Modern Mythology, Real Therapy: Rewriting the Hero’s Journey with a Controller

What if the controller in your hands is more than entertainment—what if it’s a clinical tool? We dive into how video games create a safe, structured space for growth, where failure is feedback, flow builds focus, and stories teach the mindset shifts therapy aims to unlock. From the fog-drenched tension of Silent Hill F to the classroom-to-cosmos arc of Persona 3 Reload and the patient puzzle-solving of Breath of the Wild, we map mechanics to mental health: resilience under pressure, cognitive flexibility, emotion regulation, and meaning-making.

As clinicians, we share practical ways to bring play into the room without gimmicks. Short, intentional gameplay segments can surface self-talk, triggers, and problem-solving styles in real time. Debriefs turn boss fights into case studies, party roles into communication patterns, and cooldowns into recovery plans. For work between sessions, we unpack gamified tools like Habitica and journaling apps to transform values into quests, track streaks like EXP, and celebrate milestones with purpose. Along the way, we challenge screen-time shame by asking a better question: not “How long did you play?” but “What did the play give you—relief, mastery, connection, courage?”

Games also offer what real life withholds: a believable arc. Clear goals, fair challenges, and earned triumphs restore a sense that effort matters. We explore how modern mythology in games echoes deep psychology—archetypes, the collective unconscious, and growth mindset—so players can choose who they are becoming: sage, magician, creator, or leader. Whether you’re a therapist looking for evidence-informed interventions or a player seeking permission to claim the benefits you already feel, you’ll leave with concrete steps to turn your favorite titles into tools for change.

If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who games, and leave a review telling us which game taught you the most about yourself.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & SoloQuest Focus
• 0:21 Why Watch the Twitch Streams
• 1:18 Video Games as Modern Mythology
• 2:17 Games, Flow, and Real-Life Frustrations
• 4:56 Identity, Purpose, and The Grind
• 6:50 Clinician Persona and Therapeutic Tech
• 7:41 Play Therapy Meets Game Design
• 10:19 Growth Mindset and Failure Reframed
• 12:28 Lessons from Fandoms and Psychology
• 13:40 Applying Games Directly in Sessions
• 16:06 Rethinking Screen Time and Stigma
• 17:54 Closing Thoughts & Calls to Action

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome everyone to another episode of SoloQuest. This is a spin-off of the Gaming Persona podcast, but SoloQuest is where I get to academically explore whatever topics are coming up during my Twitch streams and be able to give them as bite-sized little mini podcast episodes for all of you. I don't know how long this one's gonna go, but that's part of the fun. And the D20 chat topic for today is using video games in therapy. So before we get onto the topic, I want to just talk about why you should watch the Twitch streams that I do at twitch.tv slash doctorgamology. That is the central hub for all the content that I create in my community, in my organization, and my work with Kind Ridge Behavioral Health. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about them later in this episode. But the reason you should watch the streams on Twitch, usually those are on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday, but sometimes there's other days too. It really just depends what my schedule looks like. And the reason you should watch is because this is where we talk about the topics that will eventually become books and become research studies and eventually become treatment programs. This is where I play the games with all of you, talk about what's on my mind, you get to see me react. Like today, I've been playing Silent Hill F, which is a Silent Hill game that takes place in a 1960s Japanese village, and you play as a Japanese schoolgirl, which is very different than playing as James in Silent Hill 2. And if you were watching the stream, then you'd be here live listening to this topic, and you'd be able to participate in the chat, and you'd be able to really get the ideas as they're fresh coming out of my mind that you can use in your therapy, that you can use with your counselor, that you can talk about with your friends and family and loved ones. And the whole goal of the channel, the whole idea of what Dr. Gamology is, is that video games are the modern mythology. They enhance our philosophy, our psychology, our approach to mental health. They help us find ourselves, increase our self-esteem, find our strategies that will help us become the best version of ourself and the hero of our own story. And what this episode is all about after playing Silent Hill is how would we use video games in therapy? And I'm going to talk about this from the point of view of whether you are the therapist, the clinician, the life coach, the geek