How do I stop getting so mad at games
Crippl3
ohnoRegistered User regular
ohnoRegistered User regular
I found myself getting really really mad at games lately, anytime I lose in Marvel Snap I pound on the screen or I want to throw my phone, and while I've always had a really bad temper in Halo and Destiny earlier tonight I think I ruined the game night me and my friends do weekly (we played Halo MCC tonight after playing through Borderlands 3 over the past few months, people kept dropping out as I had outbursts during/after matches, we didn't even play for 2 full hours unlike previous Halo/Borderlands nights)
I've always had a really short temper with a lot of games, especially Halo and Magic, but I feel like it's gotten worse. All people do is tell me "well it's just a game it doesn't matter" but that doesn't help, I can't stop getting really mad when I lose or do poorly. I want to not drive my friends away, and while they say up and down that wasn't why they left early I'm pretty sure I was ruining the night. How do you all avoid yelling and shouting and getting mad at games?
I've always had a really short temper with a lot of games, especially Halo and Magic, but I feel like it's gotten worse. All people do is tell me "well it's just a game it doesn't matter" but that doesn't help, I can't stop getting really mad when I lose or do poorly. I want to not drive my friends away, and while they say up and down that wasn't why they left early I'm pretty sure I was ruining the night. How do you all avoid yelling and shouting and getting mad at games?
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When you feel that even in your only form of escapism you can't find success, frustration abounds.
Have you tried mindfulness?
As for getting less mad at shit... what other stuff makes you angry? You can look for a common theme of the kind of things that get you upset. For me I get annoyed when I feel like I just had bad luck. Like in Snap when my whole deck was about Odin dropping in the 4th slot, but then one of the many random lane-effects denied me that, it would annoy me. Snap in particular has a lot of random elements and you're just supposed to give up on a lot of games to prevent losing too many points per match. It can be frustrating, but you just gotta roll with it and also acknowledge the game heavily favors spending money to unlock the cards needed for current meta.
It can be other stuff that pisses you off, and a good first step is to recognize what that is. After that it's about recognizing your own emotions early on and either stop seeking out entertainment that is rife with those kinds of triggers or find ways to calm yourself when you see it happening. For me the trick was to work on self-distancing. I'll be annoyed by something, recognize the annoyance and take a mental step back to analyze what's going on. That takes a lot of effort and practice. It helps to ask for aid from your friends, either by helping you recognize when you're getting annoyed or by seeking out games together that would be less triggering to you.
I used to play MOBAs, and I realized over time that those specific games did something to my brain that made me take them super seriously and get combative/angry with teammates. Even though I played them socially with friends, I eventually realized it was better overall to just not play those games and that the juice wasn't worth the squeeze there. I have far fewer issues with other game types and this basically solved my "getting mad at videogames" problem.
try and catch yourself getting mad. just recognize it. just be like "oh wow I'm fucking PISSED". then try to disassociate from the experience. try to picture watching yourself get mad at something. or picture the last time you smashed a thing.
(this is hard)
if you can catch yourself doing it, that's awesome and a good step. if you can catch yourself doing it, next step would be try to remember that:
hopefully after that you now can make a choice about if wanna still throw a thing. for me it was giving up those games because it wasn't worth it. but if you wanna get great at the game, catching and disarming the emotion avoids tilts and improves overall performance
and if you're actually tilting off at the game, I dunno, there's a lot of guides out there about escaping tilt. Try the Inner Game of Tennis? The main thing for me is recognizing that there's never a rational justification for being mad at the game -- your opponent didn't get lucky, that weapon isn't bullshit, they aren't cheating, they're just better than you. Tilting will never make you better at the game.
This is the conclusion I arrived at with my occasional anger issues with certain games under certain circumstances, and once I figured out what those circumstances were I tried to stop engaging with those activities that triggered the anger. Your trigger situations sound a little different than mine, Crippl3, but otherwise it sounds similar. I tend to lose my head when I am losing at competitive player vs. player things, specifically by myself, for longer than a match or two, especially the kind that you can slam down a bunch of matches in a row easily like MTG Arena or FPS-arena or MOBA style games. But it sounds like you have trouble with feelings of frustration even when playing socially with friends, so that's definitely rougher to deal with by just cutting it out of your life, you have my sympathy there.
FWIW I am also a very anxious person so there's probably some common thread there with what others have said.
This is what I arrived at as well. Used to be really into League of Legends but would get angry when playing pretty often. Got to the point where if I played at night it would take me an hour or so to wind down before I could actually sleep. So, although I miss it sometimes, I recognize that it’s just not worth it.
