How No Man’s Sky Helped Me Deal With Depression

Finding Peace in the Void.

One of the many beautiful vistas from my time playing No Man’s Sky

I was diagnosed with depression in my early 20s, but I’m pretty certain I had it long before that, at least since my early teens. Now 35 I’ve been knowingly living with it for 15 years and in that time I’ve tried many different methods of managing it.

Talking to professionals, going on medication, attending groups, journaling, CBT-ing, even meditating. I’ve tried a lot of different things and while some have worked better than others, for me the best way to manage my depression is to lose myself.

The phrase “to lose oneself” can conjure up a myriad of meaning, not all of them good. However, what I mean here is to lose yourself completely in a fictional world; to forget the reality around you and completely surrender yourself to the immersion of this new reality. Of course this can happen with any kind of medium; a novel, a comic, a film or TV series, a podcast or audiobook.

For me though, the medium in which it is easiest to lose myself is video games, in particular those that offer you a grand, rich universe to explore.

Such as No Man’s Sky.