therapist, or I'm going to talk about it if you're the person attending therapy and you want your counselor to understand what video games are for you and how you find these ideas of what you're going to do in your life. I think it's all relevant. It really just depends on our point of view. There's another conversation, maybe section three, is how do you talk with people in your life about what video games are and how they are actually a therapeutic tool? One of my most popular posts on threads, Twitter, Instagram, and everything last week was a simple sentence that just said, video games are therapy. Hit the heart if you agree. And people that have never met me before saw that and started clicking and started commenting and started telling me stories about what video games have been since they were children, four years old, seven years old, ten years old, what they are now in their 50s, their sixties, they're still playing video games, they're still relevant, there's still a coping skill, there's still a place to relax and let out a breath, a sigh, and let all the stress from your day leave your body. They're a place where the challenge you're given, you're meant to succeed, which is not actually a thing that a lot of things in life are. A lot of the challenges we're given at work and in school and in relationships. You're supposed to endure them, you're supposed to wrestle with them, you're supposed to tinker with them, but ultimately, if you succeed at them, you're just given another task. Good job. Count the back, do it again. Video games do that too, but you know what? They give you psychological flow, they give you a story that you get to experience in a three-act structure from the beginning where you're nobody to the end where you save the world. And saving the world in the world doesn't actually feel like saving the world all the time. And that's really disappointing. And that's why we go to therapy because we have trauma, we have mood issues, we have anxiety, we have focus that just doesn't know where to go. We have a world that's all about technology and it's rapid fire and it's bouncing all over the place and it's asking us do this, do that, do me, do me, a thousand things a day, not like it was 50 years ago, when you could do six or seven things in one day, go home and relax the entire night. No, no, no, no, no. You go home and you have emails. You need to have ADHD to succeed in this world. This little world, this 21st century world, this technology world where what we do on screens can make us money, but if we use those screens for fun, no, no, no, no, no. And that's what my channel's all about is saying, hey, hold on. That's not fair. That's not what video games are, that's not who we are, that's not what we were meant to be at our moment of birth, and all the life stages, from trust versus mistrust to generativity versus stagnation, all the way through the lifespan. There's something that we're supposed to be, and it's gone, right? The world isn't letting us get it because it needs us to buy into the grind, a never-ending grind that you're not actually supposed to succeed. Go to college, get a degree, and then pay off your student loans, right? It's not go to college, get a degree, and then contribute to society. I mean, that's what your job is, but even in the job, you're stuck, right? You're locked into a game that isn't very fulfilling to participate in all the time. But a video game is like here's a 10-hour experience, and you're supposed to save the world and feel good. It's okay in fiction, but not in nonfiction. And what gamers want is for reality to make sense. Now, if you're feeling all of that, it's very easy for that to drive you into going to therapy. All right, it's very easy to feel that and be a therapist and say the world is broken. I want to help people find a fix so that they can enjoy being who they are. And ultimately, I do enjoy being who I am, but I struggle with it every day. This journey of becoming Dr. Gamology is at least 16 or 17 years in the making, and that's exhausting. Okay, when I come on Twitch, I feel relieved that I'm in a place where I'm supposed to be to talk about video games with people and try to make a difference, and that's why it's so great that all of you are here right now. As a clinician, though, I get that same feeling. Okay, my identity when I'm doing a therapy session with people, when I'm doing supervision with people, and when I'm doing a Twitch stream with my followers and viewers and meeting new people across the world, it's all the same identity, the persona of being the sage and having that knowledge of what video games actually are, and the magician of being creative about it and showing people what you can really do with it if you embrace it, being the creator and saying, here's a new thing that we didn't have before, and now we do. Twitch can be therapeutic, the PS5 can be therapeutic, your gaming PC can be therapeutic, your smartphone can be a source of therapy if you let it. You can do journaling apps that are gamified, like