5 Pieces of Actionable Mental Health Advice for Game Designers & Publishers (& Everybody Else)
Over the past few months mental health and game design has been on my mind. First, Chelsea and I started Pine Island Games, and are pouring innumerable hours, a good chunk of capital, and an unhealthy amount of stress into it.
In July, Jamey Stegmaier shared some thoughts on his mental health over the years, and earlier this month Matt Holden of the Indie Game Alliance wrote about his own recent diagnosis with ADHD and how pervasive our mental condition can be on every aspect of our lives.
Every day I would sit down to work on the game, and my mind would immediately blank. I could see the code in my head, but it would evaporate like mist before it reached the keyboard. I stared at it for hours, crying and panicked, but the code never came. – Matt Holden
This is a hard topic. It is hard to examine ourselves. Hard to find good reliable advice. Hard to parse through the mumbo-jumbo of life coaches, click bait on productivity, and a culture of instant gratification and glorified success.
But, luckily, there are really smart people who spend a lot of time studying this stuff. I sat down with one such person to pick her brain.
“Frog Pond” by Steve Nickel (seemed appropriately calming)
Dr. Julia Martin Burch is a practicing clinical psychologist. She has an impressive CV including clinical work with anxious youth and parents at McLean Hospital in Boston, consultation and training, and is on staff in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. You can find some of her writing here.
We talked about mental health, game design, entrepreneurialism, and life. We came up with 5 pieces of actionable advice to help game designers, publishers, and really anybody look out for their own mental wellbeing.
Be intentional about your work and your passion
Accept that not everything will get done
Behavioral activation
Tap into values
Charge your battery
Be Intentional About Work and Passion
Kudos to anyone who makes room for things that bring them joy and meaning. – JMB
For a lot of us game design either is, or started as, a passion project. Julia’s first piece of advice is to create firm boundaries between work and life. Try to limit the bleed over between your projects.
Limited, pre-planned time chunks are helpful for a brain to focus and to recharge. - JMB
Get in the habit of writing a schedule, it doesn’t have to be rigid, just 1-3 things to accomplish in the morning, and in the afternoon. It will help you focus and make time for your projects.
If time management is a challenge, she recommends using a timer. 25 minutes on and 5 minutes off allows us time to focus and time to recharge. During the 25 minutes on, eliminate all distractions and just focus on your work. During the 5 minutes off, truly recharge – disconnect from screens and give your brain a break. You may need to play with the time intervals to find the best ratio of time on to off for you. She’s seen a lot of success in her patients using this approach.
Accept that Not Everything will Get Done
The more we try to be efficient, the more we stress ourselves out. - JMB
In order to have a healthy balance, and to accomplish our passions, we need to accept that not everything will get done. There will always be a load of laundry waiting, or a social commitment we are bailing on.
Having things left undone can cause stress and anxiety. It is important to accept that anxiety, recognize it, and live with it. Otherwise, we’ll never accomplish our dreams and create amazing games.
One of the things we say in therapy is that I wouldn’t ask you to sit with this negative emotion if it wasn’t in service of something. You tolerating anxiety around leaving a few emails unanswered is in service of dedicating that time to creating this amazing thing that you are passionate about. It’s tough because you won’t be immediately reinforced the way you are when you get to check an email off your to-do list, but it’s worth it in the long run. - JMB
If game design and publication is your dream, if it’s your hobby, if it is what puts food on the table – it is ok for you to prioritize it over other aspects of your life.
You need to find the balance that works for you.
At times that balance will be stressful. Those uncomfortable emotions are ok. Recognize them. Make a conscious choice to make room for them. Create something great.
Behavioral Activation
I worked from home and devoted 70-80 hours a week on Stonemaier. There were still waking hours in the day to focus on physical health, but I just stopped prioritizing it… – Jamey Stegmaier
It is easy to let “self-care” slip by, even if it is for a good reason. “We know from a ton of research that one of the most important things to keep mood steady is behavioral activation.” That means:
Move your body
Build mastery towards a goal that is enjoyable and meaningful to you
This doesn’t mean you need to run a marathon. Moving your body can be as simple as going for a walk around the block (Julia often holds her client sessions while walking together), biking into town, or stretching.
