Sam's

[ROCurONium]

22/05/24

1. Outline

> I went without games for my first 24 hours again.
> It was challenging. 

2. Reflection
Feelings: How + When (During experience)
- Felt irritated
- Bored when not gaming
- Cravings
- Browsing on ipad didn't scratch the itch 

Struggles: What + When + Triggers?
Reaction: How + When (You/Others)
- 1. Bedtime, after hopping into bed, couldn't sleep DIFFICULTY HERE
    - Light through door cracks
    - Light through curtains
    - After laptop force shutdown at 6pm
    - Led to grabbing IPAD
- 2. Browsing youtube on the IPAD. Was in the room conveniently because I took it back into the room. 
    - Constantly browsing on browsers random things
    - News, games, trending on youtube

- [x] Vulnerability factors/<u>Antecedents</u>: What + When (Immediately before?)
- [x] Vulnerability factors/<u>Antecedents</u>: What + When (Day/Week ago?)
- [x] How did you respond to difficulty or struggle? (Above questions)
- Didn't play games
- Didn't finish assignment
- Played Clash Royale the day before 
- Thoughts about xenoblade chronicles carried onwards 
- Reminiscing about games I had played (memories) - cravings of the fun feelings

 

3. Abstraction

Avoid discomfort: I tend to find other forms of procrastination instead of trying to experience the discomfort. 

Trash the strategies: I don't stick to emotional management strategies like simple CBT exercises (wind, leaves, car)

I get "bored" and lose belief in hard strategies that might actually be more effective.

 

4. Experimentation

-> Force discomfort

-> Use the strategy

Set up an exposure exercise on schedule of 10 minutes tomorrow. Evokes feelings of discomfort. Use scripted action:
1. Look away

2. Count to 10 slowly

3. Use CBT leaves, wind, car to disregard discomfort

Edited May 22 by ROCurONium

[ROCurONium]

1. Experience

Experience A
> Last night before I fell asleep, I relapsed and played some Clash Royale. The Ipad was in my room, because I didn't want to clean the analogue alarm clock with battery mould. 

Experience B (reduced priority of importance)
> I also didn't follow my Practice Block time scheduled in today - studying alone. I pushed it back to a later time, despite it being important to pushing thriving in discomfort/fear zone.
 

2 + 3. Reflection + Abstraction

Experience A
How did I feel?
- Urge to play games
- Just one game
- Thought about downloading Genshin again also
- Deterred due to financial implications and gambling

When did the feelings occur?
- Felt discomfort before sleeping. Wasn't tired enough to sleep, despite jogging earlier. Maybe I need to push my exercise a lot more, so I get tired during bedtime? (Experimentation) I normally don't push myself hard enough when I exercise: going outside to jog - I end up walking a lot more than I jog (Abstraction)

- Felt difficulty trying to control impulse to download another game. Reminiscing the happiness and direction-oriented goals pre-established. These feelings of comfort and having purpose, compared way better than feeling discomfort due to not spending time to create clear SMARTER goals. Creating the goals also felt challenging and not purposeful due to the success rate of completing the goals. I often feel this way when I try to complete my SMARTER goals. I also give myself too many SMARTER goals that it gets overwhelming. I don't put these SMARTER goals as a project in Amazing Marvin, and categorise them more efficiently as a result of transferring from Obsidian to Amazing Marvin. (Abstraction)

Vulnerability factors:
1. Events
- A lot of studying the day before, felt slightly stressed and tired to control willpower
- Stress due to assignment dates coming up

2. Environment
- ipad in the room

 

4. Experimentation

> Clean the analogue alarm. Use it.
> Put the Ipad outside every night before I sleep. Daily Burntheboats: if no put ipad outside, I have to run around naked at university for day before. 

[ROCurONium]

The last 2 days hasn't been good. I installed a new game - Clash Royale - and spent over 600$ AUD on the game... I also haven't showered in 2-3 days. I feel really bad. 

 

For tomorrow, I'll aim to get my final assignment done within the -15% penalty for handing it in 3 days after the deadline.

 

It's been really hard trying to stop gaming. I also recovered my nintendo switch and almost started playing on it. However, I got bored with the prospect of playing my old games so I didn't play it. 

So far, it's been very difficult trying to quit games. I will do my best to do better in the following days... 

1. Changed apple id password into somethign random. Unlinked the card to my apple id account. 

2. Changed nintendo password to a random password. 

Edited May 25 by ROCurONium

[wheatbiscuit]

15 hours ago, ROCurONium said:

The last 2 days hasn't been good. I installed a new game - Clash Royale - and spent over 600$ AUD on the game... I also haven't showered in 2-3 days. I feel really bad. 

For tomorrow, I'll aim to get my final assignment done within the -15% penalty for handing it in 3 days after the deadline.

t's been really hard trying to stop gaming. I also recovered my nintendo switch and almost started playing on it. However, I got bored with the prospect of playing my old games so I didn't play it. 

So far, it's been very difficult trying to quit games. I will do my best to do better in the following days... 

1. Changed apple id password into somethign random. Unlinked the card to my apple id account. 

2. Changed nintendo password to a random password. 

I'm sorry about your spent money. Once, I was properly scammed while gaming, and paid for some of it back for a few dollars, but otherwise 'paying to win' or what it's actually called wasn't too necessary for me. Later that account actually got banned for my being offensive, so I resolved to play more quietly on the next one.

Who feels the most strongly about you not gaming? If it's not you, maybe it should be. I searched for and found GameQuitters because I'd had enough of the kind of emotional slavery I was involved in. That, and (being Aussie too) colder weather last May made me increasingly sad about the way things were going online and offline together. No one had given me any ultimatum or anything for quitting at the time - something that probably isn't truly effective for many people anyway. I had read and heard enough in about a week about gaming problems to make the choice on my own. 

But, as it seems to go, if you do become better at living without games and fit in with people (here or anywhere), you might realise that you have more in common than you think, and fairness and equal treatment may become the next challenge. That's what I'm seeing. 

If it helps with your assignment, maybe pretend that it's a group assignment with good friends (but not made difficult according to the number of people working on it) for motivation! You might not believe it, but I did someone else's film study assignment on The Blind Side in high school because I liked the movie, and got near-full marks (subtractions made for generalisations I think).

Good luck!

[cjdecker2002]

Hey man,

The first step is to confess the mistake, and you've done that so good job.  That helps reset mentally, remove the shame, and get you back on track.  

One of the biggest pieces of advice I would give you is to never take electronic devices into your room, especially not your bed.  It's always been a recipe for bad things to happen for me.