For me its like:
Me: “Hey I used to love video games, let play video games”
Brain: “No you don’t like video games, they are boring. Also, nothing is fun, don’t try doing anything”
Me: cries in a corner
Same here.
I used to get super excited for Steam summer sales because I played all the games in my library.
But now my library is full of games that I haven’t played, and I keep telling myself that I don’t want to buy new games since they’ll end up sitting there like the ones already in my library
Yep, that’s how I know by now a depressive episode is coming on.
Recognizing them earlier helps me to give myself a mixture of slack and forced “that’s good for you so do it fucker” that usually gets me through them quicker and with less collateral damage than just waiting them out.
I dunno what you play or how, but try playing blind (no looking up solutions), and not try to not min/max the game. Both of those take the fun out of the game really fast.
For me it was the opposite. Whenever I tried some game and I didn’t have luck it got boring. But passing it with god-power cheats was fun. Hell, I had most fun with GTA-SA after going through the game with cheats and then blowing up everything and everyone and spawning random vehicles to either use or blow up as well.
I probably spent the most time with train and planes. Also I think car mods, I don’t remember it that well anymore. Yeah, I think there was that mod garage near train station, definitely. That was a lof of fun too.
For me, cheats made 95% of the fun.
My definition is “knowing literally nothing”, with an exception for watching a video that gives a review or first-look. Thus, I can play blind exactly once, per game. I will only seek help if I get stuck for a while (hour+).
Often friends look to me for opinions of games, and assuming it’s a game I’m interested in, I’ll either stream or record my own blind ‘review’. Everything from the second I hit launch, gets included. I have turned away groups of people because of my criticisms, as if a game is shit I’ll explain in excruciating detail how, and bitch about it every time it fucks with the experience. Kinda similar to AVGN’s style. It can be therapitic for me, and save a bunch of friends a bunch of money.
The whole ‘min/max’ bullshit isn’t gaming, it’s a glorified spreadsheet exercise. Yawn. Going in and just doing stuff is what games are all about, for me. I recently started playing gran turismo 4 and I chose a daihatsu k-car minivan with like 53hp and fwd, as my starter car. Makes no sense, makes winning really hard or literally impossible. But I liked the car and fuck it, everyone would go with a miata or something similar, but that’s boring, let’s see how this does. It actually can win (some) races, if you disregard racing rules, plow straight as you can through chicanes, around barriers and through the environment. The game isn’t penalizing me so it’s a ‘legit strat’…
Playing ‘blind’ is the only way, imo. And worry more about fun than competitiveness. If you’re a skilled player you can beat others with better items/gear/cars regardless. And if you aren’t skilled yet, you’ll try harder to get there learning more than others.
Executive dystfunction is a symptom of ADHD and one that I have a hard time explaining to others. Most people I know don’t understand that even if I actually want to do something, sometimes I literally just can’t start doing it or I have to do weird shit like this to like talk myself into it.
Getting medicated helps a lot if you find the right meds. Honestly the current meds I’m on don’t help as much with focus, but they do help with just being able to fucking do shit and that’s the greater benefit in my opinion. The fact I can just think “oh I should do the dishes” and then start doing the dishes without having to think about doing it for half an hour before starting is still mind blowing to me sometimes.
I’m pretty severe ADHD and my wife has it too. Honestly unless someone either has ADHD or has had someone important in their life with it I’m not sure they truly understand executive disfunction.
Autist checking in, its a big problem for many of us too.
Yesterday I discovered a new tactic for the stuff I had been putting off all year. I started getting so angry at the fact that ive been putting myself though agony all year over some tasks that would take a few hours I nearly saw red.
I powered through them in about 4 hours, and I probably spent 400 hours agonizing over them.
I dubbed it ragetasking
Not healthy but it worked, not sure if I can harness it again haha
If the source is to be trusted:
Evidence indicates both disorders co-occur with a high frequency, in 20-50% of children with ADHD meeting criteria for ASD and in 30-80% of ASD children meeting criteria for ADHD.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20148275/
Also in the past, at least in US with DSM-4 it was thought that ASD and ADHD are mutually exclusive, so there’s probably a lot of people incorrectly missing that diagnosis.
DSM-5 superseded that in May 2013.
Yea i would definitely use that power sparingly lol. My dad was undiagnosed with ADHD till his 40s and he used rage/anger to get things done all throughout his younger years and he has a lot of stomach problems due to a number of factors such as severe reflux and other similar things. Not saying they were all directly caused by the anger, but it’s pretty accepted with my family and others that the anger probably exacerbated things.
Also, i feel like in some, not all, regards ADHD and Autism can be two sides of the same coin. I’ve definitely wondered before whether I might be at least a little bit on the spectrum.
Yeah this is the biggest thing that drove me to get diagnosed. I just wasn’t doing anything I enjoyed because I couldn’t get myself to do it. I would just watch YouTube instead. Now when I’m medicated I actually do the stuff that I’m interested in.
Just to add for anyone reading, and I’m not diagnosing anyone, ADHD shares a ton of symptoms with anxiety, depression, autism, and C/PTSD. It’s also common to have multiple of those at once with a compounding effect.
I’ve always had a mild level of executive function difficulty(presumed ADHD, undiagnosed) but then i had acute anxiety+depression and saw how bad it can get. The comic is a story of the one good day you might get in a week.
“What’s the point” aka living while depressed
When you stare blankly at your steam library unable to pick a game as you know you the dopamine farms dried up.
I wish it worked for me as easy as that.