thehawthornehut-blog

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Do not punish the behaviour you want to see

I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right?

But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize,  snarkily say, “So, you’ve decided to join us”?

Or when someone does something they’ve had trouble doing, say, “Why can’t you do that all the time?” (Happened to me, too often.)

Or any sentence containing the word “finally”. 

If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don’t complain about how it’s not enough. Don’t bring up previous stuff. Encourage it.

Because I swear to fucking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.

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With the holidays around the corner, I wanted to write you guys a little something special… I know the holiday season can be a tough time for anyone working through any kind of mental health issues and I just want all of you to know that you can get through this! There is nothing more important than self care and I hope each and every one of you carve out the time each and every day just for yourself. It can be as simple as going to get your nails done to buying yourself a little present :) You deserve it and so much more!

Love you guys!! Make sure to take care of YOU ❤️

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You shouldn’t stop yourself from taking a break if you really need one! They can be healthy and add to your productivity. :D

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How to Help a Friend See they’re Not a Failure

1. Remind them of all the kind and thoughtful things they’ve done for you, and for the other people in their life.

2. Remind them of times when they’ve pushed ahead, and kept on going, even when it was hard.

3. Remind them of the times when things worked out eventually, and their efforts were rewarded, and they reached a personal goal.

4. Remind of the funny things they’ve said and done, and the times when you have laughed, and shared some happy memories.

5. Show them they are worthwhile and are valuable by doing something special that makes them feel they’re loved.

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While cleaning out my room I found a paper that my therapist gave me some time ago to deal with obsessive and intrusive thoughts. Sorry the paper is a little crinkled and stained, but I figured I’d post it in hopes that it will help someone like it helped me.

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I’ve seen people say that the guardian theme from BotW is what anxiety sounds like. I don’t necessarily think they’re wrong, but...well let’s just say that on playing this video, some of us older gamers will grow in a few more grey hairs.

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So it turns out that when you’re being smashed in the face with the old depression, running PotD solo doesn’t actually make you feel any better. Who knew.

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So, As a healer I do find large pulls very difficult to deal with sometimes, however if anyone is having panic attacks because of large pulls in a video game, they could heavily consider putting that game down or trying another class... it is absolutely not fair for tanks to run off sprinting large pulls, but I also don't believe it's okay for healers to expect everyone to cater to their anxiety. Nobody should play a role that makes them panic like that. Just saying

They’re allowed to play it if it’s the only one they enjoy. And it’s not really catering it’s simply asking to go a bit slower. A lot of people who are in that situation and continue to play are people who can handle mid-level pulls (I’m talking double packs) or would rather be warned ahead of time than surprised so they can be prepared. What leads to the panic is being unprepared either based on just plain not expecting it or not having done it before.

Example: I can handle most if not all pull patterns on all three healers while adding DPS. I also base the dungeon’s pull pattern on the first pull taken. Take Ala Mhigo. Tank only takes the first two groups and goes to do the second one by itself. My assumption then is we’re doing standard doubles. So I’m mentally prepared for standard doubles. However, after the first boss Tank pulls wall to monkies to cannons, stopping for a few seconds at second monkey pack (which is long enough for me to assume that he’s going to stop resulting in me dropping Earthly Star) then suddenly sprinting across the field to get everything else, effectively leaving me behind flabberghasted. Was I mentally prepared for that? Nope. Did we survive? Nope. Did I panic and try to get us to survive? Yep. Did I fail? Yep!

A person’s condition doesn’t dictate what class they can and can’t play. People have triggers that aren’t necessarily related to the game at all as well but what triggers them are situations and text left by other players . You’re basically saying someone who goes through this should assume the worst in everybody and quit the class they enjoy. I’m not expecting tanks to cater to me. Most never do. But I do expect them to be considerate. The example I gave above was actually a good day because the tank apologized there after and split the pull in two which is something I can better handle. There are tanks who won’t do that and will either force a second try or “punish” the healer by doing single packs.

And in addition to that, people who suffer from panic attacks possibly related to game stress know their limits better than you do and will decide whether or not they can play this game or certain roles in this game.

– Mod Mhi

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Yes, I’m an angry healer but I’m mostly just angry at myself. 

