SamuelMentalHealth

Hello everyone! My name is Samuel and I want to share two blogs I've made about my mental health journey. My first blog is about how video game addiction and negative worldviews led to my psychosis: https://samuelmentalhealth.wordpress.com/mental-health-awareness-week-blog-how-addiction-and-cynical-worldviews-led-to-my-psychosis/ My second blog is about the changes I've made by quitting video games and how that is key to healing: https://samuelmentalhealth.wordpress.com/change-is-key-to-healing/ Let me know what you think. All the best, Samuel

Thank you Paul!

Hello, my name is Samuel and I'm a recovering video game addict. This is my story. I've been playing games for as long as I can remember. My first video game was Pokemon on the Game Boy Colour and my first home console was the Nintendo GameCube. I remember playing The Simpsons Hit & Run a lot on that console. I would play video games at any opportunity I could. Every day and weekend after school I would play games at every available opportunity and wasn't interested in social activities as much as my peers were. Things got worse when The Last of Us released in 2013. I played that game over a hundred times in the span of 5 years. I played that game to escape and not deal with the stresses of my life. I played that game so much that I needed to get help. The help I got guided me to where I am today. Through the help I got, I realised that violent games (violent media in general) wasn't good for me because it's too intense and stays in my mind far longer than I would like. I quit games because I started to find them to be not as fun as they used to be. Games were also a burden on my finances. Any money I got would immediately go towards buying games. I wanted that habit to stop as well. What has helped me commit to quitting games is Reading. I love reading books because they are much more relaxing than video games. I've also done exercising through Team Body Project and it has boosted my confidence a lot. A great app that I recommend highly is the Mindfulness app. It has helped me not to take my thoughts too seriously. I'm able to think about something other than violent video games much more often now. I'm so thankful for Game Quitters! It has helped me take control of my life and know that I'm not alone. I'm so happy to see that this forum exists! Hello to you all!