u/GustavoFedrizziPsych

I played Dark Souls 1 for the first time when I was 13yo or something. Before that I was a pretty "cowardly" kid, in many senses, but in this case I refer to being easily disencouraged when facing resistance.

Never really wanted to accept hard challenges or anything like that, low tolerance to frustration, etc.

But for some reason, DS1 was so captivating that I kept trying again and again, and eventually beat the game. Then I went for DS2 when it was released, and so on.

My approach to things outside of gaming didn't change much. But eventually, as I grew older and started learning a bit more about life, I decided that I needed to get out of my comfort zone, and I truly believe that the thing that made me confident enough to do things like volunteer to military service, choose a career path that was challenging to me, and face my issues with social anxiety, was my experience with From Software games.

And as a psychologist, with what I know about human behavior, I have pretty good reasons to believe that these games do, indeed, offer a safe and controlled environment to deal with frustration and learning how to overcome resistance. Because of their trial and error learning mechanics, alongside the philosophical messages.

Some bosses feel quite literally impossible on your first try, specially when you're unable to even touch them or make any noticeble progress.

But after, 10, 20, 30, or however many tries, we all eventually adapt and GIT GUD at the game.

The difference is that, often, in real life, each try takes longer, so to most people it is very hard to know if you would succeed after trying again and again, or if you should just give up.

But I feel like having repeatedly failed, in the controlled environment of videogames, and eventually succeding, built in me this certainty that I can do pretty much anything (within reason) as long as I try for enough times (of course, in real life you have to consider your natural talents and your access to resources in order to decide what you're gonna dedicate yourself to).

Anyways, I'll be forever grateful to these games (specially DS1, which has a special place in my heart) for positively impacting me like that.

And I believe that this is a lesson that everyone should have the opportunity to learn.

Anyways, enough of this motivational speech lol. I'd love to hear you guys's experiences.

Don't you dare go hollow.

Hey guys! I hear so much talk about tips and "hacks" to be consistent in things, but as a psychologist, I know that most of them either don't work/are not sustainable in the long run.

So I thought I'd share with you somethign that actually works. Unfortunately, it's not an "ready to apply" protocol, but it's the framework that will actually work if you manage to apply it in your life:

Learning how to make whatever you want to do feel rewarding. Ideally both in the short and long run.

Because every behavior we exhibit is based on an automatic calculation of cost-effectiveness our brain does. If a certain behavior SEEMS to us as more rewarding than it is costly, then we'll do it.

Discipline, neurologically speaking, is simply one's ability to sustain their motivation for longer than usual in order to do a given activity consistenly. And that happens because "disciplined" people are able to see the world in a way that makes the desired behaviors cost-effective.

Then, there are many strategies you could use in order to achieve that, and it will highly depend on context. But you can use this principle as a framework of what will most likelly work, and what won't.

And if that seems hard to implement, it might also be a good idea to get professional help in order to be able to manage your own behaviors (not only depressed people can benefit from therapy).

But anyways, you guys can experiment with that and find out what works for you, I believe understanding the underlying mechanism tends to be much better than just following protocols blindly.

Hope this helps!

Hey Guys!

When talking about Dark Souls and mental health/personal development, most people relate it to depression. My experience was a bit different, I've never been clinically depressed, but I think Dark Souls had a considerable role in preventing that, but not for the philosophical reasons people usually talk about.

Basically, I started playing DS1 when I was about 13yo or something like that (I'm 26 now). Over the years I became a very persistent person, and even though I never thought I was destined to do many great things, I've gotten into the habit of setting high aspirations for myself.

And I believe one of the main experiences that taught me that was playing Dark Souls 1.

I've played hard games before, but DS1 is the kind of game where you could try to fight a boss for the first time and make literally ZERO progress on your first try. You actually couldn't even touch, or give any damage to the boss, as he obliterated you. So, to a pessimistic person, DS doesn't only feel hard, it might feel impossible.

Many people, when they have a hard time trying something new outside of gaming, they will be very sensitive to their first performance. If they perform somewhat well, they'll believe they have potential, if they perform poorly for a first try, they'll believe that simply isn't the right activity for them.

And the thing is: in real life, each try "costs" much more. 1 single try at creating a business takes multiple days, money, etc. But in gaming you have a controlled environment where you can try very hard things with little to no punishment if you fail.

And I guess that is precisely the dynamic that changed me as a person: through DS1 I've learned that even the things that feel completely impossible at first can be conquered if you just keep on trying.

I lost count of how many times I've failed to defeat Ornstein and Smough, so why should it be any different with any relevant challenge in real life?

I already tackle certain challenges expecting to have a hard time, and knowing that most of my tries will be failures, but that if I keep trying, I will eventually win.

That's what made me volunteer for military service in my country and what made me go through the service period even though it was hard and I was not the ideal soldier. That's also what made me keep pursuing my career as a clinical psychologist even though I struggled with social anxiety for most of my life (which is pretty much completely gone nowadays btw, behavioral exposure really does wonders). Btw, my social insecurites were probably the greatest psychological "challenge" of my life, but still I had the notion that even though it felt impossible to overcome it, I could do it if I just kept trying. And now it doesn't even affect my work as a psychologist at all.

If I didn't have this kind of mentality, I am 100% sure I'd have avoided many of the challenges that shaped me into who I am nowadays, and I wouldn't be so satisfied with my life currently. So I'm very grateful to this game and will forever love it.

Sorry for the long text guys, but I hope this was interesting for you. Let me know what your experience with Dark Souls was like.

I was reading this article about how depression affects one's judgment of their own ability to pay attention.

It turns out people who score higher in depression tend to underestimate their attention performance. A lot of them got pretty good scores on the tests, but felt like they had some kind of attention deficit.

There are a couple of interpretations we could make about that, but a pretty interesting one is the following: many people don't fail to focus because they have some kind of attention deficit, but because they're not motivated enough by a particular activity.

And well, depressed people tend to feel less desire to engage with the world, therefore less motivation, and therefore lower attention in their daily lives.

These people think they have an attention deficit because they do have a hard time paying attention in their daily lives. But that's related to motivation, and not cognitive limitations (at least in those cases).

As a psychologist, at some point I worked with a patient who was getting very low grades (like actual zeros). He had previously been diagnosed (or, possibly, misdiagnosed) with cognitive impairment and ADHD (that one was actually correct). But by changing the context in which he studied and applying strategies to make the behavior of studying more rewarding, his ability to focus improved, and he started getting great grades.

Even I was a terrible student in school, and to this day I can't focus at all while listening to a professor lecture. But if I sit down with a book in front of me, I'm able to focus and retain knowledge pretty easily, especially after a couple of months of behavioral conditioning.

So the main takeaway is: if you're unable to focus, sure, it could be ADHD, but regardless of that, your performance could be greatly increased by developing a "system" that makes studying more rewarding and improves your confidence and motivation.

The article I mentioned: Discrepancy between self-reported and performance-based attention - ScienceDirect