the Exist app. You could do task management apps that are gamified, like Habitica, which also I did a peer-reviewed article about that, and we talked about that last solo quest. You just put your tasks into your day and turn yourself into the RPG character of your dreams, and you can accomplish anything if you just want to gain those EXP and go be the hero of your story. But what really makes video games work in therapy actually is in line with what we already know about play therapy. This idea that there is a childish curiosity that just experiences the world through a lens of fun. And once we hit a certain stage in life, that lens of fun doesn't have an outlet to see things anymore. And so we're stuck and we're empty and we're left with all these talents and not knowing how to utilize them. And when you give the opportunity to sit on the floor, build things with blocks, put people in a sand tray scene with different figures, roll some dice and tell the story based on the pictures that you get. These are play therapy interventions. You can do it with something as simple as a board with checkers or chess pieces. You could do it with Uno. You can do it with Jenga. You can do anything that can facilitate more conversation to dig deeper and just explore freely your psyche, the never-ending expanse of ideas and thoughts that make up who you are. Games unlock those because the joy of playing things takes away the threat of failure. Because in a game, you're not supposed to succeed instantly, you're supposed to trial and error your way until you reach a conclusion that gives you something you didn't have before, right? You keep going from castle to castle as Mario finding Toad and saying, Ah, Mario, the princess you're looking for is in a different castle, and that doesn't feel like failure, it just means on to the next castle, the next goal, the next flag, and eventually the princess is in that room. It's enjoyable to pursue that. And even if it takes you three hours to get there, it feels good to find her. But if you fail something IRL in real life, people say you're lazy, people say you weren't dedicated, people say you didn't pay attention, you didn't take the right notes, you weren't ready for the challenge, and that just isn't true. Growth mindset is a real thing. You're not supposed to succeed at the most meaningful tasks in life on the very first try. Even me, when I wrote The Gamer's Journey, I got feedback on the chapters that said, Hey, some of these things need to be better, right? You need to fix your way of describing Dante's Inferno in the middle of the book. You need to change the way you support the ideas in this different Bioshock infinite inspired graphic. I don't know that game, so I don't know what I'm looking at. Explain it better. And these are pieces of feedback that I got. So growth mindset. Yeah, it's frustrating to say do better, but when you do better, it's amazing. Like in God of War, when Atreus fails to cut down an animal correctly, and the animal gets away, and he says, I'm sorry. Kratos says, Don't be sorry, be better. And that idea comes back later in the franchise when Kratos needs to apologize for something, and Atreus throws that right back. It's a learning lesson, it's a father-son moment, it's an ethos for life. Video games give us these philosophies all over the place. I was just playing Expedition 33 earlier in the week, and I got to this scene where one of the characters says, We are the artists that paint the bars of our own cell, right? We create the cage that locks us in, that makes our self-esteem hard to reach. But if we let video games become the therapy, these become life lessons. Like Valkorion said in Star Wars The Old Republic in that classic trailer for Knights of the Fallen Empire. Someone can have anything if they will only sacrifice. And that idea also echoes through many different fandoms. It's the law of equivalent exchange in Full Metal Alchemist that you have to give something to get something. And if that becomes the driving force of your work ethic, what is there that you cannot do? But those ideas are all over the place in the DNA of video games. All right. They give us ideas to inspire us, they show us that even a high school kid in a persona game can defeat a corrupted god and save the world and cleanse the broken psyche of the collective subconscious that Carl Jung talked about in analytical psychology a hundred years ago. An idea from Psychology's Foundation a hundred plus years ago constantly comes back in video games to give us something special and new and amazing. All right. Video games can actually give us anything that we need to inspire us to become better at things in life. We just have to look at the stories and unpack what they mean. Right? Whether it's a horror game like Silent Hill F, like I was playing today, or Persona 3 Reload, where we're going to high school and then we're going into the psyche and we're battling the demons and the neurotic tendencies of society to make the world a better place, one person at a time, one