How Playing Scary Games Made Me Less of a Scaredy-Cat

If you knew me growing up, you’d probably say I was a huge wuss. And honestly, you’d be right. Scary movies, haunted houses, spooky games? No thanks. And don’t get me started on bugs. If anything with too many legs got near me, let alone touched me, I’d completely flip out. Even in my early twenties, I remember calling my roommate to get a spider cricket out of the bathroom because I was way too scared to do it myself.

Video games have been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember, and while it might sound cheesy, they’ve done more for me than I can really put into words. One surprising side effect of my gaming habit, though, is how it helped me evolve from someone who couldn’t handle fear into someone who not only tolerates scary experiences but actually enjoys them.

I Used to Avoid Horror at All Costs

One of my earliest memories (not just gaming-related, but in general) was around age five or six, messing around with a Super NES my parents had left me alone with one day. I remember picking up every cartridge and trying each one for a few minutes before moving on to the next. Eventually, I got to Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

The game looked innocent enough from the label, but the moment it booted up—that eerie music combined with the psychedelic main menu—I felt something I hadn’t experienced before: real fear. I was terrified. I shut off the TV immediately and ran downstairs to find my parents. Even now, more than two decades later, that moment is burned into my memory.

And that was just the beginning. My parents tried to ease me into the idea of horror growing up. They’d take me to haunted houses around Halloween, but it was always traumatic and usually ended with me hiding behind them, begging to leave. I remember my mom trying to get me to watch The Ring, but we had to turn it off after the main character watched the tape and got the dreaded “seven days” phone call. Scary movies were a hard no after that.

Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, I also have severe arachnophobia. You already know I’m not a big bug guy, but spiders in particular have always been a special kind of trigger.

All of this is to say: I’ve basically been a scaredy-cat since birth. Whether it’s because of those early experiences or just the way I’m wired, I can’t say for sure. Maybe a therapist could help me figure that out. But what I do know is this: video games, especially horror titles, have become a kind of self-prescribed exposure therapy. And after 30 years, this “treatment” has genuinely helped me confront, and in some cases, overcome fears I’ve carried my entire life.

How Horror Games Became My Exposure Therapy

Fast-forward to 2020, and co-op horror games were all the rage. It was also the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most people were staying indoors, taking online courses or working from home, and just generally avoiding the outside world.

So if I wanted to socialize, gaming was the best option. And what were my friends playing? Scary games, of course. My first real dip into the genre was Phasmophobia, the ghost-hunting co-op hit that exploded in popularity during lockdown. If I wanted to hang out with friends, I had to suck it up and face my fears.

Naturally, I volunteered to be the one who stayed in the truck, monitoring the surveillance cameras and relaying intel over the walkie-talkie. Somebody had to do it, right? I tried to convince my friends that I was taking one for the team by doing the boring job while they got to play paranormal investigators in the field. But that didn’t fly for long. Thanks to a little friendly peer pressure, I eventually had to leave the safety of the truck and step inside the ghost-infested house myself.

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Fear Is a Mental Game—And I Started Winning

It only took a few minutes for me to realize this wasn’t as bad as I thought. Don’t get me wrong, the first time the ghost choked me from behind was absolutely horrifying. But then came the laughter. When you hear your friends burst out laughing at your virtual demise, it’s hard to stay scared.

There’s something satisfying about making your friends laugh, even if it’s at your own expense. It lightens the mood, breaks the tension, and reminds you of something important: It’s just a game. When it’s all said and done and the credits roll, you’re still sitting in the same spot—safe on your sofa or at your desk.

That brings me to my next realization, that the build-up is often worse than the scare itself. The first time you “get got” sucks. No doubt about that. However, the more you play, the more familiar it becomes. Obviously, it depends on the game, but in Phasmophobia, the ghost’s jump-scare animation is the same every time. Eventually, getting grabbed doesn’t send your heart racing the way it did the first time. You build a tolerance to the fear.

Looking back on that childhood moment with Zombies Ate My Neighbors, I can’t help but wonder would things have gone differently if I’d just pushed past the fear and actually played it? Would I have figured out what I know now, twenty-something years later? Which is that the anticipation, and your imagination, is almost always scarier than the reality—and that’s true far beyond just video games.

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The Comfort of Controlling the Scare

Throughout what was, at the time, my unintentional experiment in using video games as knock-off exposure therapy, I discovered that games offer a level of control over the experience that nothing else really can. You’re in the driver’s seat. For me, it made gaming a more effective fear-facing tool than, say, binging horror movies.

Even if you can’t always pause, you can still look away, close your eyes, and take off the headset if the situation gets too intense. But when you’re watching a scary movie, you can’t stop the actor from investigating that unsettling noise coming from the basement. In something like Phasmophobia, though, I can stay in the truck as long as I want, easing myself into the experience at my own pace.

And if I do decide to venture into the house, I always have an escape plan. If it gets too real, I can run back outside, or worst case, leave my character parked in a corner, shut my eyes, and let the ghost do its thing while I wait it out. Just knowing I have those outs makes the whole thing a lot less intimidating.

Grounded’s arachnophobia mode.

Speaking of control, thanks to some forward-thinking developers, many modern games now offer accessibility features specifically for phobias. If you suffer from arachnophobia like I do, you’ll be glad to know that filters for spider-like enemies are becoming more common. Titles like Grounded, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Hogwarts Legacy, World of Warcraft, Monster Hunter Wilds, and even some horror games now include arachnophobia modes that swap out the eight-legged freaks for less threatening alternatives.

From Hiding Under the Blanket to Craving the Creepiness

Slowly but surely, session after session, my fears started to fade. I still wouldn’t intentionally instigate the ghost or be the one to wander into a room alone, trying to coax out a shy spirit with a spirit box—but hey, baby steps, right? Over time, that fear gave way to something else. Dare I say… joy?

Yes, that’s it. I was having fun.

I didn’t fully grasp how successful my makeshift exposure therapy had been until I played The Inn map in Devour, another co-op horror title. This particular level features a house overrun with giant demonic spiders, and one of the characters is transformed into a grotesque half-human, half-spider nightmare. It felt like the ultimate test. And while it definitely wasn’t easy, I made it through and beat the level—without the arachnophobia safe mode enabled, mind you!

I couldn’t believe it. I’d gone from someone who couldn’t even look at a picture of a spider without getting the heebie-jeebies to willingly facing off against demon spiders in a first-person horror setting. These days, I’m the one convincing my friends to try the latest scary releases.

It’s carried over into real life, too. Just the other day, a spider dropped in front of my face, and I flicked it away without a second thought. When I go on Netflix, I head straight to the horror section. I’m even planning a trip to Salem, Massachusetts to check out all the haunted festivities. And it’s all thanks to my favorite hobby: video games.

I’m still not quite at the point where you’ll catch me strapping on a VR headset to play horror games alone at night or bringing home a pet tarantula, but I can confidently say that playing scary games made me less of a scaredy-cat.

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