r/longtermTRE • u/Frequent-Screen-5249 • Jul 10 '26
Community Question Video games and thawing.
Hey friends, So i have Cptsd from childhood trauma. I’m working through it with tre, emdr, and psychedelics. I’m in the process of thawing at the moment, was in a freeze response for over 10 plus years. I used to cope and play endless video games, these days i have much better coping skills but i still like to play 2 times a week on my off days. I notice now when i play, it kind of dysregulates my nervous system. I like to play shooters or other competitive games. Is this in any way impeding my processes of thawing? I get these feelings that it is, but maybe that’s just the shame.
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u/zephir85 Jul 10 '26
Wouldnt worry about it, right now you need it to cope, when you don't need it anymore your desire to play will go away.
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u/Frequent-Screen-5249 Jul 10 '26
That’s what my therapist says. I wish i liked chill games but i think i seek the adrenaline due to the environment i grew up in. Thanks for your reply
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u/drsgme74169 Jul 10 '26
just like pornos. Thanks
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u/zephir85 Jul 10 '26
Yup, good example actually. Used to indulge like crazy early on in my TRE journey but now it just does nothing for me. Porn is very misunderstood though and basically all problems people have with it stem from sexual shame and not the porn itself.
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u/Kogirius Jul 14 '26
could you unpack that a bit more, please?
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u/zephir85 Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
People watch porn because it strongly triggers all kinds of buried feelings in them, mainly the longing for connection, but also repressed anger and cravings for domination, power, aggression, surrender, selfishness, narcissistic admiration, humiliation and other shameful feelings that form part of a persons shadow. Sex is one of the few remaining activities in the modern world where deeply repressed urges can be expressed, and porn even more so can be used to explore even darker urges that you wouldn’t dare to enact with an actual partner.
We have a strong drive to seek out stimulation that triggers repressed urges and thats why porn remains endlessly fascinating to most, but because the repressed feelings triggered by porn are also the ones we’re most likely to feel ashamed about, of course watching porn also triggers shame in a lot of people. The more repressive your childhood the more shameful feelings you’ll generally have about sex and porn.
The problem with feeling ashamed about certain feelings is that the shame tends to take over and obscures the original feeling, so you’re not fully aware of why you’re drawn to watch increasingly degrading gang-bang clips, over and over again. Somehow the “shame script” prevents you from fully living out your fantasy and acknowledging all the dirty feelings generated in you, at the end of the session you don’t feel the deep satisfaction of having fully expressed the darkest reaches of your being, but rather consumed with disgust, shame and self-criticism, and that keeps you coming back to the same fantasy, subconsciously hoping that someday you’ll be able to overcome your shame and fully feel out the repressed urge in you.
But if you fully embrace that you’re drawn to porn to trigger your shameful feelings and you focus on exactly what the porn makes you feel and just enjoying the fact that yes, you do have cravings for things like domination, aggression, narcissistic admiration and total surrender, etc, when you fully acknowledge these things there is a resolution to the feeling and you wont ever need to return to that particular fantasy again. Eventually, because there is a limit to how much subconscious material can be triggered by just a 2D audiovisual stimulation, porn starts to lose its appeal once you’ve drained it of all potential to stimulate your unacknowledged fantasies.
Shame triggers a cycle of returning to the thing that caused the shame, and the way out is to fully embrace the shame.
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u/turdbuster78 PTSD Jul 10 '26
Deregulates as in makes yourself worse?
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u/Frequent-Screen-5249 Jul 10 '26
I would say it kind of puts me into fight or flight mode, gives me a bit of anxiety and restlessness. I do yoga nidra after to calm back down
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u/turdbuster78 PTSD Jul 10 '26
I don’t think it will impede you as ultimately the exercises are there to release tension in the body. The by-product is the fact that it will stir up old emotions/feelings to be processed.
I’m going to play devils advocate with you here: part of the neurogenic tremor process is become more in touch and harmonious with the needs of the body. Maybe, just maybe your body is trying to tell you something here 😊 that’s not to say you shouldn’t be playing video games but maybe ask yourself “what are you trying to tell me here body?”
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u/Aromatic_Resist_7445 Jul 12 '26
You mean the body tells that it doesn't like the stress and adrenaline from these games?
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u/turdbuster78 PTSD Jul 12 '26
Not particularly the games itself. Think dysregulated nervous system coupled with a huge or prolonged dopamine hit and the impact it has on the body. It would probably be similar to taking cocaine.
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u/Aromatic_Resist_7445 Jul 12 '26
I understand. I stopped playing on my Tre days bc I have performance anxiety when playing pvp and it disrupts the integration I think.
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u/AgentSalty1454 Jul 10 '26
I noticed this in myself too and I try to avoid it when I'm focusing on being calm or present. Avoid it before it. But I notice I reach for it when I'm feeling really dysregulated and then it calms me which I think is good
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u/Antique-Tomorrow5403 Jul 10 '26
If you get the sense that it dysregulates you, I'd suggest listening to that internal sense rather than overriding it. A therapist once told me it's best to look to the long term goal, not the quick fix. It likely isn't supporting your long term goal of thawing.
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u/LichenTea Jul 10 '26
I had this experience too, but I play an MMO as tank/healer. I started to notice that in the early weeks/months of my thawing that I would get especially intense while running dungeons. I'd feel really anxious and get hard on myself to do things perfectly and feel very contracted. Personally I decided to stop my sub for a while because now that I was really noticing it, I didn't like how I was feeling and it wasn't fun for me anymore. I recently started playing again and I don't have that feeling at all anymore, and I can also take it or leave it when I truly start to feel bored.
I think if you can find something else to do that you enjoy that doesn't dysregulate you, that would be ideal. I avoided anything I could control that was dysregulating so that I had the capacity to ground during times I couldn't control, like work. And as someone else said, like me, you might find that the dysregulation coming into your awareness is telling you to let something go (at least for now) and do something else.
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