Video Games V. Nightmares: Video Game Training for Night TerrorsDecember 13, 2012 by

The other day I was walking through a wintry land of ruins. My right hand gripped a glimmering sword while the left was poised and ready to cast flames against anyone or anything that I deemed to be a threat. Before long I came across a beast that was clearly not fond of my presence. Seeing as how it was me or him. I chose me, which led to something that looked a lot like this.

Fire blasting a monster from the realm of Skyrim

But then something happened that I certainly didn’t see coming. I woke up. Every gamer has had dreams like this. I know you have because it happens to me all the time. Especially with RPG’s like Skyrim. When a game creates such a vivid reality, it seems to me that it makes it very easy for your brain to recreate that world in your own dreams.

This got me to thinking. Just how intricate is the relationship between video games and dreams? Is there any way to capture any control over these dreams or do games actually affect your dreams at all?

Some quick research led to the concept of lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is simply a dream in which you realize you are dreaming. Once a person recognizes that they are in a dream, they can potentially interact with their dreaming environment in order to experience whatever they would like to experience while in their dream.

Research into the field of lucid dreaming has shown that it helps to fight nightmares. Brigitte Holzinger recognizes this phenomenon in an article for Contemporary Hypnosis. Holzinger says, “Recurrent nightmares… have been shown to be alleviated by lucid dream induction, though it remains unclear whether this alleviation is because of lucidity itself or the ability to alter some aspect of the dream…lucid dreaming reduced nightmare suffering, though nightmare frequency remained unchanged.”

Basically, lucid dreams have been shown in psychotherapeutic research to curb the negative intensity of nightmares. But what does this have to do with games?

Well Pete Casale believes that Wolfenstein helped him conquer his problems with recurrent nightmares. As a sufferer of frequent nightmares, Casale just thought that he was stuck dealing with them for the rest of his life. That is, until he began playing Wolfenstein around the age of 10. It was his first experience with a first-person shooter, which he believes gave him the perspective to fight his nightmares.

First-Person perspective of Wolfenstein

The key to dispatching his nightmares is the ability to turn them into a lucid dreams which he feels are triggered for him by the fear he experiences. Once he recognizes he is dreaming, he fights back against the nightmare and takes control of the dream.

The main pioneer in the academic community trying to tie video games to lucid dreaming is Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. One of the tenets of her research and theories is that, “Video game play increases lucidity because game play encourages absorption as well as enhanced reaction time, attention span, spatial skills, and problem solving skills.”

In one of the first studies Gackenbach performed involving hardcore gamers and non-gamers, she found that gamers have a higher tendency to enter into lucid dreams. Furthermore, a later test revealed to Gackenbach that gamers are more likely to combat their nightmares than non-gamers. “What happens with gamers is that something inexplicable happens,” Gackenbach said in an interview from 2010, “They don’t run away, they turn and fight back. They’re more aggressive than the norms.”

She also had a further comment on the violence level of gamers’ dreams. “If you look at the actual overall amount of aggression, gamers have less aggression in dreams. But when they’re aggressive, oh boy, they go off the top,” said Gackenbach

Gackenbach is essentially saying that gamers almost have a level of training to handle lucid dreaming. “If you’re spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it’s practice,” she said.

She’s quick to point out that her research is anything but completely conclusive. However, she has seen consistent connections between gamers and elevated numbers of lucid dreams.

Gackenbach also believes that certain games can train your brain to deal with certain situations. The idea is that playing a game like Wolfenstein could equip you to handle a nightmare that would require you to fight back. Furthermore, puzzle games can help you develop problem solving skills while in a lucid dream.

Meditation has been seen as the only other way to increase lucid dreams which means that if you would like to increase your ability to have these dreams, but don’t like the idea of meditating, video games are the best way to get your brain aimed in the right direction.

As mentioned before, there is no exact science for handling lucid dreams. Continued studies are necessary to get a fuller understanding of lucid dreams and what a subject can achieve in them. However, lucid dreaming can help deal with nightmares as well as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

People with PTSD have exponentially higher rates of nightmares than those without. Almost 75% of people dealing with PTSD have regular nightmares while people without PTSD have only shown a rate of 3-5%. Lucid dreams have been shown to help PTSD victims curb the frequency of nightmares.

I have never experienced PTSD nor do I have frequent nightmares at all, but I do frequently dream about the games that I’ve been playing. For some reason, it seems to me that it would be likely for video games to help you enhance your dreaming experience regardless of the frequency of nightmares. Think about it. Playing video games could help you become a world conqueror in your dreams as well as the screen. Gamers have a leg up in enhancing their dreams according to Gackenbach, so get to playing your video games. Before you know it Leonardo Dicaprio might show up in your dreams. Then you’ll have a really big situation on your hands.

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