Going Into Your Mind
We used virtual reality to enter someone’s mind — and fix something that was broken.
It wasn’t Inception, or Star Trek, or any number of science fiction tropes. But we really did find a way of conjuring a psychic landscape in a virtual setting, and used it to make changes in the mind.
It was an experiment applying psychotherapies in VR: visualize, navigate, transform, and — most importantly — heal. The therapeutic effects remained strong more than a year later, after a single thirty-minute session.
A quick disclaimer: although built on sound and established principles, this was as exploratory as it was experimental, and used a small sample size (one) rather than a rigorously designed and controlled study. The person was already familiar with therapy outside of VR, and this process and these results may not be the same for everyone.
Content warning: the therapy transcript deals with child abuse as discussed in a clinical setting; respectful, redacted to be appropriate for sharing and without graphic or sensationalized elements, but it may still be uncomfortable for some. You may wish to skip to “The Science”.
If you or someone you know are at risk of child abuse, please visit ChildHelpHotline.org to find help. For adult survivors, visit HAVOCA.org.
The Story
The following is a transcript of the experimental session. Events and essential dialog here are accurate, though not verbatim. Additional context and narrative flow have been reconstructed from notes and journal entries in order to present a clearer sense of the experience, without altering the essential facts or order of events. Contents have also been edited for privacy, brevity, and appropriate audiences, and are shared with the permission of all parties.
We stepped into a shared dream world, brought to life in Virtual Reality through simple artwork in MultiBrush. Strokes of textured paint and lighting effects hang in the air; crude but effective, evocative.
“How do you call them?”
“When I meditate, I think of a campfire and they come.” And so they set about painting a campfire into being.
Not a typical fire of wood-ember and smoke, this one was made of elongated electrified crystals floating vertically above the floor of the clearing. All around was obscured by a black mist, a bare hint of mountainous silhouette in the distance. A flat bench divided light from dark, marking the edge of the crystalline firelight and the encroaching vapor.
A giant pair of glistening red lips took shape where a face would be, if it belonged to someone sitting on the bench. No other details were visible, and none were required — this was a familiar “part”, an aspect of the subconscious psyche and one of “them” which the fireside setting was meant to attract. This part represented a caregiver-antagonist and one of the artist’s first recovered sense-memories and associated trauma.
“Why did you make this?”
“To know if it was working. The campfire feels right, and this is the first part that came to mind. It feels frightening and familiar — but not overwhelming. I feel more aware and in-control in this space.”
“Lips” sat silently, quietly malevolent, as a stone archway was brought into being. Drawing each stone took time, with limited copying and pasting; the artistic process, inexpert though it may have been, was as much a therapy as the resulting tableau. The artist grew to the size of a giant, turning the comfortable clearing into a shoebox diorama and bringing the heights of the arch into reach. Taking time to create also meant taking time to process, to decide the fit and feel of the design, and prevent emotional overwhelm from what came next.
Multiple layers of thick, black, oil-slick paint hung from the ten-foot-tall archway in a sibylline curtain. The artist, now back to their normal size, sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at their creation, tears of deep apprehension on their cheeks.
“Some young part of me is terrified of this.”
“This” was a representation of a mental block, a ceiling in the therapeutic process beyond which they had not been able to progress: every time a self-guided therapy session moved toward this unknown topic their mind would slip off of it, distracted by something — anything — else. Or, perplexingly, they would fall asleep; the subconscious mind protecting itself from reliving the underlying trauma which had at some point completely overcome them. That same protective subconscious now accepted this digital facsimile as a representation of its guarded secret: memory wrapped in meditation and imagination, given form, and made truly visible for the first time.
“What would help that part feel safe?”
They thought for a moment, and after a pause: “A shield.”
And so a shield was conjured, iconographic and stereotypical, with two thick arm bands on the back. They picked it up, holding it on their left arm between them and the dark curtain, and the terror subsided. It was not yet safe to move forward, but it was no longer unbearable to sit in its presence.
“Why is that part afraid?”
“It thinks I can’t handle it, that I’m too young and unprotected. Too fragile. It thinks I’m a child, maybe at most eight years old.” Traumatic memory is often frozen to some apparent age, unable to move forward and integrate with additional lived experience. This perceived-age impasse is common in the “parts” paradigm of Internal Family Systems Therapy, and approaches for dealing with it are well established: “I’m letting it see me as I am now, older and stronger. It’s surprised, and cautiously agrees to let me move forward.”
The shield was laid aside with care and deliberate movement. After a brief contemplation they drew another iconic form: a large heart placed on the floor next to the shield, an offering of openness, of resilient love and understanding; of forgiveness.
It was now safe to approach the arch, and in the magic of VR this was done with perfect simplicity: stand up and walk over to it, moving across the physical room and the simulated environment simultaneously. The body was in a large open space prepared for this experiment, but the eyes peered through a marvelous technological window into a parallel world of their own making: an externalized representation of their own mind.
