Gaming for Mental Health

The Mystery of the Mismatched Messages Have you ever felt your heart pounding in a quiet meeting for no apparent reason? Or gotten a sudden stomach knot before a routine social event? Maybe you’ve experienced a wave of exhaustion hit in the middle of the day, despite a full night's sleep. You check your thoughts—you don’t feel particularly anxious, stressed, or sad. So what’s going on? Welcome to the complex and often confusing world of body dysregulation. This is what happens when the intricate communication network between your body and your brain becomes faulty. Your body sends out its normal, automatic signals—a faster heartbeat, tense muscles, shallow breath—but your brain struggles to interpret them correctly. It’s like your nervous system is speaking in Morse code, but your brain is trying to read it as a handwritten note. The messages get crossed, leading you to feel physically off-kilter without a clear mental or emotional cause. For many, this isn't just an occasional...

We have a picture in our minds when we hear the word "addict." It’s a stereotype etched by decades of public service announcements and crime dramas: the figure in the shadows, the person who has "lost everything," whose life is visibly unraveling at the seams. This image, while real for some, is dangerously incomplete. It acts as a blindfold, allowing us to believe that addiction is a problem of "other people"—those on the margins of society. This myth lets us ignore the colleague, the neighbor, the executive, the parent who is managing their life while secretly in the grips of a dependency. The truth is far more pervasive and insidious. Beneath the surface of normalcy—behind the polished desk, the successful career, the seemingly stable home—exists a hidden class: the functional addict. They are the hidden junkie class, individuals who use drugs or alcohol, often in significant quantities, while continuing to meet their professional, financial, and social...

The Arcadian Rhythm and Our Evolutionary Alarm Clock If you are someone who wakes up not to a gentle sunrise but to the internal blare of an alarm clock you never set, you are intimately familiar with the morning cortisol spike. This surge, a core component of your circadian rhythm, is an evolutionary masterpiece designed to propel you from sleep to action . It regulates metabolism, decreases inflammation, and provides a burst of glucose from your liver for fast energy, priming your body and mind to face the day’s demands . In essence, it is your body’s way of making you bright and aware first thing in the morning. However, for many—especially those with conditions like CPTSD—this physiological marvel can be misinterpreted by the mind. What the body intends as preparatory energy can feel like hypervigilance or free-floating anxiety. The hormone that is meant to be a tool for engagement becomes a source of distress. This is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of a system that is workin...