Learning to "learn"...kinda sucks

TL:DR - "What are you frustrated you're not better at?"

I'm a Mental Health Counselor. Licensed and everything. It's been a dream of mine since my early adolescence. I'm good at the job. I started my private practice 3 years ago, and was immediately full for clients, and I now have a manageable caseload of people who like talking to me and who I help with their emotions and trauma in a way that they say they greatly appreciate. That said, I've always been "good" at this since I can remember. I was born into a male body, and even being cis-gendered and heterosexual, I've always been comfortable expressing my emotions and helping others do that in a safe environment.

This is to introduce how much I dislike saying this: I had an emotional and existential breakdown over how shitty I felt and how "stupid" I was when my friend just utterly destroyed me in a set of matches in Street Fighter 6.

Some backstory: I've loved fighting games since I first put quarters into a Street Fighter II machine at my bowling alley arcade as a 11ish-year-old kid. I chose the cool dude with stretchy arms (while I'm now training to be a yoga teacher, Dhalsim was not to be my main though) and was immediately in love with the spectacle, bombast, and dopamine surge of this "new" type of game. Then 2011 arrived. After YEARS of playing 99.9% of my time with fighting games single player (with some exception of ruling my local arcades with Wolverine in X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel vs. Capcom 1); after multiple decades of playing this way, falling in LOVE with Guilty Gear XX # Reload, and the death of arcades, I decided that with Street Fighter IV...I would start playing online.

Sub backstory: I've also had a STRONG social phobia most of my life (when I'm not interacting with others professionally, at least) combined with some INTENSE competitiveness.

I still went into USFIV's online lobby with high hopes.

"I've been doing this for 20 years," I said.

"At the very least, I'm probably going to be decent with Guile. I've been practicing combo trials with him forever so I can do some cool shit," I continued.

36 hours later...my partner DEMANDED that I stop playing online because I was "becoming a terrible person to be around." She was right. Even when I was winning I was just FRUSTRATED as hell. People were constantly just countering my jump-ins (my worst habit and hardest to deal with) and even when I was scrubbing out some wins, they felt hollow because it just felt like the other person was "letting me win" or I had just been the person to NOT make the last mistake.

After 20 matches (if that) I decided I was, after all, terrible at fighting games...or at least playing other humans.

Back to single player I went. "Here at least I can beat the shit out of AIs."

Backstories over. To the co-Main Event!: 6-7ish years later, in my first job at a community mental health center I met my first adult, video-game-loving friend, and we would get together at their home to play random fighting games every now and then (when my competitiveness and fragile ego would allow it). Pre-pandemic time we played a slew together on their couch: Tekken 6, Dive Kick, MvC3, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Pocket Rumble (surprisingly awesome, don't let this one slip away if you've never played it), Last Blade 2, etc. all had a time between us. We were/are pretty evenly matched and, except for the time they COMPLETELY DESTROYED me in CvS2, we would pretty much 50/50 all the time.

Very recently (within the last 4/5 months) I got the itch again. Kudos to the Guilty Gear Strive development team: they had made me want to unlock shit and had given me JUST enough currency from finishing Arcade Mode with every character to get me to say, "ok if I'm going to unlock everything, I need to at least finish the tutorials." Those tutorials are AMAZING. For the first time, I was seeing the mind-games in fighting games. For the first time, I could see the art and the mental play!

... ... "wait"... ..."Fuck, I think I can do this"... ... ... ....

I went online again!... The "Floor" lobby system seems excellent in Strive and truly the best version of "skills based matchmaking," and I had started to learn to actually play decently with my lady Baiken.

I was feeling myself improve! I was learning!! I was winning more, but it wasn't as important as analyzing my replays. Both the wins and the losses!

I was moving up the Floors! I beat a Happy Chaos player on Floor 8!?!?!!! I have just played 100 matches!?!?!?...I've never played 100 matches in a fighting game against real-life people in any context.

