Virtual Reality (VR)

What VR Therapy Can do for You

VR exposure is the new wave of mental health therapy; it provides the opportunity to look at counseling in a new way. Mental health professionals now have the ability to not only reproduce real-life scenarios but also adapt and control these environments within VR headsets. Therapists can gather useful information along with biofeedback, providing new and improved techniques that suit the client’s individual needs. VR clients can move towards total wellness much faster and find themselves equipped with strategies and tools to help make their lives easier.

VR therapy helps the client rely on their imagination or reach deep into their memory, retrieving thoughts, feelings, and emotions in real-time! It places the client in a controlled environment so the therapist can provide treatment addressing the client’s most critical needs. This technology allows mental health professionals to evaluate, identify, and apply intervention protocols to their client’s fears and anxieties more effectively over time.

We use Virtual Reality therapy with great success at Guided Grace Family and Youth Services. Many clients with various individualized treatment plans have made incredible progress utilizing this therapy, whereas other forms haven’t succeeded. What is displayed through the headset is dependent on the trauma experienced. For example, people with PTSD from war scenarios or other life-threatening events have found the process very cathartic and enlightening.

Conditions that can benefit from VR therapy

Virtual therapy can help so many more conditions than PTSD. It can be utilized to help people who are suffering from a variety of conditions, including:

• Anger Management
• Phobias
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Trauma from bullying
• Trouble relaxing
• Trauma (caused by several situations such as domestic, physical, sexual, mental, and verbal abuse)

How Virtual Reality Therapy Works

VR therapy may be used as an adjunctive form of trauma-focused therapy! It can enable you to remember your experience more vividly and deal with the emotions as they arise. As mentioned above, adding the virtual element can trigger traumatic memories much more effectively.

If you have never experienced VR before, it can be slightly unusual. The VR goggles sit comfortably on your head and have an internal video display. The headset responds to head movement, so as you turn your head, the visual on the screen moves to reveal more of the scene. This enables VR to be an immersive experience.

Looking for Virtual Reality Therapy in the Great Lakes Bay Region?

Have you experienced a traumatic event recently or in your past and would like to address it? Virtual reality could be a handy therapeutic tool for you! It is a powerful experience, but it will be administered under the direct supervision of one of the highly experienced therapists at Guided Grace Family and Youth Services. For more information, call or book an appointment online today!