So I’m a shut-in with a ton of problems and no money. My life revolves around World of Warcraft and Destiny 2 which is sad in its own right I’m sure. Anyway every single time I try to find a community (guild or clan) it goes to hell within a month or so. They always say I’m too negative about the game or my performance. No matter what I do/say it apparently always comes across as ‘negative’ and they see it as hurting their community. Funny enough these communities are always dead and I’m talking into a void trying to engage people.
Sorry I’m not sure why I’m posting this. Just had another group tell me I was getting kicked due to negativity and I’m so tired of it. I don’t have any friends, I’m always starting over from scratch and even if I try my hardest it still ends the same way. Don’t even feel that I’m being negative since I just say bugs me. Sorry. Feel like I could cry, because of everything, and I can’t even do that.
When I was younger I also was told that I had a bit of a “debbie downer” presence.
Something that helped me was the concept of “yes and”, when someone says something, find anything in, or tangential to, their statement that you can either :
- Agree with
- Comment on
- Tangent from
Then the “and” part, add something of your own to the conversation.
Force yourself to balance your natural negativity with forced positivity and over time you may find that you no longer have to force it, and that you enjoy finding hidden positives in things, like a game, it turns conversation into a puzzle.
In general, people like being agreed with. So sometimes before disagreeing you can even say, “I agree with X part” and then instead of saying you blatantly disagree, change your tone to something like, “I would probably modify Y and see if I like it.” It’s all about controlling your tone and playing to human tendencies.
Once you get to know someone better, you can be a bit looser, some people like autistic truths. Know your audience, sometimes it’s as easy as asking, “Oh, am I being too negative, I try not to do that.”
Good luck!
I think this is great advice! It helps if you (not op, but the general “you”) find yourself to be a bit of a contrarian, too.
I had talked to them about how I come off as negative but don’t mean it thar way. They said I was good and to not stress it. So I was just beint me and tonight I get a ‘you’re being negative and we don’t want that in our community’. So even being real with them and talking to them about this it wasn’t good enough.
People are unpredictable. Don’t take it as a judgement of who you are, we all face rejection sometimes. It can even be good for you in doses because it helps build resilience and shows that failure is just part of growth as a person. If you never fail, you aren’t trying hard enough.
All you can do is sincerely try, if you are doing that, as well as accepting feedback and growing, the right people will notice that effort. You’ll find your people, just don’t stop trying.
I also suggest meditation, it can help you to identify the roots if thoughts as well as help you to know yourself. You may find the root of your negativity if you explore yourself.
Not an ad, I use it regularly, Headspace is a great app as an intro to meditation. Costs like $100 a year I think? If money is tight there are plenty of free alternatives.
Wish you the best.
Super advice. I do this in online and real life discourse on most any subject.
When responding to something, always begin your point at a place the other person understands. It’s not always easy to find something to agree with from a position that you completely disagree with, but still try to find even some neutral ground. If you start at an unfamiliar spot for them right out of the gate, you lose people’s attention, or they can get defensive, which isn’t your fault but it’s a natural reaction.
This is good advice. Interactions between people usually have loose scripts, but are mostly improv, and a big part of that is encouraging the other person to keep talking about what they are interested in. The hard part for me is usually when I find I don’t have much to add, but usually I try to agree and paraphrase what they’ve said. This shows you’re genuinely paying attention and care about what they have to say, and invites them to clarify or keep going. Really, just try to find things in what others say that you can agree with in general and you’ll likely be in a pretty good spot.
I have some experience with this unintended negativity, both from working on my own and helping friends and colleagues (programmers). You care and want to help - feeling positive or neutral, people feel like you are pushing negativity on them.
I’m happy to have a longer discussion with you over DM to help - maybe go through some conversation examples - but for general advice I’d focus on:
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Suggesting improvement is criticism.
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When talking about non-persons (plan, initiative, item, map, game, …) people will take it personally if they have any connection to it. E.g. if they found a new gun, they may be excited to test it out. Commenting “x is better” sucks away their happiness. If they have spent a lot of time grinding on something, telling them “you should do Y it is faster” devalues the time they spent and makes them feel stupid.
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Most people you interact with don’t want to play optimally. Any helpful advice to show them a better way is making them feel worse about the fun they are having.
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But! If people ask you for advice explicitly, let loose! What would otherwise be interpreted as negativity, will be taken positively.
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Comming from a simular situation. So the best I can give is my own story.
Nearing my 40s. More of a rimworld/minecrafter. Every day off work, every waking minute im in a game.
short version of a long story. I’m experiencing huge life changes. Therapy and friends convinced me to remove one of the major causes of my isolation. And with it going away I saw just how isolated I actually was all this time. I saw how badly it has affected me. The negativity is part of that. It’s like a symptom of isolation poisoning.
I feel for the first time that I’ve wasted so much time. I didn’t value making friends or seeking a life parter. Though having made a friend everything changed.
Honestly the desire to play games is fading and it now feels bad to play games all day. Making a real friend who is postive made me want to be more positive i leared that it’s a genuinely good feeling.
Isolation is comfortable but it comes at a cost you may not see. It’s good to go out and get some perspective occasionally.
Hey, there’s a lot going on in this post. This might be a bit beyond our scope. I recommend seeking professional help. It sounds like there’s a number of things that you’d wanna talk about in therapy: depression, gaming addiction, boundaries, self criticism, emotional regulation, etc.
