The Psychology of Psychosis in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice — Therapist Reacts!

hello who are you welcome you're safe with me i'll be right here nice and close so i can speak without alerting the others let me tell you about senua ninja theory did a great job of bringing us this story of senua someone that deals with psychosis and in her case psychosis deals with visual and auditory hallucinations they cared about the manner in which they portrayed her illness i think that a lot of the media has done a really horrible job of portraying mental illness as something that means that psychosis always means psychotic or dangerous or there's something wrong with them or you should be scared of it and that has unjustly maligned a lot of people made people not want to be able to talk about their journey and so it is a wonderful portrayal that we see senua as a heroine that also is dealing with this what's happening it's we see the world through her eyes which allows us to better empathize with her journey senewa is a scottish celt a picked and she's carrying this skull on her belt the celts believed that the soul resides inside of the head and so it might seem at first very very creepy but really this is a beautiful thing that she's carrying with her her loved one and so she's traveling to helheim to be able to save his soul and that's why she's bringing it with her ninja theory hired a psychiatrist to be able to better explain and make sure that they were accurate in their depiction of senua but i'm not going to go through the diagnosis of why she deals with the psychosis what exactly it is because i don't think that it's fair without being able to actually ask her specific questions and i'm not actually a diagnostician they actually asked people that go through visual and auditory hallucinations what was their experience to make sure that it was accurate and they had to struggle with how much do they show because this game can become quite intense and i've been playing this game in vr where i hear everything and see it and it's quite an immersive experience and though i wouldn't say that it allows you to really know what it would be like because i can take the headset off and go back to my normal day-to-day life but it definitely allows you to empathize more with what someone else's plight might be this is a journey deep into darkness there'll be no more stories after this one and you hear all of these differing voices now it's kind of interesting because many people that go through auditory and visual hallucinations the flavor of those are defined usually by the culture and so in western culture it's often very negative and cruel and harsh but other cultures the voices are often kind or thoughtful and in those cultures usually they think of these voices more as loved ones and people that are going to help them along their journey we've treated through the media people that are dealing with auditory and visual hallucinations as someone that we should fear that they're psychotic or dangerous whereas other cultures have actually looked at it as something that they're an oracle and a soothsayer and that we should listen to what happens inside of their creative world why is she doing this and many of us have this negative voice inside of us that is saying different things making comments on us as we go through life the difference though is that for many of us we hear it inside of our head we know that it is our own internal voice and for people that are dealing with auditory visual hallucinations this is often outside of them hearing it as you and i would hear someone else directly speaking to us oh how rude of me i never told you of the others you hear them too right they've been around ever since the tragedy that's not quite true some are old some are new so these are little hints of when this happened to senua that they've been around since the tragedy but not really and that's quite true for people that are dealing with different types of psychosis or schizophrenia that there's some signs that happen in late teenage years but after it can come to a full-blown episode during their early 20s but if you go through something that's severely traumatic such as in senua's case that stress can create the full-blown effects of psychosis i think the darkness changed them just like it changed her and so we don't know how this darkness changed her but odds are going through that trauma and the anxiety of living through it it was a viking attack that ended up decimating her people and also her loved one who she ends up coming upon in a very graphic sacrificial ritual that he was sacrificed to their gods and that's why she brings him with her to be able to save him and so going through something so traumatic the stress that probably created a lot more of the negative thoughts that are being spoken about they probably became much more protective much more worried because when you have something really horrible go through to you your entire feeling of trust in the world changes and that alters the way that we see everything that we look upon why aren't you you see it too and you hear that these voices are always there mocking fearful giving information senua has to battle not only all of the different obstacles that are in front of her but the internal conflicts and the internal dialogue that's happening at the same time it's constantly all around her and to have these voices constantly giving her all of this negative feedback doubt in every single one of her actions we talk a lot about the effect of bullying and of people saying things to undermine your own feeling of control and self-esteem for senua as she's wanting to go through to complete the journey that she has promised she has to always deal with this and it's really damaging to our own sense of self when we're constantly being abusive to ourselves but it's more so for senua because she hears them as other people and she can't turn it off look around and you'll see that the drought the sink what are some of the symptoms of dealing with psychosis i'm going to give you the symptoms and we all may experience some of them from time to time