The Wyoming Incident is an Alternate Reality Game that started almost a decade ago in 2006. It’s not really important to the question, but if you want background, there’s a 44 minute video on the subject by Night Mind here.
In said video, at the timestamp 22:22 he mentions a “ritual” the game asked the players to do. He says “It involves […] doing some things we’re not going to talk about, because what was suggested as part of this ritual is legitimately dangerous on many levels, and I’m not joking about that.”
Now, obviously it’s not going to summon any spooky spirits, but on the occasion I hear The Wyoming Incident mentioned, someone always brings up how “dangerous” this ritual is. Another example is in this forum post I found talking about it. But in general, even on other forums and chat rooms I’ve visited, people feel a need to mention this “dangerous” ritual they tried to get people to do.
Here is the relevant part (sorry for the >, I originally wrote this in Markdown intending to post it somewhere else before I decided it wasn’t a good fit for that site. Markdown uses those for quotes):
It certainly doesn’t sound fun, and if you suffer from some sort of clinical anxiety or paranoia I can certainly see how it may cause an episode, which would be rather unpleasant. But I’m skeptical that this is “dangerous” to anyone who doesn’t have something like serious PTSD, in any real way. Is there any reason to suspect that doing this could actually do lasting damage, trigger a suicidal/self harming episode, or anything worthy of calling it “dangerous”?
Even the Happy Cube forum (the forum where this ARG was run) has a followup post later on mentioning not to do it if you have “anxiety issues”. I just feel skeptical that this is really harmful. I mean, any more harmful than playing Bloody Mary at least.
I do not see anything that is dangerous in that. And I’m rather well-versed in anxiety stuff. In fact, imagining a scary scenario is sometimes a part of therapy, and the “relief” they describe sounds like flooding–the idea that your brain gets tired of being anxious if you keep exposing it.
It’s basically just a sort of self-hypnosis/visualization. I can’t see how it would be dangerous unless you were moving around and might bump into things, or are not in a secure position and fall over.
hey as a person who does experience mental health problems i can explain why this can easily be dangerous to someone, specifically to someone that doesnt realize if they have depression or anxiety.
essentially this “ritual” is having you imagine horrible things happen to you, and tricking your brain from having the normal reaction of being unnerved or bothered by it, to feel relief. the reason why this sort of thing is dangerous is because a common symptom for mental health problems is something called “intrusive thoughts” that can vary in how severe they are. it takes a LOT to unlearn that these thoughts are not necessarily a reflection of yourself, but rather, more random blips or your brain filtering things out. feeling “relief” or “release” from envisioning harm to yourself or hurting yourself can easily turn into not just visualizing, but actualizing harm- to put more clearly, can lead to someone believing that self harm or even suicide is a good idea, and would be a positive thing. thats why its highly dangerous, because if you tell yourself something dangerous is a good thing enough times, eventually the brain will actually believe it. and if someone is already susceptible to picturing those things? it makes it even worse. hope that provides some sort of insight for you!
I realise this is a zombie thread, but yeah, I can see how this could affect someone adversely - not directly, but if they are already suffering from anxiety and depression or are in some otherwise vulnerable mental state, this could make that state of mind significantly worse.
Of course, that does not cause any direct harm physiologically, but it could increase the risk of an individual harming themself either through deliberate action, or negligence or neglect.
If we accept that there are exercises and actions that people can do which will improve their own mental states, we must accept that the opposite is also possible.
[I know how old the post is.] I am not well-versed in anxiety, but wouldn’t the therapy you described be done under the supervision of, you know, a therapist? Not alone in a situation designed to create anxiety?
As a therapy, definitely–at least, at first (later on you can learn to do it to some extent on your own). I can’t know for sure, but I think my point was that it’s safe enough that a therapist might do it. I was likely assuming this would not be attempted by someone who actually would find those things genuinely scary, but just would be having a bit of fun.
I also wouldn’t suggest someone watch a scary movie if the movie was about things they had an anxiety disorder about. Not without supervision.
This said, I would be a lot less cavalier in what I say these days about this stuff. Back then, while I knew statistically than anxiety disorders were common, I don’t think I’d quite internalized it.
It was not my intent to call you on anything–your point might be very valid that such things are done in therapy. I imagined that the therapist would not do quite the same thing as described in the OP. I imagined it to be more like what you described in your follow up.