Inspired by the "Versus Wolves" podcast (shoutout to friend-of-the-site John "Super Eyepatch Wolf" Walsh), I started looking for local meet-ups. There was a Tekken meet-up nearby. There was a FGC "Casual" meet-up slightly less nearby but they played some Strive there.

I went to Seattle Tekken. I was terrified and I only played a few matches. I nearly won a few though...in a game I didn't quite understand!

I went to TRC Casuals. I won a FEW matches with my Baiken...I lost a LOT more, but I was getting feedback and I enjoyed it.

"Where's your parry, dude? You've got no way to stop me just running in and punching. You've gotta use all your character's tools." - a really nice dude

"You know why I'm getting you in that combo every time? You won't stop pressing buttons. A 5 frame Slash is going to lose every time if you're getting up from knockdown." - a wonderfully nice person who told me that AFTER they had 0-15'd me

...I was "capital L" Learning now! True to their reputation (despite how SOME people present online), people within the FGC locals were INCREDIBLY nice, wanted to teach, and wanted to help everyone get better.

Then Terry got announced for Street Fighter 6. Terry "Mother Fucking Hero of Southtown" Bogard! I bought Street Fighter 6 the next week and started grinding out some play with Guile in the meantime. I was playing some single player, messing around in the beginner-only lobbies.

Main Event storytime for real now: My friend from before (remember them) bought Street Fighter 6 when I had expressed some interest in doing those FGC meetups and had been preaching the good word of Guilty Gear Strive. We played some matches 3 weeks or so ago. They stuck with their main Chun-Li and I was all for my dude Guile. We had been trading back and forth some matches and were pretty 50/50 again. I was sorta frustrated that all my recent learning hadn't made it so I was CRUSHING them. And then the fated sentence happened: "Want to try out your Akuma?" Fuck yes I did! I've loved Akuma since Alpha 3, but I'd never played him competitively... ... ...

My friend OWNED my Akuma. I took some fights near the end where I started to calm down and not be so "on tilt" but the series there was 2-16.

I broke. I graciously thanked my friend, told them we would play more later, and intended to go to lunch to deal with this emotional fraughtness. It was...uncomfortable, but anything mentionable is manageable. "I have the tools to deal with this." "I'm disappointed, and it's ok to feel that way."

Before I left for food (a necessary part of any human being's functioning)...food, by the way, I would not have the rest of the day, I wanted to briefly make some moves in some Chess games I was playing because I recently started playing on Chess.com to start to learn there as well...apparently, my capacity for pulling my ADHD addled brain into complex, strategy-based tasks knows very few bounds. That's also been a "man I would like to learn this but am too scared to play real people" thing for me for decades. All the games I played were tinged with my frustration and disappointment and each one looked like a completely hopeless game that I was inevitably going to lose (I won 2 of the 3 when they were over, btw).

I BROKE. "I'm fucking terrible at this." "I'm not learning ANYTHING." "Nothing I want to get better at is in my ability." "I'm always going to suck at things I enjoy."

I collapsed for the rest of the day (thankfully it wasn't a work day) in what I believe was 70% shame spiral, 20% anxiety attack, and 10% obsessive gaming to not do either of the other two things.

Conclusion, aka why did I tell a bunch of random strangers about an emotional breakdown?: I've done some work on these emotions over the last few weeks. I turned down a rematch session with my friend, but I've played enough SF6 to get "ranked"; and while I'm upset that I sit in 2* Bronze, I'm enjoying the process again. I think I'm ready to start learning and being ok with being taught lessons. But, it's still hard.

It SUCKS to love something and want to learn, but to sit in that awkward "Conscious Incompetence" learning phase.

Do any of you have similar video game or life stories? Anything that you're driven towards that you stick with despite some of the more painful lessons that it gives you?

...I'm really excited about that Capcom collection and I'm excited to pull my Wolverine out again in MvC 1. Anybody consider themselves a "scrub"ish player who wants to learn along with me? :)