For clarification, what you're talking about is pvp type games, is that correct? If you're referring specifically to competitive tabletop games I don't have a good answer, but I do have one for third or first person shooter video games you are playing in pvp mode, that worked for me but will possibly make you a slightly less good player - I found the games much more enjoyable this way, though, and I was much, much less likely to get angry about them.
What I found is that the sounds that the game makes - the explosions or alert noises, whatever environmental sounds are added to a pvp game - often egg on my rage feelings. So I started playing pvp with the game on complete mute and even create "action" soundtracks to play in the background, to remind me how fun it is jump around and shoot and use powers in these games, how you get to feel like you're Indiana Jones or a Jedi or insert movie hero here, being amazing and doing tricks and stunts all over the place. This is an example of one of those playlists:
The downside, as I mentioned, is that by not hearing the sound cues in the game, you may miss something important, turning you into a worse player. You have to keep your eyes peeled instead of just hearing when a bad thing happens. You're deliberately cutting out some of your knowledge of the game. But for me at least, the mental improvement is enough to make it worth it.
For tabletop games, you may need to do a similar thing mentally instead of getting to use the mute trick to realign yourself. If you start getting worked up, pull yourself back and remind yourself how much you like the guys you're sitting around with, how lucky you are to have a weekly tabletop group to play with, how fun and hilarious and smart these guys are (or whatever superlative you would like to use). If you need to stand up and take a breather from the game because you feel your feelings getting too big, do that! The main thing is you'll need to start training yourself to notice when your feelings are beginning to boil, and step back from them.
On my sleeve, let the runway start
Between Collection level 1500 - collection level 3000 or so (pool 3 complete), where you're constantly getting dunked on by cards you don't have.
It's probably best to decide whether you're going to tank the rage to get to the other side, or whether it's better to stop playing or reset your progress with a different profile.
It is natural to get frustrated with any game over time, even non competitive ones, if they feeling they give you makes you feel bad just setting it aside is probably for the best. For me, I really dug into fighting game tutorials and tried my best to get better, but I admit I found I hit a hard skill limit after a while. I'm much better at and have an affinity for FPS games, but I still play other stuff like fighting games or Marvel Snap.
Snap in general is one of the more bullshit card games that has crazy, table flipping powerful effects to make the games fast and exciting. Unfortunately it just feels plain bad to lose to some of the most effective decks over and over. A lot of TCGs have this issue and solve it by phasing out older cards from play so everything gets a chance to shine. I don't think Snap will do this. Guess we'll see.
Kinda rambled there for a bit but basically, once I divorced my performance in game vs how I feel about myself I started to get better. I like competition because it's exciting to feel like I'm getting better and see the results in my gameplay, but the opposite feeling can be true as well; if you feel you've hit a wall and aren't having fun anymore, no shame in stepping away. Playing for fun is always better than playing to win, and I find I end up playing better the less I focus on my performance, my stats, my win loss rate, etc.
I literally stopped playing ranked LoL for 5 years because it was making me too emotional. Nothing wrong with just taking a break. Regular exercise goes a long way towards managing this.
Do you get frustrated or even angry with non-game activities that are really brain taxing? Have you ever snapped at someone distracting you while you're concentrating on a difficult task? If so, that's a common stress reaction. It could be a problem with anxiety rather than anger.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Is it possible you're not mad at the games? It's just a safe place to vent anger (anxiety, etc) from other places? If your friends have said it doesn't bother them, it could be reinforcing the idea that this is where you can express your day to day anger.
Like I say, I may be very well talking out my ass here. Just an idea I thought merited floating.
- Tell your friends you're tilted. Speak your emotions, and you'll start to get a little bit of a grip on them. You still might need to step away but say what's up. Talk about how you feel, not about who did things to you or why you feel that way. Just name your feelings out loud and then stop doing the thing that makes you feel them in that moment.
- Take a break from the games that make you rage. It will solve your immediate problem but not your core underlying issues. This is the "touch grass" answer and as much as it stings to hear, it works in the short term for your mental health. Do actually go find some grass, and touch it. Be present. Stop thinking about the next thing and experience some physicality in the moment. Think for 30 seconds about grass, and how it feels, and nothing else. The issue here is that after a short time of abstinence from ragegames, you'll end up finding new things that make you rage, and you'll also have to give up your friend group if they don't want to play something more chill. So while it's going to help you tonight and next week, this isn't a super great solution in the long term. You need something that prevents you from running someone off the road in a rage incident or developing alcoholism or any of the many other ways this feeling will begin to seep through the cracks over time and start wrecking your life again.
