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The Virtual Reality Therapy (VRT) Coping modules are designed to change negative beliefs and catastrophic thoughts at a subconscious level and replace them with positive coping strategies.
The ability to cope with stress is one of the most important factors in the psycho-biology of health and illness. Psychological factors that influence coping ability (i.e. personality, beliefs and the way we think) are more important predictors of morbidity, disability and disease outcomes than the severity and duration of pain and sickness.
The way we think plays an important role in shaping our response to pain, sickness, anxiety, panic, depression, and deciding the progression and outcome of diseases like AIDS, cancer, viral infections, heart disease and acute asthma.
Our ability to deal with unpleasant circumstances (i.e. coping ability) is shaped by our own unique life experiences. Coping strategies created around a framework of negative beliefs and negative expectations about pain, sickness, and disease can lead to poor treatment outcomes.
Negative belief systems lead to:
- Increased pain sensitivity
- Reduced pain tolerance
- Increased disability
- Slower recovery times
- Feelings of helplessness
- Panic
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Progression towards psychosomatic disorders.
Virtual Reality Therapy
During Virtual Reality Therapy, thinking is narrowly
and selectively focused on a single concept or idea. Concentration is
withdrawn from the "real world", and awareness is internalized
in virtual and imaginary worlds, where you are more likely to be influenced
by suggestions about alternative, more appropriate coping strategies.
Verbal suggestions provided during Virtual Reality Therapy are supported and enhanced using:
- Binaural beats (phased subliminal audio inducing deep relaxation)
- Visual and narrative metaphors
- Color psychology
- Biophilia (our subconscious connection with nature)
- Body language
- Reframing (positive behavioural change)
- Matching and mirroring
- Many other cognitive intervention strategies.
In a virtual reality environment, a deeply relaxed person is more receptive to positive suggestions, which are more likely to pass directly into the subconscious mind. Without conscious analysis or interference by pre-existing negative beliefs already held in the subconscious mind, changes in thinking and beliefs can take place.
Over time, positive beliefs initiated and regularly repeated and maintained by the VRT process are reinforced by "real world" experiences. The framework of negative beliefs can be gradually dismantled and replaced by a modified, more robust coping style, where the person's beliefs support their ability to overcome sickness, pain, anxiety, panic and depression.
Guided REM™
Altered states and dreams are conceptually linked,
so Virtual Medicine has developed the Guided REM™ CD's to support
and consolidate the VRT process.
During VRT, posthypnotic suggestions are paired (i.e. Pavlovian conditioning) to auditory cues, which are used in the Guided REM™ CD's. These cues reactivate suggestions for relaxation and assist in the process of creating a new, more robust coping style.
The process of guiding dreams during REM sleep was also designed to improve sleep quality, reduce the traffic of inappropriate thoughts, and prevent imaginings and dreams dominated by negative beliefs.
The Guided REM™"Coping" CD's are take-home tools for use as regular maintenance of positive suggestions, to continue the therapy after the clinic sessions. They reduce the potential for pre-existing, negative beliefs to interfere with the formation of a new, positive belief system with improved coping ability.
People provided with pre-sleep suggestions have significantly higher levels of positive emotions in their dreams, they rate their dreams as more pleasant, and they have significantly lower levels of anxiety, sadness and aggression.
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