It’s currently Mental Health Week in the UK, and a
conversation with a very good friend led me to think about what gaming means
for me and my mental health. I am open about the fact that I suffer from Borderline
Personality Disorder; a name for a collection of problems that came about
because of being bullied harshly during my formative years. My journey is my
own, many will relate to it, and many more won’t. But it is important to
recognise how gaming has helped me learn to cope with my own issues.
Does gaming help with mental health issues? I am not
acquainted with the statistics to be sure, but over the years I can candidly
say that the games I played were a vital lifeline in helping me to cope with
hard times. If it wasn’t for video games, and the world they helped me escape
into, I doubt I would be here today.
In Primary School, life was tough for me. I was bullied
verbally and physically practically every day of my life. I have developed a
defensive personality where I am always suspicious of other people because of
this. It’s hard to make friends when every person you’ve ever met has hurt you
in some way. I had the occasional friendship but they never lasted, as most
people that made themselves acquainted with me were soon convinced by a gang of
abusers to join in the bullying or they would become a target.
I didn’t know anything about mental health. I had been seen
by the occasional specialist, but my parents were terrified of the stigma and
refused to get any help for me. I was told to hide a lot of my issues as much
as possible, or I ‘would be sent away to the loony bin’. As a result, my coping
mechanisms were poor. I first attempted suicide at the age of eight years old,
by trying to bash my own head repeatedly against a tiled bathroom wall.
I found my coping mechanism in escaping into the fantastical
world of gaming, where for once I could count on predictable patterns and a
happier, nicer world. Conversely, reality was a bleak place for me, where I had
no safe space to feel relaxed.
I first discovered gaming after my Dad bought me a SEGA Mega
Drive bundled with Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2. I recognise now what these games
meant to me as a child. The bright colours depicted a happy world, with
cheerful music and immersive graphics. I could participate in a world where,
for once, I was the winner.
The world of video games was so immersive that reality would
oftentimes fade away. Sonic was my hero as a child and I aspired to be like
him. This cool, never-give-up personality was something that I admired greatly.
I found a sense of self-worth in video games that I found nowhere else in the
world.
As new games came out and became more mainstream, I managed
to find some success in relating to other kids by shared stories. I managed to
find a couple of best friends with whom I shared stories of playing Final
Fantasy, and we would regularly track each other’s progress by the discs we
were on.
One of the most important game characters in my life was
Zidane from Final Fantasy IX. He was a traumatised guy with a dark past, but
despite this he turned out to be one of the most caring characters in the
series. His main quote ‘You don’t need a reason to help people’ was something I
took on board, and I modelled my own personality after him. I wanted to be the cheerful
rock that could always be upbeat no matter the situation. Not only that, but
the way he cared deeply about his friends and protected them any way he could
was inspirational.
Another game that was important to me growing up was Pokémon
Red and Blue. I was amazed by the world of Pokémon and I felt a strong sense of
camaraderie with the creatures that joined me on my journey. I got a lot of
therapy from calling my rival after the ringleader of my bullies as a child. It
gave me that vital lifeline of having at least one place, imagined though it
was, that I could beat my bully.
Through high school, I developed a very close friendship
with another teenage boy thanks to gaming. We became inseparable and would
often go around each other’s houses to play Halo and Sonic games together. We
bonded over the shared sense of belonging with each other, as we were both
social outcasts, regularly bullied and tormented at school.
It was a shame that it didn’t last. As time moved on, we
grew further apart, and at the age of 15 my friend and I had become enemies. He
joined in on playground campaigns to encourage me to kill myself, and the
bullying had been intensified. On occasions I was choked to
unconsciousness, thrown down stairs and was verbally abused to the point I
desperately started cutting myself with a pencil sharpener blade.
I found gaming to be an important escape during these
difficult times. No matter how badly I was bullied, or how loudly my parents
screamed at each other at home, I could just melt away and be immersed into a
better world thanks to video games. I could be myself and I felt safe to show my
true personality in these worlds and not fear the horrid consequences as a result.
I was diagnosed with depression during college, where I
realised that my previous experiences with being bullied were damaging my
grades and my ability to socialise. I was paranoid about everyone around me and
I had no idea who to trust. Thanks to recently having lost my friend, I had
nothing but videogames for comfort, and they were an important lifeline during
the harder times of becoming a young adult.
Imagine being totally, oppressively alone in life, with
literally nobody reaching out to you. That was my early adulthood until I was
lucky enough to meet my fiancée. Video games were safe
places for me when nowhere felt safe.
I feel like as long as I have a gaming system by my side I
can cope with a lot of things. Videogames gave me a reason to live and played a
huge part in shaping my identity. As I went to darker and darker places, I
could always boot up a game and forget about life for a while. It was a
lifeline, a stick to fight with that was more important to me than anything.
One of the biggest ways gaming helped me was in finding
communities online, and in doing so, I found that there were a lot more people
like me that suffered. I wasn’t alone, and that was one of the most important
things to me.
As I now go into later stages of my treatment, knowing that
I suffer from Borderline and all the issues that come with it, one of the key
things I hold onto is that I can always cope by booting up a game and enjoying
the warm feelings of nostalgia that I get from that.
Gaming is an important coping mechanism for many people in
this way, and I am glad that I can raise awareness in some way of just what
gaming can do to help, not hinder, mental illness. I am deeply lucky to live in
a world where more and more people are connecting through this awesome hobby,
and I feel humbled to be a part of this community, something that helps me feel
a sense of belonging I struggle to get elsewhere.
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