it's not just that you have these symptoms but it's also how much it actually affects your day-to-day world one of them would be a loss of contact with reality and for senua we are immersed into this completely different world with her your thoughts and perceptions may be distorted different than the way that other people might see them and this may cause a difficulty in being able to understand what is real and what isn't which makes it really hard for interacting with the world as with senua you may go through visual or auditory hallucinations actually seeing things in a distorted or completely created way and all of these things may have secondary effects of anxiety depression social withdrawal because our society is often not very good and able to make people feel welcomed and safe you stay within this world that you have created for senua she was taken out and isolated from her tribe because of what she was going through is she really traveling to helheim or is this part of her psychosis the interesting part is that it doesn't really matter and when you think of someone else dealing with psychosis you might be like oh how could they believe these things are real but look at what happens when we play a video game or watch a movie how easily we can be immersed and understand and take on the rules of what happens within this world and for people that are dealing with psychosis often that's the same thing this is their world this is what is normal for them that being said yes it is probably a figment of her own psychosis but she is still making this journey and in the end that's what we're all trying to do we're trying to defeat all of the rocks that we ourselves have placed in front of us and that's why i think that this game is so well done because whether you are dealing with this or not dealing with this this allows you to really walk in her shoes and take on what her reality says as her truth and that's what we do in therapy i want to see the world through someone else's eyes because if i don't if i can't understand if i can't empathize how am i really gonna help someone she's afraid wouldn't you be you'd think she would get used to it by now after so many years and this tells us a little bit about who senua is she's gone through this through many years she's scared but she continues forward and that shows courage because courage isn't you not being scared of something it's you being scared and continuing your journey forward anyways but the darkness it just builds onto itself growing stronger you might try and ignore it turn away it's always there just out of sight and that's what happens with our negative self-talk because it comes from within ourselves it understands what our greatest weaknesses are it knows where to attack these are the things that we're worried that might happen or that we're worried that other people will see within ourselves you might think she's brave to go on this journey on her own bravery only means something to those afraid of death said it was fear runs far far deeper and so we talk about how senua is not afraid to die what she's afraid of is not being able to complete her quest her promise and having that be broken and though her self-talk says that that isn't bravery or courage i definitely would define it as so it's not too late to get into the boat and go back there's no going back and i love that look of defiance of senua really speaking back to her voices and then kicking her boat away saying you know what i'm going to make sure that even in an act of fear or weakness that there is no other recourse i'm going to make sure that i've completed the quest that i promised cena pushes away a world that conspired to cause so much suffering and i love that statement that senua pushes away a world the world that didn't accept her that she's gonna go on this journey and make it what she says that it should be there's nothing to go back to and worse to look forward to why don't you join us maybe you two have a part to play in this story i think that this game does such a great job of taking in parts that we can all understand that journey within ourselves of having to defeat the things that we say we can't do and going forward anyways and if you're still curious about more reaction and psychology videos you can watch them all ad free sponsor free like all my videos all on nebula and it's not just my videos but mary's spender wendover renee ritchie real life lore alt shift decks and so many more all ad-free sponsor free on nebula and bundled in for free when you sign up with today's sponsor curiosity stream at curiositystream.com georgia dao or you can click on the link below and right now because you watch this channel you can get curiosity stream for 26 off less than 15 a year i don't know what you can buy for 15 but not much around where i live and you get the whole catalog for a year that includes thousands of amazing documentaries and series like inside the mind of a con artist we unearth the human truths behind some of the most extraordinary cases in con artistry and we deal with the psychology that makes them tick you'll also be supporting educational creators directly for 26 off curiosity stream less than 15 a year and nebula bundled in for free yes free just go to the link below or curiositystream.com georgia dow and clicking that link really does help my channel so thank you so very much and thank you to curiositystream so hopefully you liked this video did i go too far is this too much cosplay let me know and i created this myself i'm really really excited if you want to see how i made it you can take a look on my patreon thank you to everyone that supports me and hopefully you enjoyed this video if you want more of senua's sacrifice or another game let me know because i'm thinking that i'm gonna do some video games thank 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Channel: Georgia Dow

Views: 72,224

Keywords: psychology, psychotherapy, therapy, self help, life coach, psychotherapist, self improvement, reacts, reaction, Hellblade, Senua's Sacrifice

Id: PDgs66qDDDE

Length: 13min 41sec (821 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2022