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I’m going to preface this by saying most of my experiences in the duty finder are what I’d call “neutral”. You go in, some poor DPS might make a comment about waiting for like, a hojillion years on this queue, someone may have an “I love bonus” macro (which, by the way always makes me feel a little less self-conscious about being new to something). Nobody says anything much, you clear or you don’t and everyone moves on. Sometimes people hang around long enough to give comms. The truly bad parties, I’ve found, are comparatively rare, but to me it’s less about whether we clear or not, or how many times we wipe but rather just how people behave. 

Now, I don’t consider myself to have particularly thick skin, rather just general acceptance that people will behave like jerks online. Yes I’ll include myself in this assessment. As such most nastiness I encounter I can usually shake off pretty easily.  

One notable exception to this happened during an Urth’s Fount run, awhile ago now, which I was doing for Khloe Aliapoh, who I am convinced is a Garlean agent sent to ruin adventurers everywhere. I’m running as WHM, and I’ve always found that fight is pretty intense to heal. Anyway. I should have had some alarm bells going when the tank pronounced that there wasn’t a lot of dodging in that fight (blatant lies or simple unfamiliarity), but whatever, I don’t care. I’m just here to heal. Anyway after wiping at least once, possibly multiple times the tank tells the healers that we should be DPSing more. I say something to the effect of “this fight is tough enough on my MP as is”. I don’t think I was rude. And that is when the tank lets me know that 95% of my heals were wasted anyway.  

To be honest, I’m not sure why that comment got to me to the degree that it did. I mean we finished, and a small (large) part of me said “just let the tank die. That’ll show them” which I didn’t do. Maybe it was the use of a number. The science part of my brain said “Oh Crap! They have stats! Head for the hills!” I probably should have asked for a citation. 

But really the point of all this is that I dealt with it badly. I told myself “you shouldn’t let it get to you” when it was really too late. It had gotten to me; I had been gotten to. And maybe if I had just let myself be a little spooked in the moment. I wouldn’t have spent the next however long quietly stressing about all the tanks secretly judging me at all times. “I’m a terrible healer and all the tanks hate me” is such a stupid, stupid thing to be ashamed of, but being ashamed of being ashamed isn’t a good solution. It turned out that the solution was time. I ran Urth’s Fount recently as WHM. It wasn’t smooth, but we cleared and I got my couple of comms and life was back to normal again. 

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So I’m leveling AST at the moment, which brings with it a host of ridiculous (mostly card related) things I actually worry about. 

Examples: 

- Card favouritism (eg. Will the BLM notice that I’ve used all my balances on MNK?) 

- What the hell do I do with spire? I can’t see TP so I’m just going to throw this at the NIN’s face and hope we’re good 

- Am I being greedy using the ewer on myself?  

- Does the spear actually have a purpose that I’m just too incompetent to notice? (Never mind! Thank you latest update!) 

I am grateful that in 4 man dungeons I can just switch on diurnal sect and pretend I’m still just a WHM. Also I do enjoy my bedtime AST glamour. It’s actually pretty boring, but the moogle slippers are just delightful. 

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An odd rambling introduction from an odd person

Hi people who might be reading this, I’m Tatsu 

Well...not really. Tatsu isn’t my actual name, but it’s a name that I use in a videogame, which happens to be a reference to another videogame. Is that detail relevant? 

(No. No it is not)

Anyway, in case you haven’t read the blog description on the side, I decided to make this blog for the benefit of online gamers who are dealing with mental illness, one of whom happens to be me! 

Essentially I’ve used gaming for many years as a tool to help cope with anxiety and depression. Online games specifically are useful in that they often have big, immersive worlds which are super distracting when I’m worried about nothing and allow me to fairly precisely control my degree of social interaction when I want to be around people but not necessarily be with them. Does that distinction make sense to people who aren’t me?  

(No. No it does not) 

But people are inconsistent. And while some people find other wonderful people out there in Eorzea or Azeroth or Overwatchia (I’m assuming that’s where Overwatch takes place), the internet can be incredibly cruel, and I suppose my heals weren’t the best but does the tank really need to be quite so harsh? I’m feeling guilty enough thank you. 

Anyway, to put it succinctly this is a place I’m making available for those of us with mental illness to talk about their experiences gaming online. While my personal choice of game is FFXIV, I like to think said experiences have a degree of universality to them.  

So please make use of my ask and submission boxes. Otherwise I’m going to have to do more of whatever this....mess of words is.