Flamme Rouge - photo by Stefano Zannoni (via BGG)
Building mastery towards a goal doesn’t have to be physical either. It can be painting, or learning a song on the guitar, or conquering that tricky 5.10 at the climbing gym. Whatever it is, set a goal and chip away at it.
Moving your body and working towards goals will help your mood and your emotional wellbeing.
Tap into Values
I have gotten criticism on every single blog post I’ve written (and will on this one). Creating something and putting it into the world will do that. It is a simple fact of interfacing with the public that you can’t please everyone, and that some people will be vocal about their displeasure.
Some backers’ passion revealed a dark side of humanity and Kickstarter–the example I always give is that even though the game was delivering early in the US, backers in some states were outraged that backers in other states had their rewards shipped first. – Jamey Stegmaier
At the end of the day, we are social creatures, and this type of feedback is painful. It is especially painful when you pour your heart into something.
Make room for the feelings and find a balance where you acknowledge your feelings, but also check the facts on the situation. -JMB
Julia recommends four steps for dealing with criticism
Acknowledge the feelings
Extract what is useful from them
Check the facts – what do I know to be true
Know that you aren’t your emotions - get space from the feelings and thoughts once you’ve gotten what you can from them
First, acknowledge that something is causing you distress. Recognize the emotion for what it is. This allows us to confront it, understand it, and process it.
Second, extract what is useful from the criticism. Mark Rosewater (lead designer of Magic: The Gathering) has talked about this several times. The most vitriol charged comments come from a place of passion. Understanding the core of criticism, and peeling away the painful layers, can allow us to both improve ourselves, our designs, our projects, but also gives us the emotional space to digest the feedback.
Third, check the facts. Dial it back into what you know to be true. In Jamey’s example the facts would be: 1) games are being delivered ahead of schedule, 2) some backers are receiving their games before others. Acknowledging what the facts are and extracting them allows us to have a more balanced view of the situation which allows us to better come to terms with other people’s anger and disappointment. Checking the facts helps us examine all sides, to understand if something is our fault, if there is something else we should do (either this time or next time), and to de-personalize the feedback.
Four, recognize that you aren’t your emotions or thoughts. If you find yourself consistently spiraling and getting upset because of a specific type of feedback, Julia recommends noticing and calling out what’s happening to get some distance from it. For example, “ah yes, my mind is telling me the ‘Kansas hates Jamey story again. Thanks mind, I’m going to refocus on what I’m doing rather than on your commentary.” (Kansas being purely an example). This can help take the power out of the painful emotions and thoughts that naturally arise when we experience criticism.
Charge Your Battery
I like to think about ourselves and our emotional and physical reserves to be analogous to our phones. Think about how often you check your phone charge. What if you checked in on yourself one tenth as often as you check on your phone? - JMB
Creating and publishing a board game is really hard. Having a passion project on top of a job is herculean. You are doing something inspiring and difficult. You need to check in on yourself and make sure that you have the emotional and mental energy.
It doesn’t take more than 5-10 seconds to ask yourself “how am I doing?” Are you at 80%, 50%, 20%?
Robot Quest Arena - I haven’t gotten to play this yet (it KSed a few months ago), but I am pretty sure there is a thematic battery pack in it
Some people will need to recharge at 60%, some will be fine at 25%. There is no right answer, but it is about getting in the habit of checking in on yourself and figuring out where our threshold is.
Take that moment to be still. Yes, it is 15 seconds that you aren’t “being productive”, but it will pay off in spades. – JMB
Julia recommends either checking in at specific times or tying your check ins to an activity. Check in every time you get a snack or get up to use the restroom. Make it a normal part of your day.
And figure out what you need to recharge. Maybe it’s a few deep breaths, a little music, sometime daydreaming out the window.
Taking time to recharge might feel stressful, but it will make you healthier, and happier, and ultimately more productive.
I got a lot out of my conversation with Julia, and I hope you find something useful and actionable in her advice. Remember to look out for one another and to take care of yourself.
What mental health techniques do you use to keep yourself, healthy, happy, and focused on your priorities?
