Shelly88

@Alexanderle, thank you. I am kind of new to using forums, so those things like using @ are good to know. I really like how you approach things, and I really liked your comment of “Social anxiety will be destroyed by me.” I can relate to that feeling and want to get to that point as well! Psychology is such an awesome field to study, I have a background in social work and psychology was my absolute most favorite subject. Continued good luck on your psych studies, I think that it is a great fit for you! and thank you @BooksandTrees, you are another one whose posts have inspired me. You have given a lot of great advice and support throughout this forum, just like Alexanderle and so many others. I look forward to getting to know you all a bit better through your journaling and learning from you. Hopefully I can make it to a point to be able to help others as well. journal entry for today: I would like this to be a positive entry but it is not because I played for two hours this evening. I had five days not playing, which was good, but I wish I hadn’t given in. Today, rather than feeling anxiety, I felt depressed. I tried to stay out of the house for the majority of the day cause I felt the temptation being there, and it was strong. I just felt so sad tonight and wanted to not feel sad. It feels like I am at the edge of some metaphorical cliff, and standing at the edge not doing anything doesn’t feel good but diving down into a vat expanse of the unknown feels scary. I am going to concentrate on those five days I went game-free, rather than my two hours of weakness tonight. I don’t want to give up on myself, and think I need to realize I will most like relapse again, and I will need to pick myself up and keep going. I think the important thing is to keep going back to making improvements and staying game free as much as possible! and making those stretches of game free time longer and longer, until there are no more relapses. I have been trying to figure out why I even played. I *knew* it wasn’t going to make me feel better. Nothing else I tried today made me feel better either and I guess I felt desperate and wanted to cling to that one thing that used to give some relief. On some level, I think I have been feeling really alone, and wanted to see old gaming buddies which I did, but it didn’t make me feel better or less alone. This is all a huge learning process, and it is freaking hard. The initial excitement of trying to learn the piano keyboard and throwing myself back into art has worn off, so I am guess all the dopamine issues I have read about here have probably affected me, and I really need to get my brain back into a good working order. My sleeping is so messed up right now too. I can’t leave the day on a negative note though. So here are some things that I am grateful for: I am grateful to have this forum, to have seen the sun today, and spending time making salsa with my daughter. -looking forward to a better tomorrow.

Hi Alexanderle, thank you for taking the time to read and respond, that means a lot. My anxiety can either be tied to specific things like medical appointments-phobia thing with needles/blood, dealing with my daughters mental health and physical health issues, dealing with my cat’s cancer, etc. and other times it is more generalized probably due to a strive for perfectionism, which leads to feelings of inadequacy when I make mistakes/errors or just general feelings of not knowing what to do when things are beyond my control. I guess those things can all be tied together now looking at it. When my brain became cluttered with anxiety and the endless loop of feeling out of control/not knowing what to do, gaming gave to something to concentrate on and I could be somebody different (ie strong, confident monster/demon slayer —arpg’s were my downfall). However, looking back I can see that killing a monster in a game does not make my real life problems go away/get better, nor does it make me any more stronger or confident in real life. Since you commented on the making a difference thing, have you yet found something that you feel makes a difference or are you still searching?

I figured it was a good time to start a journal here to keep track of my progress. It has been three days since I stopped gaming. I had made my original introductory post here on the forum in early December but quickly fell back into gaming as a form of escapism when some health issues arose with my daughter. It was so easy to fall back into the old habit. But since I had made the first attempt to stop in December, something was different when I went back to it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I shouldn’t be gaming. I struggled with it, and when I played there was no enjoyment. Rather I felt more frustrated and depressed after playing. Late at night fighting insomnia/anxiety, I would read this forum and imagined each of your struggles and successes through all the posts. Your stories helped me gain my strength and willpower back. For those of you that write on this forum and share your personal struggles and successes, I thank you. There are probably many others like myself who read and gain help just by knowing we are not alone. Combating the boredom has been one of the biggest hurdles in trying to overcome gaming. I didn’t realize how many hours I wasted on it each and every day until I stopped. Reading the other members’ posts about how they schedule their days and what they are grateful for has given me good ideas on things to do as well as how much I take for granted every day and how much I have to be thankful for. I am not going to lie, every day is a struggle and I hope this eases with time. It takes mindfulness not to just sit down, turn on the pc and lose hours to mind-numbing playing. Since quitting, I have had loads more time to devote to my art, writing, and I also took up learning the keyboard after finding some amazon gift cards collecting dust after thoroughly cleaning the bedroom (yay for free money!). This is the first time ever that I have tried to learn a musical instrument, and the new challenge has been fun. I miss the social aspect of gaming, so I might need to look into something like volunteering once things calm down here at home enough so I can get out and be around people since my hobbies tend to be on the solitary side. I still need to find a way to better cope with my anxiety. Life is all about ups, downs, changes, and if I let every bump in the road nudge me back into gaming, I can’t grow as a person. I don’t want to look back on my life and know the majority of my free time was spent on looking at pixels, sitting in front of a screen, escaping life because I didn’t know how to deal with it. I want to know that I have done something productive, something that I can be proud of, something significant. I want to make a difference. I don’t know how yet, but I know I will make no difference to anyone or anything playing a video game. So with all that said, I am hoping that journaling here will make me accountable and be able to stick through this, and find a way to living a more meaningful life. Thank you all for being here, I am so thankful to have found this forum.

Hi everyone, I have spent the past couple of days browsing this forum trying to get things figured out. Was having issues registering so am hoping this post goes through ok. A couple years ago, some personal life stressors reared their ugly head and I started using gaming as an escape. A bit of background, I have always gamed on and off since the days of Atari (showing my age here;)). It was sporadic and just for fun, but I was always drawn to arpg’s for the most part. I was a console user until about three years ago. I then dabbled on and off on d3, but started using it more when my now teen daughter started having suicidal ideations/cutting issues. Since then, more life stressors are just piling on with my husband hating his job and we barely speak. My cat has a very very rare blood disease and requires chemo every third day. I then began playing an additional online arpg’s, and have noticed that I am spending 6-8 hours a day on these games, more time when there is a new league/expansion/season start. It feels like this is the only time I can escape my anxious thoughts. Three days ago something broke inside me, or awakened, and I uninstalled one game. I started my artwork again, which I had abandoned after having my daughter and have been working on a website for my work. I think I was looking for games to fill a sense of purpose, as well as being a social outlet and filling my head with things other than anxious/depressed thoughts. But I am still feeling anxious, nauseous, my stomach is in knots. I still feel like I can’t deal with things in real life in a meaningful way and want so badly to go back to my happy escape gaming place. But the gaming place was also starting to take a toll for various reasons -physically, mentally, socially. I made good friends there and don’t want to give them up but feel like that is the one main thing we had in common. I am feeling really alone and isolated. I have have thought about trying therapy but my husband is afraid of losing his job (his company keeps laying people off) so we have been watching our money very tightly and I am anxious about adding another expense to our budget. I am not sure what the next steps are I should take. It would just be nice to know I am not alone in this. Any advice, suggestions are fully welcomed. regards, shelly