I rarely played any video games during the stretch where I was overcome with anxiety throughout the day. I briefly played a couple of games here and there during this stretch, but playing video games did not cross my mind as an option to help ease anxiety. The few occasions I did play video games in this stretch did help get my mind be able to escape the constant anxiety barrage that I was constantly bombarded for the most part. There were a few occasions where the anxiety would breakthrough and break my attention toward the game I was playing at the time. Before I read the two books that paved the way for my recovery, I was stubborn to hope that video games and other hobbies would help ease my anxiety and was reliant on my mental fight in hopes to win over.

It wasn’t until a couple of days after I finished reading (and re-reading) that I found the therapeutic elements of playing video games. Many of us may have cited video games as an escape from the rough aspects of our daily lives and is a source of plentiful positive effects in undergoing this activity. After spending most of the Saturday working from home needing to catch up on my workload, I took Sunday as a work-free day to at least have one day off from work for the week. Video games never crossed my mind for the day until I finished lunch and sat in my room ruminating what I should do next. The first game that crossed my mind when I wanted to play was Rock Band. I hadn’t played Rock Band in a while to this point and thought a non-action, music-heavy game session would be a nice small step in getting me back to enjoy video games again. It would become more than just a small step back.

I played Rock Band 4 (solo drums) for two hours. In the past year, I would play the Rock Band drums to get a little bit of physical activity squeezed into my day. On that day, not only playing Rock Band got me the bit of physical activity, but also gave me that peace of mind that I desperately sought for against anxiety. My mind was so attuned to reading and reacting to the note highway and listening to the music for enjoyment and cues that anxiety never barged in to interrupt as it typically did. It wasn’t until I stopped that it crept back in, but at a lesser intensity scale than I was normally experiencing at the time. That triggered in my mind on the power of video games in the right setting. I was so pumped after my Rock Band session that I wanted to play another game. Funny enough, the game I settled to play after chilling out from my Rock Band session was Celeste, a game that included mental health as a prominent story device. Just like Rock Band, I played Celeste in bits and pieces earlier this year but fell off due to a number of factors. The part where Celeste makes peace with her other self was a strong moment for me, as one of the tips from the self-help book stated was to NOT combat your intrusive thoughts, but to simply accept them. I took this allegory to heart even further thanks to playing Celeste and has further assistance in my bout against anxiety.

I likened playing or watching video games to performing an exercise, your mind and body is so attuned to the video game that rarely anything else impedes on your attention to the video game. It’s the equivalent to a runner achieving a runner’s high, where you feel no pain and in the zone of setting a great pace. Depending on the game, I would fall under this zone where I’m just solely focused on the game at hand. It’s great from a player perspective because you feel like you’re very interested in what you’re involved in with the game. I can also get this sensation as a spectator, whether it’s watching an engrossing back and forth battle in competitive fighting games or witnessing numerous shenanigans happen in many Giant Bomb content. Once the session ends, I feel exhausted but happy experiencing being so invested on performing or witnessing the video game content in front of me. Just like how an exercise feels mostly exhaustive yet refreshing once the session is done. This is the solace that many gamers seek to in order to find some happiness against the grueling other parts of our days.

Thanks to this breakthrough, I have reclaimed video games back into my normal run of things to do during the day, from playing to watching various content online. Even though I will mostly get positive experiences in engaging with video games, there are particular actions and themes that will cause me to react harshly for the moment before settling back to normal. Mortal Kombat 11 will be a challenge for me to view due to the graphic nature of bodily harm done due to regular course of combat, course interactables, fatal blows, and fatalities. The moment in The Last of Us where Joel falls and gets injured falling onto a steel rod sticking out from the ground. Other similar graphic violent acts will get me anxious a good bit, so I hope the tips that I learned to cope with those quick moments will help me get through and still enjoy viewing the content. I’ll need to since MK11 will be prominently shown in major fighting game tournaments for the year.

I will say that if I had not treated myself in reading the two books that it would continue to affect my time and enjoyment with video games. Anxiety affected my well being so much that I feel I would be forcing myself to enjoy my hobbies and would not have gotten the positive byproducts of them as my anxiety would drag my mind back to worrying over a number of things again. Hence it was important to get the treatment first to recover my mental state to a state of normalcy. Getting my mental state back to “normal” felt great compared to being in a constant state of flux under anxiety. From there, I was able to integrate my enjoyment of my hobbies back into my life and now feel mostly back where games are fun to watch and play again.

If I were to suffer a setback and anxiety roars back its ugly head again, I would personally set my hobbies aside and utilize the other tools that helped me breakthrough and recover my mental state back to normal first. I would rather get myself back to square one as soon as possible first and not have to delay and deal with anxiety later with a brief reprieve of gaming in between. I think of my hobbies as nice post recovery tools to continue the positive vibes after recovering from anxiety. It feels alright to play video games to interrupt the misery, but it feels much better to play video games in a better mindset.