Thinking about PTSD and Tetris…

I’ve been giving some thought to the whole “Tetris fixes PTSD flashbacks” concept, over the past few weeks.

Some people agree, others don’t. Here’s an interesting discussion over at Vetvoice.com about it.

I have to admit, I have found some relief while playing Tetris. It’s so interactively neutral — no people to shoot, no mortal danger to avoid, no sudden loud sounds and flashing colors to tax my already frazzled system. I have tried playing it when I was extremely agitated about stuff that was coming up in therapy… flashbacks, in particular. For whatever reason, I found the flashbacks subsiding and images of dropping brightly-colored Tetris pieces showing up instead of the shadowy figure appearing suddenly in front of me. It seemed me me that Tetris images were literally replacing the unwanted flashbacks.

Or maybe it’s just me. But I can tell you, my system really started to chill out. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

One of the commenters at the discussion about this over at Vetvoice.com suggested. “And why not win every tetris computer game you play, while you’re at it design a new one!”

It made sense to me, so I decided to do just that. I’ve been working on alternative versions of the game, with different colors. My first attempts are a bit rudimentary, the changes being isolated to the colors alone. But it’s working.

You can get to “PTSTetris” by following this link: http://ptstetris.110mb.com/

I don’t know if it really works, but the logic seems sound. I think we can’t make generalizations all across the board about whether it will fix what’s wrong, but if nothing else, spending a few minutes rearranging colored blocks beats flashing back on wretchedness that intrudes on my regular day, getting all anxious and agitated and freaked out over stuff that happened a long time ago in a very different place.

I’ll probably be creating more color schemes, as time goes on, but for now, at least this is up and running.

Cheers

PTST – Post-Traumatic Stress Tetris

This has not been an easy few weeks. I tend to make light of my difficulties, and try to not get all mired in them, but between my job stress, money problems, social issues, and the resurgence of some pretty intense pain that just won’t quit, it hasn’t been a walk in the park.

I don’t want sympathy, but I do need to say it out loud, so I don’t keep denying the impact it’s having on me.

I think that Natasha Richardson’s fatal accident also threw me for a loop. There’s part of me that doesn’t understand why I could have so many bad falls and survive, while she didn’t have as rough a tumble (from what I read), yet she’s gone. On the one hand, I’m so very grateful to still be here. On the other, I am feeling some survivor’s guilt that is buried very deep and is taking a while to get to the surface.

On top of this, I’ve been dredging up some rough old “stuff” that happened to me 25 years ago that was pretty bad. Basically, I got my wires crossed with the wrong person — I wasn’t reading their social cues very well, and it turned ugly, and that person was not only an active addict and alcoholic, but they were overly aggressive, as well. So, I got my ass kicked. More than once.

It left me not only physically injured, but it set me back pretty intensely in other ways. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong, I couldn’t figure out why it had happened, and I ended up isolating and acting out in un-helpful ways, and generally going downhill and ending up with some nasty post-traumatic stress.

Now I’m dealing with it in therapy, and it’s not pretty. I couldn’t have picked a worse time to deal with this, considering everything that’s going on with my job and health and bank accout. But there’s never a good time to deal with this crap, so what-evah. Fine. I’ll deal with this, too.

I’ve not been sleeping well, and I’ve been having flashbacks. Unpleasant stuff. Trying to navigate all this is bad enough, but my TBI situation isn’t helping. I’m pretty much at an impasse with what to do.

One thing that has helped me with my flashbacks, playing Tetris at http://www.gosu.pl/tetris/.

I don’t know what it is about the game, but I’ve been playing it, on and off over the past couple of weeks, and it actually seems to be helping me with flashbacks. Something about the movement and the colors and how emotionally neutral the shapes are, is very soothing.

I had read something about it helping with ptsd flash backs — and why it may work. I’ll have to dig that up and write about it. It’s pretty interesting, I think.

But for now, I’ve got to get going to work and see what the day ahead of me brings.

Playing Past PTSD – Using Tetris to Relieve Trauma

A little while back, I came across mention that playing the game Tetris can help relieve — or even prevent — post-traumatic stress disorder (esp. flashbacks), if it’s played immediately after a traumatic event.

Can Playing the Computer Game “Tetris” Reduce the Build-Up of Flashbacks for Trauma? A Proposal from Cognitive Science by Emily A. Holmes*, Ella L. James, Thomas Coode-Bate, Catherine Deeprose from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom published a paper you can read here. The abstract is below.

Abstract
Background

Flashbacks are the hallmark symptom of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although we have successful treatments for full-blown PTSD, early interventions are lacking. We propose the utility of developing a ‘cognitive vaccine’ to prevent PTSD flashback development following exposure to trauma. Our theory is based on two key findings: 1) Cognitive science suggests that the brain has selective resources with limited capacity; 2) The neurobiology of memory suggests a 6-hr window to disrupt memory consolidation. The rationale for a ‘cognitive vaccine’ approach is as follows: Trauma flashbacks are sensory-perceptual, visuospatial mental images. Visuospatial cognitive tasks selectively compete for resources required to generate mental images. Thus, a visuospatial computer game (e.g. “Tetris”) will interfere with flashbacks. Visuospatial tasks post-trauma, performed within the time window for memory consolidation, will reduce subsequent flashbacks. We predicted that playing “Tetris” half an hour after viewing trauma would reduce flashback frequency over 1-week.

Now, it’s been a while since I had a really traumatic experience — tho’ the winter storms we had last December did leave their mark. But I thought I’d just see if I could find Tetris online, and I did — JS Tetris 1.17

It will run in your regular browser using javascript, and you don’t need to download anything different or special to run it.

I like this game because it has vertical lines that help me line up the pieces that are “falling”. The pieces are brightly colored. And the controls are on the arrows on my keyboard, not the numbers, which tends to get me turned around. Also, I can restart the game anytime without it complaining at me. Some games make me feel pretty inadequate when I stop them before I finish. Or they try to upsell me and get me to purchase a “full” version. No thanks. I just want to start from scratch.

I don’t know if Tetris does any good in the long-term, but I know after spending a little time playing this a.m., I’m feeling a little more focused.  And after mucking up about seven different tries at filling up the bottom row, I’m ready to do something useful and productive with my time. So, playing Tetris poorly — in its own way — helps me get past my issues, t0o

Something for everyone.