room at a time, one situation at a time. When we're playing video games, we are experiencing something therapeutic because it's going into our subconscious realm and saying, you can do this. This challenge was designed for you to succeed and to feel fulfilled and to feel like you were good enough just because you made it to that final room and found the princess. So if a counselor wants to hand you a switch and say, Let's play the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, find a shrine, and talk about the problem-solving process to get that missing relic at the end of the room, right? To eventually level up our heart containers, to level up our stamina. By working hard, we eventually get the things that we need to go back into the wilderness and succeed in life. That's what gaining EXP is all about. That's what that's what it is like to level up. Okay. A counselor can do that. If we're allowed to play checkers and chess and facilitate conversation with each play, each turn. Every time we put down a card in Uno, we talk about the motion, the emotional experience of what it's like for that moment to happen. Every time we knock a tower down in Jenga, we talk about a time where we fell short and how we picked up the pieces. The metaphor of picking up pieces. Video games are about a metaphor of finding ourselves. Just like therapy is a structure for us to experience the metaphors, find our archetypes, unravel the things that hinder our self-esteem, find our persona, and then apply our persona, our personality, our archetypes, our strategies, our philosophies for life, and then go live life better. Do it better, feel better, love yourself better. We spend so much time talking about how much time did you spend on video games and screens when everything else we do in life is on screens. It just doesn't make sense anymore. It's not about being on a screen, it's about what you do being yourself, whether you're on a screen or not. And you know what? We are allowed to relax too. Relaxation can be therapy because meditation can be therapy, exercise can be therapy. Any activity we elect for ourselves to restore the energies that get depleted when we exert our effort and influence into the challenges that we're given in life. That is our therapy. So if you're a counselor, let your clients play a video game and talk to you about what they're experiencing. Let them play a match of League of Legends in front of you, a Fortnite, a Valorance. Let them play Call of Duty, let them play Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. Let them show you Persona 3. Let them talk to you about the philosophical situations of trying to save entire generations of people and Claire Obscure Expedition 33. Let them show you the outfit on their created character in Final Fantasy XIV, Dawn Trail. Let them talk to you about why Endwalker might be more enjoyable than Dawn Trail. There is stuff in the psyche there that if everyone just understood video games are a form of therapy, then maybe we'd be having the right conversations instead of being worried about the merit of choosing to play a video game for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 180 minutes, five hours. I mean, how long did you watch Netflix today if you're listening to this? And why aren't we talking about that? How much did you spend replying and updating your statuses on social media? Why aren't we talking about that? Why is it always video games? All these things are a projection of our psyche in our inner world, trying to make sense of how we connect with the world around us because the world around us is digital. And so part of what we are now is digital. So it is, in my opinion, as a person who leads research task force, edits books that are going to educate psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health professionals across the country and will influence legislation and policy across the world. The video games are therapy. They should be a part of our therapy, and when we play them, we should open up our minds instead of saying, Oh, I hope people don't judge me for how I played this for this period of time today. I think people should be saying, I hope I get what I need out of this play session. Whatever that is. A chance to enjoy things and relax, a chance to accomplish things, a chance to blow things up, a chance to forge friendships and groups and take down the bosses and save the world. Because you know what? We need that energy in life. We really, really do. I hope everyone made it to the end of this conversation today. It was so fun to give it to you. If this is the kind of thing you're excited by, follow me on Twitch. Check out the next stream, twitch.tv slash Dr. Gameology. Buy a copy of my book, The Gamer's Journey. You can get it at the Dr. Gamology Shopify store. You know, you can follow me on all the social medias. It's at Dr. Gameology D-R-G-A-M-E-O-L-O-G-Y. And next time you play a video game, think about what it's giving you and appreciate it. And when you do that, always remember to continue the journey.