This Mood Log Might Cure Your Gamer Rage

This Mood Log Might Cure Your Gamer Rage

Multiplayer video games can get toxic fast, especially when you’re stuck with a team of overranked LOSERS and you are the ONLY ONE guarding the last capture point while Trash6Boner9 just DICKS AROUND. You complain to your friend or your partner, and they ask why you even play this game if it pisses you off so much. And then you feel utterly alone in the world.

But redditor and Overwatch player SirBenny is married to a therapist, so she had a solution. Not to fix SirBenny’s garbage teammates, but to help him actually feel good about playing his video game.

She had SirBenny fill out a daily mood log, a therapeutic tool for processing negative thoughts and feelings after an upsetting event. The results (excerpted above) read kind of like a child’s diary, partly because negative thoughts can sound ridiculous when we write them out. Just by putting his thoughts into words, then considering the assumptions and distortions he was making, SirBenny was able to reconsider the experience and improve his outlook.

Mood logs can be used for serious trauma, like the death of a loved one. But it’s valid to use them for any event, however “silly” or “small,” that’s really causing problems. SirBenny says he was playing Overwatch late into the night, hoping for “one more win,” then losing sleep over his losses. “Honestly,” he says, “it helped a lot!”

Here’s a clean copy you can print out and use. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but here’s cognitive therapist Dr. David D. Burns, creator of the mood log, explaining how to use it. And here’s hoping for fewer rage quits.

“My wife is a therapist. After I kept complaining about Overwatch losses, she made me fill out this worksheet.” [Reddit]


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