Consume horror movies or other forms of scary entertainment to build psychological resilience and preparedness for real-life stressful or dangerous events, which can lead to lower physiological distress and greater optimism about handling future challenges.
Engage in “scary play” (like haunted houses or horror media) to practice regulating intense negative emotions such as fear and anxiety, learn your emotional boundaries, and understand how you react in high-intensity situations, thereby building mastery over these emotions.
When exploring scary entertainment or experiences, start with “easy stuff” that you know you can handle, then gradually increase the intensity, pushing yourself to the “edge of what you’re able to do” to effectively practice emotion regulation without being overwhelmed.
When engaging with scary content, use physical tactics like pausing, covering your eyes, turning down sound, or turning on lights, as these are effective emotional regulation skills that help manage anxiety and fear, allowing you to gradually build tolerance.
Beyond physical tactics, actively practice cognitive emotion regulation skills like reframing (e.g., reminding yourself that the scary content isn’t real) to gain mastery over negative emotions and improve your ability to manage them in real-life situations.
Instead of suppressing negative emotions like anxiety, allow yourself to fully feel them, especially in safe, controlled environments (like engaging with scary entertainment), as this practice can help you process and move through them more effectively.
When engaging with scary or anxiety-inducing content in a safe setting, utilize breaks (like pausing a game or finding a “safe room”) to collect yourself, strategize, and plan your next move, as this can help you learn to control feelings of anxiety and fear.
Instead of direct, dangerous encounters, learn about potential threats (like dangerous animals or people) by listening to or creating “psychologically real” stories, which offer a safe and cost-effective way to gain valuable knowledge about dangerous situations and how to react.
Observe potential threats and dangers, even when they are not actively harmful, to learn valuable information about their characteristics and behaviors, which can serve you later in life, especially when done from a position of lower risk.
When communicating information, especially about products or situations, prioritize sharing potentially threatening or negative details, as people are more likely to remember and pass on such information due to an inherent threat bias, which can protect others.