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Traumatic memories are often stored as vivid sensory images, not coherent stories.

Visuospatial tasks like Tetris may reduce the intensity of traumatic imagery.

Neural plasticity shows the brain can reshape how trauma is processed.

Especially for women under chronic stress, these cognitive tools offer practical agency.

As women’s personal agency feels increasingly under threat, our ability to stay grounded and self-governing may be more important than ever.

Culturally, women’s mental and physical well-being has been under stress for quite some time. Like most people, we swim against the tides of ongoing political unrest, economic precarity, and ever-increasing hostilities in both the real and digital worlds. In addition, we shoulder the burden of being caretakers and domestic laborers, often while going to school or holding down jobs. We’re navigating collective human traumas like COVID-19 and global warming, while managing anticipatory stress surrounding abortion rights, bodily autonomy, and decisions being made (without our input or seemingly that of medical professionals) about our general health and safety. And somehow, we are also doing our best to heal from profound personal traumas that seem to stick with us no matter how many healing journeys we embark on.

It is here, at this cross-section between balancing the chaos of our outer world with that of our inner world, that a little piece of nostalgia appears on our radar: a digital game named Tetris.

Can Tetris Heal Our Trauma and Rewire Our Brains?

What if playing a simple game from our childhood could help ease the sting of our trauma? A recent study published in The Lancet Psychiatry revealed that the game of colorful moving blocks from our youth called Tetris might help alleviate traumatic memories and even PTSD-related flashbacks (Beckenstrom et al., 2026). Tetris is a mental rotation game in which differently shaped blocks fall from the top of a computer screen. The player must rotate and arrange them to form complete horizontal lines before the pieces stack too high. In the study, participants were asked to visualize an unwanted traumatic memory and then play Tetris for 20 minutes.

The researchers reasoned that if traumatic memories are stored visually and sensorially as brain science suggests, then asking the brain to perform a competing spatial task like Tetris while recalling those memories might dull their intensity or change how they are processed.

This prediction was based largely on our brain’s working memory: the limited-capacity system for holding and manipulating information in the moment. The brain cannot fully maintain a vivid traumatic image while simultaneously performing a demanding spatial task. When working memory is taxed by something like mental rotation, the emotional image of the memory has fewer cognitive resources available to sustain its intensity. Over time, this repeated competition can make the memory feel less sharp or intrusive.

By the conclusion of the study, participants reported that playing Tetris not only distracted them from their traumatic memory in the moment, but doing so over time caused the traumatic memory to become less vivid and easier to interrupt. In short, their trauma began to have a looser grip.

How Neural Plasticity Helps Us Take Control

How is it possible that a game like Tetris can reduce the sharpness of traumatic memories in the long term and not merely while the game is being played? The answer may be found in the brain’s plasticity.

Neural plasticity is the concept that our brain changes based on what it experiences (Berlucchi, G., & Buchtel, 2009; Draganki et al., 2004; Hebb, 1949). When we change our behavior (and therefore what tasks the brain gets used to performing), neural circuits are reorganized, connections between ideas or actions are strengthened, and existing brain structures get repurposed. If you’ve ever seen a figure skater close her eyes and visualize her routine before hitting the ice or heard someone tell you to adopt a “mindset of gratitude,” you’ve seen the concept of neural plasticity in action. The skater and the mindfulness coach are both using the brain’s ability to rewire itself to achieve a desired outcome, whether that is an Olympic gold medal or a more positive outlook. They are embodying the idea that what the brain rehearses is what it encodes.

The Tetris study beautifully demonstrates how neural plasticity can help us, even with something as complex as our deep-seated trauma. By interrupting a traumatic memory with a competing task, we can essentially interrupt, reprogram, and reset the memory, both in the moment and in the long term.

Of course, this is not a new concept. Therapeutic techniques like EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and other cognitive interventions appear to tap into the same basic insight: that interrupting how our brain processes trauma can alter the emotional intensity of those memories (De Jongh et al., 2019; Shapiro, 1989). But while these techniques are conducted by trained clinicians and involve structured therapeutic phases that are costly in terms of money and time, Tetris is a game anyone can play from the comfort of their own home.

Naturally, the Tetris study does not indicate that we should fire our therapists and play Tetris to heal our wounds instead. What it does show us is that cognition and memory—even traumatic cognition and memory—can be interrupted and reshaped by something as simple as a game we played as kids.

Why This Matters for Women

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Statistically speaking, women are more likely to experience certain forms of trauma, to carry cumulative and communal distress, and to be socialized to endure their stress rather than address it. Add to that stretched financial resources, uneven access to care, and uncertainty about whether institutions meant to protect us will do so, and the result is often chronic stress. In such an environment, anything that helps us regulate our nervous systems and retrain our brains toward calm rather than chaos is a collective win.

Insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience show us that the brain is not fixed. And if the brain is not fixed, then neither is the grip of our trauma. In times when the world feels unsteady, having tools that allow us to soften the sting of trauma is a gift we can (and should) offer ourselves. Even if that gift is nothing more than playing Tetris when the trauma tries to take center stage.

The research does not suggest that Tetris is a magical cure for trauma. What it suggests is that the brain can be redirected at will. Any structured, engaging visuospatial activity—pattern-based games, drawing, knitting, certain forms of movement, even organizing a physical space—may activate similar cognitive systems. The key is not the brand name of the task, but the demand it places on your attention.

For women especially, this offers something radical: permission to interrupt and intervene.

You might ask yourself:

What activity meaningfully occupies my mind and hands?

What helps me feel absorbed rather than overwhelmed?

What could I reach for when a memory begins to take center stage?

Importantly, the offer is not for you to distract yourself from the memories. Distraction and suppression rarely work when creating distance from the memory is the goal. That is a passive process that leaves you with little personal agency. Instead, the goal is to be an active participant in reprogramming the memory itself. Like most things that are worthwhile, it will take time. Be patient and kind with yourself as you do the work. You are not erasing the story that trauma wrote on your brain; you are taking the pen and rewriting the script.

Beckenstrom, A. C., Bonsall, M. B., Markham, A., Slade, O., Ramineni, V., Iyadurai, L., ... & Holmes, E. A. (2026). A digital imagery-competing task intervention for stopping intrusive memories in trauma-exposed health-care staff during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK: A Bayesian adaptive randomised clinical trial. The Lancet Psychiatry, 13(3), 233-247.

Berlucchi, G., & Buchtel, H. A. (2009). Neuronal plasticity: historical roots and evolution of meaning. Experimental Brain Research, 192(3), 307-319.

De Jongh, A., Amann, B. L., Hofmann, A., Farrell, D., & Lee, C. W. (2019). The status of EMDR therapy in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder 30 years after its introduction. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 13(4), 261-269.

Draganski, B., Gaser, C., Busch, V., Schuierer, G., Bogdahn, U., & May, A. (2004). Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, 427(6972), 311-312.

Hebb D. O. (1949). The Organisation of Behaviour. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons

Shapiro, F. (1989). Efficacy of the eye movement desensitization procedure in the treatment of traumatic memories. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 2, 199–223.

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