youStrapped to a chair in a dingy basement, I do my best not to panic: I inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, and slowly release for eight. But when a bloodthirsty monster appears at my feet and begins to crawl towards me, I don’t need a dial to tell me my heart is pounding and I’m in imminent danger of death.
Welcome to the future of anxiety treatment: a virtual reality (VR) game that teaches you a breathing technique to help calm your nerves, then pits you against a monstrous humanoid that wants to eat you, to practice deploying it in a genuinely inducing way. panic. situations
Developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, with the help of a local video game company, Ninja Theory, the game is being tested as a means of teaching people a strategy for coping with everyday anxiety. For me, this could include submitting a story to The Guardian, on extraordinarily short notice, or trying to date two kids, when I’m already running late.
“We are looking at anxiety as something that most people experience, as opposed to a specific anxiety disorder, trying to teach emotion regulation techniques that could be useful to most people at some point in their lives,” he said. Lucie Daniel-Watanabe, a doctoral student leading the research.
“Therapists often ask people to learn techniques, like breathing techniques, in a totally static, non-committal way, and then say, ‘Try this while you’re stressed.’ But there’s no way for people to try it when they’re stressed in that therapeutic situation. VR allows you to fully manipulate the environment people are in, which can be very helpful in that regard.”
With the VR headset on and a heart rate monitor attached to my finger, I am transported to a rowboat, on a calm lake at sunset. A soothing voice encourages me to inhale, hold, and exhale at the appropriate time points, and as I feel more and more relaxed and my pulse rate slows, the boat moves smoothly forward.
After about five minutes of this, I’m ready to start the next stage of my training: the dungeon. Even though I know it’s just a game, the immersive nature of VR helps suspend my disbelief and I’m surprised to hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears. In the upper corner of my vision, a small dial tells me that my heart is beating significantly faster than it was when I was on the boat, reminding me what I’m here for. I start to slow my breathing, and the dial gradually drops as well, even as I hear a fellow prisoner scream, and look to my left to see a body crawling back out of sight.
Then suddenly the monster is in front of me, emaciated, grey-skinned, blindfolded, a hideous grin on its mouth. I’ve been told that he can’t see me, but he can use my heartbeat to detect my location; the only way to avoid death is to use the relaxation technique to lower my heart rate.
I do my best, but the monster is too close and too horrible. Then, once the monster jumped on me and the screen went black, Daniel-Watanabe tells me that he deliberately put me on a harder level, because many of the subjects he’s tested it on so far were too good to avoid the death.
Getting the balance right, not to mention validating the approach among larger and more diverse groups of people, could take some time. But other VR-based approaches are already being tried within the NHS, for example to help people suffering from social anxiety either agoraphobia to practice everyday scenarios, such as being on the street or inside a store, under the guidance of a virtual trainer.
Partnering with a gaming company could take such experiences to a new level. Gamifying the process can also help motivate people to practice helpful techniques, such as breathing exercises, rather than relying on internal motivation, “which, if you’re in a really tough place, can be tough,” Daniel-Daniel said. Watanabe.
While she would never want virtual reality to be used in place of therapy, “it could be a resource that people could use if they were on a waiting list for cognitive behavioral therapy, to learn some basic techniques in the meantime,” she said. .
As for me, although I would be reluctant to return to that dungeon, the encounter has reminded me to try to breathe slowly when I feel stressed. Even a looming deadline is no match for that monster.