They stepped into the curtain.
It was made of multiple sheets, and they paused between them, halfway through the arch. We knew there was nothing on the other side because it hadn’t been built yet; but nobody knew what would happen when they got there, what this critical threshold represented.
They took a deep breath and moved through the curtain, sitting cross-legged on the floor on the other side. A featureless plane extended only a little way before falling off into the same persistent darkness of the nighttime setting. They waited in the emptiness for inspiration; they had been allowed to come here, and fully expected a revelation.
The wait was not long: a sense memory unfolded in their mind, reliving an event decades in the past. “Sense” memories are a visceral record of literal sensation: sight, sound, smell, and so on — particularly touch, this time. Recall is different from episodic memory, which is abstracted into details and facts with limited “cinematic” replay most of the time. Sense memories can be incredibly intense, running parallel to or totally supplanting corresponding senses during recall; these are frequently the basis for flashbacks.
The artist began to paint again, a small lozenge-shaped bundle not much more than a swaddled blob, representing a very young child still in diapers. They later described the triggered episode as “fear of impending abuse, and an act of resistance — much more than just ‘not yielding’, the impression is of actively fighting back.” But those small, feeble attempts are overpowered and restrained.
The ensuing abuse was present in the newly recalled memory as well, but treated as unimportant — glossed over as largely inconsequential to the issue being explored. Physical pain is temporary, while emotional wounds are long lasting; trauma can manifest in surprising ways, oriented around unexpected details. In this instance, the hurt came not from the assault, but from an unbridled rage in response to it.
“I was furious. I was not a passive witness; I was capable of expressing myself, and I was denied my voice. Denied the right to have a say over my own situation…That denial, that utter disregard for my right of self determination and safety, created a bottled rage I could not release.
“I had said no, as firmly and physically as I could, and they continued anyway.”
They picked up the small bundle and placed it within their chest, feeling along with it. Then wrote NO! in the air, giving voice to that stifled resistance, accompanied by a flurry of angry blue spikes emanating from the combined bodies of child and artist. More tears were allowed to flow.
Healing was remarkable and uncomplicated: the memory had been witnessed and validated. The origin of the rage was now untangled, and no longer threatening explosive anger — what the subconscious had feared would overwhelm the rest of the Self. The symbolism of that healing was also uncomplicated, but amazing to watch unfold.
The artist picked up the bundle and walked back through the curtain, laying it to rest in the heart they’d created earlier. They erased the black curtain in the arch with a wave of their controller — the location and artifacts of the remembered anguish on the other side now visible but stripped of any malice. To complete the scene, they changed the lighting: the sun rose in this place, serene, peaceful, and whole.
And there they sat, next to the recovered child, the discarded shield, and their floating crystal campfire. The sense of safe vulnerability, openness, and peace which comes from such a healing episode is nothing short of profound.
A year later the effects of this short session are holding strong, demonstrating real transformation beyond simple cathartic release. The anger remains completely abated, even without follow-up sessions or specific therapeutic reinforcement. They’ve continued to progress in their healing journey, and welcome the opportunity to use virtual reality for therapy again in the future.
The Science
This experiment was conducted by combining Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) and Psychodrama techniques within MultiBrush on a stock Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headset.
IFS has been around since the 1980s, envisioning the mind as a multiplicity of “parts” with specific roles and relationships, and dialoguing with them. It’s often used to identify traumatic episodes from one’s past, negotiate with those subconscious elements which maladaptively “protect” against coming into contact with them, and resolve and integrate the conflicted parts back into an immutable Self.
Psychodrama uses no prescribed framework, by contrast. It’s an experiential technique for re-creating representative “tableaus” — a kind of psychologically oriented participatory theater, or dramatic reenactment (hence “psycho-” + “drama”), originally developed in the 1920s. A tableau can be constructed with actors playing roles, or through the use of props or abstract objects, which then rehearse the desired scene (commonly a relived event). Under the direction of the client-protagonist it’s a vehicle to explore, evaluate, and resolve identified emotions or behaviors, even revise personal history.
The premise of this particular exercise came from a conversation with the client (“the artist”) about the mental block they were encountering while using IFS: an inability to access a trauma or memory related to their own undesired behavior which occasionally (and unpleasantly) surprised them — manifesting as a disproportionate and irrational anger whenever they felt they were being ignored or denied. If they couldn’t reach the core of the problem, they couldn’t adequately resolve it, and the behavior continued.
Externalizing the mind’s inner processes through Psychodrama is a fairly common use case, and provides a physical anchor with which the client can then interact. Doing this with the roles inherent to IFS is no different, and the client would direct the proxies playing those Parts the same as any other tableau. This is where we hit a snag, and found an opportunity:
Not only was it the middle of the pandemic with all nonessential businesses on lock-down, the client was under quarantine with possible COVID symptoms after close contact (which later turned out to be some other seasonal virus, thankfully). But they did have a virtual reality headset; was that something we could use to conduct the therapy remotely? This therapy relies heavily on a sense of presence and shared space, and they’d found VR excelled in recreating that sense.
