What a month February was! Terrifying would be a good word to describe it, as I faced some of my very worst fears. For example, I was on top of a New York City skyscraper, outdoors, with little guard rails and major winds blowing, activating my fear of heights. I could feel the surge of anxiety all the way down my legs. Then I crawled out on a glass platform like the one at the Harris Tower in Chicago, where I looked straight down at traffic with my brain telling me to panic. Heart beating out of my chest, light-headedness, rapid breathing! If that was not enough, I was feeling trapped in an MRI tube, which I hate, but survived. What a month of exposure to some of my worst nightmares that I avoid at all cost, and all this without ever leaving my house!
Welcome to the world of Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy, or VRET. This amazing technology is an extremely effective therapeutic tool for dealing with all kinds of anxiety and phobias such as fear of flying, spiders, crowds, social events, needles, or closed spaces. With VRET, you are immersed in a computer-generated virtual environment, with either a VR headset or by entering a computer-automated room where images are present.
In order to teach our reactive or reptilian brain that these types of fears are primitive survival programs encoded to protect us with fight, flight, or freeze instincts but are not reality-based, we have to be exposed to the perceived threat. With enough safe, gradual exposure, our brain habituates and becomes desensitized. Although we may experience some discomfort with the anxiety-producing situation, it is not felt as life-threatening or catastrophic when the therapy succeeds.
As I experiment on myself, I am experiencing the benefits of VRET. In my most recent VRET sessions, I can now be on the all-glass walkway looking straight down, up, and all around with only mild discomfort. When I started VRET for my fear of heights, I had to stay seated in my chair lest I felt too weak-kneed to keep my balance. I progressed to being able to stand without grounding myself by feeling the chair or desk, and was only mildly uncomfortable.
The goal of VRET is to provide enough sustained, graduated exposure so that the lower, reactive brain gets the message that the threat is not real, as the thinking, upper brain provides factual information. Strategies for dealing with total fear, usually automatic and reflexive, are very different from strategies that are conscious and assessed in reality, which the reactive, reptilian brain is not designed to do.
Skills for dealing with discomfort are very different from avoidance reactions to fear and panic. People can be taught skills for dealing with untrue interpretations of a perceived threat in their thought processes, body reactions, and emotions, as well as how to employ effective behaviors rather than fight, flight, or freeze reactions.
As the brain becomes less reactive, at some point the person has to experience the real situation such as getting on a plane, taking an elevator, giving a public talk, having an MRI, or dealing with a needle phobia to get the COVID-19 vaccine. With virtual reality, the exposure to the frightening situation feels real to the brain/ body system. However, the brain becomes desensitized and develops the ability to interpret the fear as less dangerous, so the reaction in the real context is less intense.
Increased confidence results as we identify new beliefs more in alignment with reality and develop new tools to deal with the situation, allowing greater choices, taking more risks, and enjoying a sense of control in facing perceived threats we once avoided and successfully dealing with them. How great for our self-esteem to be able to give that talk, get that injection, get on that plane, or tolerate that medical procedure without freaking out, knowing we have the tools at our disposal to transform avoidant strategies into opportunities for mastery!
I will look for opportunities to test out my own results to experience how, when the brain changes its survival-based misfiring of inaccurate information, situations become much more workable and develop into opportunities for growth. I will keep you posted on both my adventures and the experiences my clients have with innovative Virtual Reality Therapy. Who knows? Maybe I’ll take up sky diving!