- Mindfulness meditation, especially the practice of "noting". This is a longterm actual solution but it won't fix game night next week. But seriously do this. Weeks and months from now you're going to be stunned at how good it feels to be able to note that you're having a feeling, label it, and then let it pass. The distance from the feeling is absolutely critical to not reacting in the moment. I cannot stress enough how incredibly positive this can be for you, if you can bring yourself to treat it like a new skill you're learning and will need to practice. You probably will fail to successfully note things most of the time in the beginning. Keep practicing, you will get better and have a quantifiably better life as a result of your success. You like games, treat it like a grind. You'll rank up quick.
- Reflection or therapy. Ultimately you'll have in hand a tool to get distance from the feeling, be able to return to the games if you want to, but you still don't know why Marvel Snap makes you feel like smashing a $1200 device when Galactus flips. This is the underlying work that you'll need to do in order to learn what it is about you and your life that triggers the feeling in the first place. It might be a lot of things! Feelings of shame displaced to loss in the game. Embarrassment at losing. Experiences of powerlessness or being treated as valueless elsewhere in your life or in your past. Simple unregulated frustration in a circumstance where you are regularly challenged and regularly experience failure. Feelings of worthlessness or dissatisfaction with your circumstances outside the game, which you can't fix, being mirrored in a game where you ostensibly could fix them but keep failing to do so. Any or all of these or maybe other ones entirely! In any case, even with tools to manage feelings and a period of abstinence from ragegames to lower your ambient salinity, you'll ultimately need to learn what causes behavior you don't like, and take steps to remedy the cause. You might manage this on your own, or you might need a brain scientist and maybe even medication while you heal and possibly to support you going forward.
If you do any one of these you'll see some positive improvement. If you do them all, in some form or fashion, you'll eventually have a measurably different mind that treats you better and lets you live without behaviors that harm you. Good luck with it!
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Some resources:
https://www.headspace.com/ - a fantastic app that will take you from absolute neophyte noob to someone who is comfortable with mindfulness practices.
Netflix: Headspace Guide to Meditation, especially Ep7 "How to Deal with Anger"
Some info from the Mayo Clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/mindfulness-exercises/art-20046356
Also seriously, fuck Galactus.
I use the same cognitive behavioral therapy tricks for my anger that I do for my depression. The key is to realize what's happening and pull out just a little so you're not inside of it. When you're in an emotion it just keeps making you feel it more and more, giving you new thoughts and feelings that will retrigger it.
Be mindful of how it feels, like literally as a physical experience, and imagine just relaxing away the feeling like unclenching a fist mentally. Or think of yourself as another person and how you'd react to seeing someone acting the way you are. It doesn't have to be judgmental or lead to self loathing, just, get that insight for a second to escape the spiral.
It also helps to never let it ride, if you blow up at someone or even just get a little moody you have to full stop and apologize without deflecting or trying to defend your blow up.
This also helps get you outside of it, in the same way that describing a problem to someone else in any other aspect of life often lets you realize the solution because as you're relaying it you're imaging what they'll say and think.
Also, the comment "its just a game" doesn't help you I would wager because its not just a game. For you, losing is important and you may want to consider why that is the case and if it is actually important for you.
for 1), the solution is basically just to stop playing those games. They are deliberately provoking a reaction and then preying on it and that business model ought to be fired into the sun. For 2), you just gotta do the hard work of figuring out what's really upsetting you and dealing with that. If you're over-stressed for example you know you can't fly off the handle at people you work with or at family, so videogames become the place you vent. The solution won't be found by asking how to not vent, it'll be found by figuring out what stress factors are bringing you to that point.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Better to learn how to regulate your anger so it doesn't catch you by surprise in a different environment and make you do something you'll regret.
The nastiest version being other people tiptoeing around because they know you have a temper and they have to guess at what will trigger you.
well yea, if there is deeper issues it's going to bleed into the rest of your life and negatively affect those around you. If that is happening then just avoiding those games isn't going to help and a deeper look into your own anger issues and perhaps talking with a therapist to sort that out is the way to go. That said, its not a bad place to start for an immediate relief, and perhaps once the issues get sorted that are the actual root cause of the anger, you might be able to go back and enjoy those games again.
I can only speak for my experience but it really was just MOBA style games where I had any sort of problem with getting unreasonably upset. I had almost unlimited patience for other games, even when it was with the same friend group in a similar environment; I could play Payday or Warframe or Mario Kart/Party or whatever just fine. 1v1 competitive games were fine, and while self-assessing a clean bill of mental health and emotional regulation would be silly, I didn't and don't ever get any negative emotions to the degree I got while playing MOBAs. Sometimes, it very much is just that specific games do not work with certain brains even if they're otherwise mostly OK.
This probably applies more to F2P/Gacha games, because as was pointed out above, a lot of those are deliberately designed to create stress and frustration in the player, but I think that MOBAs, by virtue of incidentally being very stressful experiences, can create a similar problem.