We didn’t have enough qualified people who also had headsets, unfortunately; would it work to use props instead? And where does one get “props” for VR? Could we draw from an existing asset library, or make them using simple modeling or artistic tools?
Somewhere in this conversation, someone remembered a brilliant scene from Terry Pratchett’s “Witches Abroad” novel in his Discworld series. Granny, a witch with a knack for psychology, causes the villain’s voodoo doll to backfire by using their own belief against them — if manipulation of the doll propagated effects to the witch, then the witch’s actions could affect the doll in kind.
While not relating to any kind of voodoo, witchcraft, or British humour, could this same premise apply to the virtual props? What if we re-created a model of the hard shell around this impenetrable memory, and since it was only a computer generated illusion, just walked through it? Would the mind reflect the action it observed, and grant access to to the juicy center it believed had been breached? Like the movie “Inception”, could we create a locked safe the psyche would fill with secrets for us? It would only work to the degree that the “hard shell” was accepted by the subconscious as a stand-in, but we already know how to make something similar happen in other contexts.
And the experiment worked brilliantly — the mental block was brought to life, overcome, and its hidden psychological trauma identified and resolved. The client negotiated with their subconscious for permission, rather than attempt the “brute force” solution of storming through the virtual artwork, but either way it was accepted in its role. From the perspective of the subconscious these illusory representations were “real”, authentic instances of its own inner workings which could be perceived, maneuvered, and transformed.
The artwork did not have to be especially detailed, creative, or accurate to be effective. The very flexible brain responded strongly to the very convincing visual stimuli — not that these things were real, physical objects indistinguishable from the material world, but at least that they had a sense of presence, scale, relative position, and emotional tenor. The human tendency to connect and identify with story, when fed a recognizable version of its own story, was fully invested in the substance of the experience.
Most powerfully of all: it was able to rewrite itself in the process, and find peace where fear and bitterness had reigned.
For further reading on trauma, healing, and the context of these therapies, see also:
The Future
There’s every reason to think that this technology will adapt well to mental health fields, just like phones and video conferencing have already done. But what makes this experience unique and potentially significant is not just porting existing modes of human interaction (i.e., sitting and talking) to a new medium, but also the creativity and collaboration: the ability to invite other people into your mind. With such inexpensive and flexible control of the virtual environment, an infinite range of expression is possible: create as many settings or tableaus as you want, and easily duplicate, remix, and share them with others.
These could be translated into guided methods for broader audiences, or realtime sessions facilitated regardless of distance: artists remotely joining therapists and clients to help recreate imagined scenery. Asset libraries of pre-designed ambience, characters, props, scripts, even soundtracks, can be leveraged to further increase accessibility.
Those kinds of features will come with time — for now, as with the early days of VR itself (which one might argue we’re still in the middle of), the next step for fitting psychotherapies to the technology is to figure out the rules and parameters. Determine what makes psychologically oriented virtual- or augmented-reality experiences more or less engaging, safe, malleable, productive, and effective — similar to the defining characteristic of “presence” for VR generally. How elastic or resilient are those variables? How well do they work across different cultures and life circumstances, and what underlying principles govern them even in their differences?
In short, it needs a lot more science. The best way to do more science is to get more people involved, especially cross-disciplinary participation, all designing and executing experiments and studies and gathering data (a LOT of data). Some of that will happen organically; our experiment was far from the first, and in the year since this took place multiple books have been written, studies launched, grants proposed, etc.:
- Nine NHS trusts trial VR psychological therapy
- VRx: How Virtual Therapeutics Will Revolutionize Medicine
- Lancet Study Reveals Benefits of OxfordVR Psychotherapy
- …
What if you want to be involved, or try this for yourself right now?
When it comes to therapeutic applications, that’s going to be a matter of personal comfort, privacy, and safety; probably best to work with an established therapist, and suggest the new tech to them directly — see how they recommend incorporating it into treatment, and if they’re willing to try new things with it. If you work or have contacts in the mental health field or related educational programs, send this article around — poke holes in it, see where you can do better, build on and expand our collective wisdom.
As for VR? Grab yourself a headset and dive in—explore the power of immersive storytelling, make and share art, meditate, and find ways to connect with others. Make the new technology a part of your toolbox, push the state of the art forward, and see where it can take you.
And where we can take each other. 🔚
Paul Tomlinson is a professional technologist, physics hobbyist, and virtual reality enthusiast with a background in behavioral psychology. He lives in Maine with his wife, children, pets, and way too many VR headsets.
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/paultomlinson/
- Twitter: @ptom27
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Affiliate links are used in this article.
