Do you need help with:

• Anxiety/Panic Disorder
• Dealing with depression
• Stress coping
• Sleep problems
• Anxiety therapy

Our subconscious mind plays an important role in shaping our response to pain, sickness, anxiety, panic, stress and depression.

Virtual Reality Therapy works with both your conscious and subconscious mind to develop new neurological pathways. These help reprogram your thinking so that a balance is achieved between the mind and body. This means that instead of just taking care of the symptoms you permanently change those negative habits and behaviours. By learning new skills and beliefs you are able to make healthier choices to improve your lifestyle, health and wellbeing. This makes it possible to achieve longer term changes as compared to other strategies for treating depression.

“Virtual Reality Therapy provides immediate access to the benefits of mind-body medicine in a consistent, pain free and reliable manner.”

The Virtual Reality Therapy (VRT) Coping modules are designed to change negative beliefs and catastrophic thoughts at a subconscious level and replace them with positive coping strategies and provide drug free option of anxiety therapy .

The ability to cope with stress, anxiety and depression is one of the most important factors in the psychobiology of health and illness. Psychological factors that influence coping ability (i.e. personality, beliefs and the way we think) are more important predictors of morbidity, disability and disease outcomes than the severity and duration of pain and sickness.

The way we think plays an important role in shaping our response to stress, anxiety, panic and dealing with depression and deciding the progression and outcome of diseases like AIDS, cancer, viral infections, heart disease and acute asthma.

Our ability to deal with unpleasant circumstances (i.e. coping ability) is shaped by our own unique life experiences. Coping strategies created around a framework of negative beliefs and negative expectations about pain, sickness, and disease can lead to poor treatment outcomes.

Negative belief systems lead to:

• Increased pain sensitivity
• Reduced pain tolerance
• Increased disability
• Slower recovery times
• Feelings of helplessness
• Panic
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Progression towards psychosomatic disorders.

During Virtual Reality Therapy, thinking is narrowly and selectively focused on a single concept or idea. Concentration is withdrawn from the "real world", and awareness is internalized in virtual and imaginary worlds, where you are more likely to be influenced by suggestions about alternative, more appropriate coping strategies and depression therapy.
Verbal suggestions provided during Virtual Reality Therapy are supported and enhanced using:

• Binaural beats (phased subliminal audio inducing deep relaxation)
• Visual and narrative metaphors
• Color psychology
• Biophilia (our subconscious connection with nature)
• Body language
• Reframing (positive behavioural change)
• Matching and mirroring
• Many other cognitive intervention strategies.

In a virtual environment, a hypnotized person is more receptive to positive suggestions, which are more likely to pass directly into the subconscious mind. Without conscious analysis or interference by pre-existing negative beliefs already held in the subconscious mind, changes in thinking and beliefs can take place.

Over time, positive beliefs initiated and regularly repeated and maintained by the VRT process are reinforced by "real world" experiences. The framework of negative beliefs can be gradually dismantled and replaced by a modified, more robust coping style, where the person's beliefs support their ability to overcome sickness, pain, anxiety, panic and depression.

Hypnosis and dreams are conceptually linked, so Virtual Medicine has developed the Guided REM™ CD's to support and consolidate the VRT process.

During VRT, posthypnotic suggestions are paired (i.e. Pavlovian conditioning) to auditory cues, which are used in the Guided REM™ CD's. These cues reactivate suggestions for relaxation and assist in the process of creating a new, more robust coping style.

The process of guiding dreams during REM sleep was also designed to improve sleep quality, reduce the traffic of inappropriate thoughts, and prevent imaginings and dreams dominated by negative beliefs.

The Guided REM™"Coping" CD's are take-home tools for use as regular maintenance of positive suggestions, to continue the therapy after the clinic sessions. They reduce the potential for pre-existing, negative beliefs to interfere with the formation of a new, positive belief system with improved coping ability.

People provided with pre-sleep suggestions have significantly higher levels of positive emotions in their dreams, they rate their dreams as more pleasant, and they have significantly lower levels of anxiety, sadness and aggression.