The Concept
Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) is part of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which draws on experience and the present to understand and modify psychological disorders. Through a virtual and progressive immersion in anxiety-provoking situations, the patient gradually confronts their phobias, becomes desensitized, and adopts new behaviors to regain autonomy and freedom.
The “in vitro” and 3D immersion in a digitally created world will allow a progressive treatment of fear, in a secure environment.
The situations experienced by the person are supposed to be neutral.
But depending on each person’s background, they will give rise to cognitions that will create behaviors. Aaron Beck discovered that by intervening on cognitions, we can change emotions and behaviors.
We know that phobic cognitions are activated in the reptilian brain. The reptilian brain has three reactions to danger: fight, flight, and stupor. But for the phobic, there is only one, avoidance (flight), in order to survive the imminent danger that this anxiety-provoking situation represents for one. The problem is that the more one avoids his phobia, the more it amplifies.
The goal is to recondition the cognitive schemas constructed by the brain and to relearn how to live with a free mind.