Is this too do with the focus you get from playing Tetris as well as the Tetris effect that can occur afterwards that’ll keep your brain occupied so you don’t think about the trauma as much?
When you see something traumatic, your brain will over the next few hours create images of the traumatic event. These images will come back to you as flashbacks over the years. Playing a game that requires high focus on visual details prevents the brain from creating those images, and as a result you'll get less (or not at all) flashbacks after the traumatic event.
I think you’ve summed it up brilliantly here. I’m sure anyone who’s ever played a game like Tetris a little too long will remember closing their eyes to go to sleep and still seeing tetronimos! So I guess it pushes everything else out of the ‘RAM’ of our visual memory, including the traumatic stuff. No room for this horrid memory, the mind-cupboard is full of tetronimos now
Can confirm, not just with the game but similar activities eg: stacking those body parts into a nice cube really takes away from the stress of killing someone
These links appear to be about something possibly related but slightly different. These involve treating traumatic memories that already rooted themselves. The post above is about preventing the memories from being rooted in the first place. Sure, they could be related concepts and mechanisms, but they are different.
We just watch Keeping Up Appearances for half an hour. Nothing could be as traumatic as trying to drink tea from fine bone china with hand painted periwinkles
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