Social Simulation for Everyday Self-Care: Design Insights from Leveraging VR, AR, and LLMs for Practicing Stress Relief

Stress is an inevitable part of day-to-day life yet many find themselves unable to manage it themselves, particularly when professional or peer support are not always readily available. As self-care becomes increasingly vital for mental well-being, this paper explores the potential of social simulation as a safe, virtual environment for practicing in-the-moment stress relief for everyday social situations. Leveraging the immersive capabilities of VR, AR, and LLMs to create realistic interactions and environments, we developed eight interactive prototypes for various social stress related scenarios (e.g. public speaking, interpersonal conflict) across design dimensions of modality, interactivity, and mental health guidance in order to conduct prototype-driven semi-structured interviews with 19 participants. Our qualitative findings reveal that people currently lack effective means to support themselves through everyday stress and perceive social simulation – even at low immersion and interaction levels – to fill a gap for practical, controlled training of mental health practices. We outline key design needs for developing social simulation for self-care needs, and identify important considerations including risks of trauma from hyper-realism, distrust of LLM-recommended timing for mental health recommendations, and the value of accessibility for self-care interventions.