The Post Virtual Reality Sadness
by Tobias van Schneider
Also mentioned in the piece was the following study: Virtual reality therapy could help people with depression
Initial results were promising.
by Tobias van Schneider
...I start to feel better physically. Objects seem to be normal again, I don’t feel dizzy or anything. All symptoms I mentioned above are back to normal usually within 30–60 minutes.
But what stays is a strange feeling of sadness & disappointment when participating in the real world, usually on the same day....The intensity of this feeling is usually closely correlated to the length and kind of experience I had in VR, at least for me.
I think about it this way. I just spent a couple hours painting with fire or any material I want in a 3D space in Virtual Reality. I’m so confident & fluid using these VR tools, they feel almost native. I scale my environment up and down, rotate objects and teleport around my own dream world. I feel like god for a couple hours, with magical and powerful tools right at my finger tips. I can do anything I want!
After leaving a world like this...I feel deeply disturbed and often end up just sitting there, starring at a wall because I just don’t feel like doing anything else. I wouldn’t say I’m feeling depressed, but there is a lack of motivation and sad feeling in my chest....
You might find it interesting to read more about Derealizationand this interesting paper on Virtual reality induces dissociation and lowers sense of presence in objective reality
Also mentioned in the piece was the following study: Virtual reality therapy could help people with depression
Patients wore a VR headset to see from the perspective of a life-size 'avatar' or virtual body.
Seeing this virtual body in a mirror moving in the same way as their own body typically produces the illusion that this is their own body....
While embodied in an adult avatar, participants were trained to express compassion towards a distressed virtual child.
As they talked to the child it appeared to gradually stop crying and respond positively to the compassion.
After a few minutes the patients were embodied in the virtual child and saw the adult avatar deliver their own compassionate words and gestures to them.
This brief eight-minute scenario was repeated three times at weekly intervals, and patients were followed up a month later.
Initial results were promising.