Suspension of disbelief

I have been thinking about suspension of disbelief, and how it relates to role playing games, story telling (books, films, TV series) and therapy. Not sure exactly where this is going.

Genre buy in

If you do not like a genre you won't normally go out of your way to expose yourself to that genre. I do not particularly like the conventions of play D&D so while I will play one offs I won't commit to a D&D campaign. I don't like basic role play dice mechanics (although they seem to be getting better with the ability to spend luck points), so again I will avoid campaign games in that style. Likewise I don't read romantic novels, and I don't watch slasher horror films. All very understandable.

If/when I need support for mental health there are only two genres freely available (and one with long waiting lists) Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and medication. The only choice here is to choose to go private and try to find a therapist who I can work with, but most people don't have the finances to do that.

Of course you can try and force yourself to buy in, despite a disbelief in the genre, with CBT I can normally manage that for the 5-6 weeks necessary. I do take a pragmatic approach most of the time, the actual exercises and interventions are useful even if the claims about how human beings work are not.

One of the things I noticed with the CBT classes run locally (and probably nationally) is they spend a lot of the first session trying to get people to believe in the model. While this might be useful for people who know little about the approaches it becomes a struggle otherwise.

Breaking Immersion

In the Walking Dead they played a game with their audience. One of the major characters appeared to have been eaten by zombies. They removed his name from the credits for a couple of weeks, and then he reappears after making a lucky (off camera) escape. That broke my suspension of disbelief. Since then I have sought out other reasons for not believing in that fictional world, two other things now bug me, the petrol in car petrol tanks should have gone off, and ammunition should be running low. I might watch the show if I am in the house when it is on, but don't seek it out on catch up.

In Tales from the Loop we have been playing through the adventures in the corebook. The third one involved the recurring bad person dragging dinosaurs into the present day. Immersion shattered. I can still play along but it becomes more game than roleplaying at that point.

A friend of mine was in a private therapeutic relationship, seeing someone twice a week, at considerable expense. They discussed with the therapist stepping down to once a week, the therapist saw this as trying to resist the therapy, and suggested they came more often. My friend couldn't afford that and ended up stopping the therapeutic relationship.

Breaking immersion carries heavier penalties in therapy than in leisure activities.

Is there anyway back from breaking immersion

This is the kicker. I am not willing to invest time in Walking Dead (or the Amazon version of Top Gear, the 'Grand Tour'). Role playing groups are about more than just what happens at the table, and we will be switching from Tales from the Loop soon. The more tricky thing is therapeutic relationships.