Role Playing for Real Life
Last week, during my weekly Dungeons & Dragons session, I got proposed to.
Not by an actual boyfriend, or even for a real-life marriage. This proposal was for my D&D character, Kit, from her long-term boyfriend played by the Dungeon Master.
Still, though, before I started meeting with my current therapist, this would have been a terrifying scenario. Even though it’s not for real life, just the thought of roleplaying a proposal - especially one I planned for my character to say yes to - would have been too much.
Lately, however, I’ve been working with my therapist about how to get through scenarios from my past as well as my fears that haven’t happened yet, through roleplay. She sets the scene, just like the DM when I play D&D. Then, she asks me what the character (me at some stage in my life) is wearing, thinking about, and doing. Next, she brings in other characters - family members, a “protector” character I constructed in our sessions, or someone she’s invented for the scenario.
After all this preparation, we play out any situation I’m worried about like it’s D&D. She asks me, just like my DM does, where the different people and animals in the room are standing, who does what, who says what. She acts the other parts and as I try to act mine, I quickly find differences between the response I would want to say or do and the one that happened or that I think would happen in real life.
A lot of this requires living in the discomfort of the situation to figure out exactly what’s bothering me, then talking it out from there. Sometimes, the scenarios can take the whole time of the appointment; other times, we take a break from the scenario to discuss what happened, how I reacted, and what we can do moving forward.
I felt a little silly doing this at first, but after my first time going through a scenario, I realized how helpful it was. Additionally, it was wonderful to feel like she had developed this method for me based on my love of D&D, and found a way to communicate with me based on my interests to help me understand things better. It reminds me of the time I chose to read an analytical book about Middle-Earth instead of a particular textbook in college, and learned so much more because I was more familiar with the content and context.
Nowadays, my therapist and I are working on more scenarios about relationships. Ever since I had several bad experiences in a row, I’ve been very wary of getting in a relationship, even though I would love to have a boyfriend. Thanks to this method of therapy, I’ve been able to talk through the scenario of a first date before going on my first date in a very long time - and I was able to roleplay a new scenario of getting engaged outside of the context of therapy.
And I was able to have the reaction I would want to have if someone I loved proposed to me in real life - I smiled really wide, giggled into my hands as I held them over my mouth, and found a creative and cute way to say yes.
It’s not the same thing as a real-life proposal, but I was thrilled that after so much time working on this in therapy, I was able to experience what I would call a typical reaction to a proposal, and I didn’t overthink anything at all.
It used to be that, even in these roleplay situations, I would get overwhelmed with real-life feelings, thoughts, and implications. But this time, even though I wasn’t in therapy, I was able to just live in the moment, a skill I’ve been learning for years.
I don’t know when I’ll meet someone who I will want to propose to me in real life, but this experience gave me hope that I will be able to experience joy in this moment instead of intense worry, just like how I imagine it would be for someone neurotypical.
Ellie, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.