Horror Films Could Be The Anxiety Support You Never Knew You Needed

Back in 2020, around six months into the pandemic, I found myself only able to tolerate horror films. I couldn’t handle all the emotions that came with watching my go-to romcoms and dramas, couldn’t handle the violence in action films and a lot of family films just made me miss my own even more. 

I didn’t understand the comfort at the time, I just rolled with it. I’ve always enjoyed horror films, especially ones tied to folklore, so while I was in that headspace, I watched hundreds of them.

Most of them were great fun, some of them were so bad I laughed out loud, but all of them brought me a strange kind of comfort.

Now, Coltan Scrivner, a psychologist at Arizona State University, has shared in a review paper that he believes being scared is actually what comforts us, paradoxically.

How horror stories can help with anxiety

Explaining why this might be, Scrivner said: “Horror entertainment content allows people to experience fear in a safe, controlled environment, providing an opportunity to practice cognitive reappraisal, tolerating uncomfortable somatic experiences, and challenge emotional reasoning.”

He’s not alone in his thinking. Speaking to the BBC, Mark Miller, a research fellow at Monash University in Australia and the University of Toronto, said that researchers believe our brains are constantly building simulations of the world around us, in something they describe as “an anticipatory engine”.

He suggested that horror films and stories help to refine this ‘engine’ so that we are better prepared to manage uncertainty and anxiety in the long run.

“Horror is an opportunity to play with being scared, play with being disgusted, play with being under duress,” he added.

A horror game has been created to treat children with anxiety

This principle has been used to treat children with anxiety using a video game called MindLight. The game is set in a haunted house and the player’s avatar is confronted with shrieking monsters that follow the player around.

To play the game, children wear an EEG headset – a non-invasive, wearable device that uses scalp electrodes to detect, record, and transmit brain electrical activity – that directly controls a light on their avatar’s head. The calmer the child is, the brighter it shines, which then reinforces relaxation.

If the player can maintain a relaxed state during an attack, the monster turns into a cute kitten that follows them around. If the child is too scared, a message appears offering advice on calming their mind.

According to research, MindLight is as effective as the gold-standard therapy currently used for treating anxiety: cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and has repeatedly decreased anxiety in children between ages eight and 12 after only 6-8 sessions of gameplay.

So, it seems the way to deal with The Horrors is, uh, horrors?