The Garden Within: Using Mixed Reality to Foster Wellbeing Through Emotional Regulation

Despite advancements in mental healthcare, significant barriers such as social stigma, limited availability of professionals, and geographic disparities hinder effective therapy access. Extended Reality technologies offer a promising solution by providing immersive, remote therapeutic experiences that can reduce stigma and improve accessibility. In this paper, we explore the development of innovative Mixed Reality therapeutic strategies for Emotional Regulation. By examining the design process of a gamified therapeutic activity, we focus on understanding the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. The immersive therapeutic activity presented in this paper facilitates emotion identification and regulation using visual metaphors and the externalisation of emotions, such as writing thoughts in the air, identifying which kind of emotions evokes on us, and then, disposing them. We present the results of a user study conducted with mental health professionals and patients to evaluate the efficacy and usability of the proposed therapeutic intervention. Our results inform the design and development of Mixed Reality therapeutic activities for emotional regulation, highlighting the importance of natural and intuitive interaction methods that leverage gesture recognition to enhance user engagement and therapeutic efficacy. This study also underscores the potential of Mixed Reality to positively influence emotional regulation and suggests future directions for incorporating personalised and multimodal elements to further enrich therapeutic experiences.