Because they might actually answer!
And then you would have to talk on the phone….shudders
And give you the answer you want! 🥹
What if it was a game that was played by you making phone calls to [insert horror trope here]?
That one is social anxiety and is because in the past if you got excluded from your group of humans you'd starve or freeze to death. We aren't evolved to deal with the hundreds and hundreds of people that the modern world requires. More used to like extended family groups and small communities.
Playing horror games may make you more desensitized to the fear of playing horror games.
Playing horror games will probably not help too much with broader experiences like generalized or social anxiety, or any kind of specific fears or reactivity. Those would be better addressed through therapy, self-help programs, meditation, exercise, and/or maybe medication if appropriate.
If you want to look into some self-study therapy books, you could try books like "The Happiness Trap," "No Bad Parts," or "Getting Past your Past."
"The Happiness Trap" is an acceptance and commitment therapy book, which is structured around using mindfulness and acceptance skills to work with your internal experiences, instead of fighting against yourself (which typically makes us more anxious and fearful).
"No Bad Parts" is an introduction to internal family systems, which is kind of like the idea in the Inside Out movies.
"Getting Past your Past" is a self-study book based on the information processing model used in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. This kind of approach may be more useful if some of the fear and anxiety is related to specific painful or traumatic experiences.
Also, if the anxiety or fear is about intrusive or unwanted thoughts or images, you could take a look at "The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD."
Mindfulness and meditation practice is helpful for any of us, for all kinds of topics. There's plenty of ways to build a meditation habit, such as starting with 5 minutes per day, and there are lots of videos and apps that can help. The Calm App and the Insight Timer are both free to try, however I might try the Calm App first, since they recently changed the sign-up steps for the free version of the Insight Timer.
Exercise can also be really helpful for anxiety, depression, and just general well-being. Rhythmic movement helps to regulate the nervous system, and a 20 or 30 minute walk can be a great way to burn off excess energy before starting your day or going to a big event.
If you do want to play horror games for their own sake, I really like the Resident Evil series. They're kind of medium horror/ action split. The RE2 Remake is a fantastic zombie game. RE4 remake is more action/ less horror. RE7 is more horror and some gore.
Thanks for those book recommendations.
I will add that I remember Silent Hill 2 being particularly creepy a couple of decades ago. No cheap jump scares, but a steady uneasiness that was very well executed. I didn't like playing it unless my college roommate was around. Still planning to check out the remake one day.
You need to try for yourself. Or consult a therapist who knows you well enough. Us idiots on the internet cannot look inside your head.
therapist
cries in American
That was only option 2.
I think if you ramp up properly, it could work. Don’t dive straight into hardcore VR survival horror, but work your way up from creepy to scary to terrifying and see where that gets you.
First time I played a vr horror game, my stomach dipped and grumbling as the eerie atmosphere left me uneasy. I’d never played alien isolation before then, so it was two new experiences in one. It was going alright until I heard something directly behind me and in one motion jumped and tumbled over my couch and filled the room with defensive fear flatulence.
The headset was still on and controllers in my hands, and I was paralyzed between avoiding death by alien, and trying to avoid throwing the expensive electronics preventing my escape, all the while quietly screaming. Which is to say, yeah, I agree, go slow.
I’ve been playing VR horror games since the HTC Vive came out, and there is truly nothing like it. I’d been playing flat horror games since the original Alone in the Dark and NOTHING compared to even janky indie VR horror when done right.
If you have a PSVR2 or PC headset, The Exorcist Legion is a pretty solid example.
My heartbeat went through the roof with RE4 (remake) 🫠 (Isn't it like supposed to be the least scary RE game?)
Can't wait to try RE7 😖 (Already got spoiled by watching playthroughs when it originally came out, but still its creepy af nontheless)
I think RE7 is probably the scariest by a good margin. I played it on PSVR and it was amazing. 8 has a really intense section and 4 has its moments for sure, but they’re both significantly more action-focused.
Maybe.
I grew up reading Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and John Saul. I now think horror movies are kind of silly. I like the Scream series because they're smarter. They're good slashers but you have the whodunit aspect as well.
I can't speak for everyone though. And maybe it's not so bad to be scared of horror? Like, isn't that part of the fun?
Never got into horror games though. The problem I have with that is, being that it's a game, either you have the agency to peek behind the curtain, or you don't. With a movie, you only see what they want you to see. I never actually played horror games, as such, but there were a couple scary moments in games I have played, like Fallout 3 with the Dunwich Building. It's a random building toward the southwest corner of the map that is not connected to any main or side quests. (I think one of the DLCs had a tie in to it, though.) When you go in, you find that you can't leave the way you came in, and as you traverse the building looking for another way out, you see flashbacks that are handled like jump scares. It's really not that scary, but the first time through might be. There's a similar area in Fallout 4 (Dunwich Borers, so, same company) and you experience some of the same stuff.
I wonder if thats what makes movies more terrifying, like you have no control and you told that dumb motherfucker NOT to peek behind the curtain but they couldnt hear you cuz its just a screen. Horrific Irony
I have anxiety attacks no matter what I do, so might as well play the games I like.
there are MANY types of horror and fear – at best, horror games might desensitize you to jump scares … but not a heck of a lot beyond that
Classic silent hill 2 was traumatic. I still struggle with playing horror games. 10/10 would recommend
It depends what your anxiety is driven by. Social anxiety is mostly the fear of being driven out of the group, which would evolutionarily lead to death. You'd be better with social interaction games or multiplayer ones to connect with more people in a safe environment.
Generalised anxiety where you're hyper aware of every risk and on edge all the time expecting something bad to happen, horror games might work with desensitisation though often in horror the bad things do happen and you just happen to survive by running away or fighting back which is probably not the most helpful thing for anxiety.
Specific fears around ghosts - play FEAR and shoot ghosts. Specific fears around zombies play resident evil, probably the remake of 4, and shoot zombies. Existential dread about what makes you human and the existence of consciousness and souls, play SOMA (has a mode where the enemies don't insta death you now so you can experience the story and the incredible locations), probably won't make it less scary but is a great game.
Immersion therapy isn’t quite so simple and certainly isn’t always effective. I bet that if you did 10k hours of horror gaming, you’d be pretty numb to it though.
That's assuming you can reach even a fraction of that amount to begin with... Musicians and athletes don't hit that amount because the hurdles towards expertise are scary to them.
I have anxiety but love horror movies. I struggle to play horror games though. Just something about being more immersed in it can push me over the edge.
That depends a lot of what the fears are and how you do it.
It has to be exposure to the stuff you're trying to challenge your anxiety about, and you should work up to it slowly.
A game with heights might be helpful for a phobia of heights if employed correctly, but a game with space monsters jumping out at you is unlikely to challenge social anxiety, or generalized anxiety. It has to be exposure to the thing you're actually afraid of, not just fear itself.
Reading about exposure therapy, especially related to your particular challenges, would be a good starting point
Maybe. If that is all you can do, then sure, there will probably be some bleed over into real life.
But remember SAID - Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. Long term, horror games will not do a whole lot to really alleviate other fears in your life that are holding you back. In order to overcome those fears, you must face those fears.
"Exposure therapy" might be a helpful term for finding literature on this. It's effective for certain fobias under certain conditions. I've only heard about it for anxiety related treatment. Not sure how horror movies would fit in. Best of luck! (ps: not a therapist, but know therapists who make use of it)