Tired of Sucking in 'Overwatch?' Try Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

An Overwatch player has been very frustrated with his matches recently, so his wife, who is a therapist, gave him a mood log worksheet to help manage his emotions. The sheet went viral on Reddit, with 14,500 upvotes and more than a thousand comments. Many are from other players who can relate and are asking how they, too, can calm the fuck down after particularly soul-sucking loss.

I talked to Ben and Anna (they asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of her work) over email about this viral piece of gamer therapy. She said she often overhears Ben’s grumbles while playing Overwatch, muttering about losses and teammates.

One night, Ben stayed up way too late playing Overwatch, trying to break a brutal losing streak. “I couldn't sleep for at least an hour, and I was clearly sleep-deprived the next day,” Ben said. “The usual progression is that I'll be upbeat and encouraging for a match or two, then quiet, then visibly annoyed.” He doesn’t scream at anyone in the chat, but he broods, he said, and it started impacting the rest of his life.

When Ben admitted to Anna that his exhaustion the next day was because of the game, she suggested the worksheet. She’s a family therapist who uses Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy approaches to help her clients, and happened to have a few extra mood assessment worksheets in her bag.

“My teammates are hot garbage,” Ben scrawled on the sheet in pencil, after a particularly brutal Overwatch losing streak. “Blizzard always makes me fight Diamond Smurfs.” “I’m just going to keep losing.”

Next to these slots are ways to reframe the thoughts by examining how they might be distorted by emotion, and turn them into positive thoughts, like “I can learn from my mistakes” and “My [Skill Rating] is an accurate reflection.”

It’s been less than a week since he filled out the worksheet for the first time, but laying out frustrations on paper is a step in the right direction, Anna said. “Seeing our thoughts on paper, in black and white can be a powerful experience. It makes us more aware of those unhelpful thought patterns that we are engaging in, and gives us the opportunity to make some changes.”

“A lot of this probably sounds obvious to someone outside of the world of the game, but when you're concentrating super hard, it's amazing how fast your brain will make these logical leaps…without you even noticing. If you're not careful to think mindfully and realize the tricks your brain is playing, you will literally feel lower self-worth after a series of losses. What this exercise does is help you understand how your brain and your emotions work—and how to change your mindset so that those things don't subconsciously beat you down.”

And Ben says that his in-game skill rating has gone up since trying the worksheet, so there’s that.