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am_Unition  ·  2460 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Video Game Therapy...is it a real thing?

When I was a kid, maybe around age 9 or 10, I developed an irrational fear of vomiting. Why? Because I never puked, at least past the age of when the brain forms long term memories. Stupid, I know.

Anyway, my parents put me in therapy, and the therapist would fire up an SNES at the beginning of every sesh. We'd play NBA Jam while he talked me through my (lack of) logic about vomiting. It totally worked. I got over my fixation and moved on with my life. If I had to guess, the enjoyment of playing video games was then associated with talking and thinking about vomit, if only tangentially. It was enough of a foot in the door to be effective.

Even more effective was when I took a couple of shots after drinking a bottle of red wine at age 19 (I never vomited in the interim, I never get sick). I definitively overcame my fear of vomiting in the back seat of my roommate's Toyota. It felt fantastic.