I know you call yourself a shut in with no money. See if you can find something virtual and through insurance. Or request financial hardship rates. You gotta do something. The only wrong answer is to keep doing nothing.
I don’t have insurance because it costs $600 a month. So again that’s not an option. Gaming addiction? These are my current fixations that bring some tiny joy in this miserable existence so I’m not sure how that is considered ‘addiction’, especially in an autistic community. Also wasn’t really looking for help. Just being seen/heard/understood is more than I get anywhere so I thought I could post here. Sorry if that was wrong.
It doesn’t seem like it’s bringing you joy. You aren’t happy where you are, are you? Sometimes when an immediate pleasure keeps us afloat in a bad situation, it tends to make it easier to stay in that bad situation. And the more you seek satisfaction from gaming, the harder it is to get that satisfaction, right? Hence the negativity.
If nothing else, try watching some Healthy Gamer videos. He has a great YouTube channel with a lot of topics that will be relevant to you.
I used to be in this pit too (and still dip back in every once in a while)
What helped me was recognizing what “negative Nancy’s” sounded like
What I sounded like. I recorded myself once and just kept tally of all the times I disagreed, argued, or tried to push on something that wasn’t worth pushing about.
Are you feeling depressed? Have you tried talking with professionals or maybe even just your family about it? They likely know you best and will be able to help you out.
Sometimes talkin with a good therapist you can vibe with a bit just helps to see these alternate viewpoints that your cognitive bias won’t/can’t see
Might be worth it. For me, and it seems like maybe you too, getting fed up with myself was the first step to being critical and objective about my choices in behavior. Sometimes being a bit “lighter” about stuff is what you need to help reset. But that can be hard if you’re struggling physically to produce enough serotonin or whatever the ailment might be. Other times it’s just habits you need to change.
Life is too short to be miserable. You will die the same way unless you take action to course correct and start living more brightly.
I can’t afford to see a therapist. I mentioned this in my post. I live in constant physical pain and mental pain layered over everything else. So not sure what to tell you.
You mentioned being lighter about stuff. When I talk about the only things that give me some good people think I’m too intense. If I try to tone that down then they say I’m vanishing or something. I can’t win either way.
Doesn’t hurt to keep it in mind, I can understand the affordability thing and I really would not trust in the app based therapy apps like betterhelp, cerebral, etc after the BS that has recently been in the news and them selling your fucking data… However, general telehealth options (sometime even offered by actual offices and clinics) are sometimes more affordable and you don’t even have to leave the house to do em. Sometimes that space can help you take the first step.
It’s hard for me to know exactly what’s going on, but introspection imo is key. Maybe try keeping a journal and get into the swing of journaling a bit every day. Don’t try to jump into it with the thought that you have to do it every day right away, but do it in more manageable chunks like every month, every week, every other day, etc. and work into it. Set yourself up for success and be reasonable and kind to yourself.
The reality is that we’re all very complicated and intricate beings. We deserve to be afforded grace (especially by ourselves) but we owe it to the people we care about and the people we enjoy being around to be the best versions of ourselves
Sometimes that means making changes to who we’ve become in favor of who we want to be. Meditation and introspection have been around for many many years and there’s a reason for that.
That sorta stuff is free financially, but it requires you to break out of your current “shape” and put in investment/work to be something new. It can feel a little weird/awkward at first, but in the end it will be worth it.
And when the day comes that you meet someone like you used to be, be kind to them too and show them your way. That’s community. That’s humanity.
I don’t know if this helped, I hope I didn’t come off too pompous or “high-horsed”. I want you to feel better like I do and I just hope it’s enough for you to use as a bit of support/gas to get going on your own path toward success. Have a better day friend
EDIT: reworded the holded parts from their original form which was more “damning” of telehealth in general, and generalizing a problem that had no business being expressed in that way.
I really would not trust in telehealth providers after the BS that has recently been in the news and them selling your fucking data
NO nono NO NO!
do not listen to the fucking sensationalist scare-tactic news on this.
telehealth is to be confidential, and any therapist breaking that rule will lose their license, full stop.
First off, relax.
Second off:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/16/24131881/ftc-fine-cerebral-telehealth
And so on. Go in person. You’re trusting your personal and medical data with companies that have proven to time in and time out be untrustworthy.
Do you have a service you would suggest that’s reputable instead? That would be constructive.
Oh man, you can’t pin the whole field down based on the actions of Better Health. Therapy apps are notoriously predatory. The message cannot be “Don’t use Telehealth”. The message is “Do not use therapy apps like Better Health and Cerebral”.
If you reach out to a proper outpatient therapy clinic and request telehealth appointments, you will meet with a therapist on specific HIPAA compliant software that medical practitioners use throughout the country. The industry is highly regulated on these things. Part of why those predatory apps are such a problem is not just in how they underpay clinicians, give poor service to clients, or charge extortionary rates, but also because of how they use sleazy practices to undermine confidentiality and telemedicine as a whole.
So in short, if you go to a licensed clinician with a proper practice, you will have confidentiality as long as they have a license.
Fair enough, I’ll put in an edit
EDIT: Edited the original comment, thanks for keeping things more levelheaded and civil, makes it easier for us to discuss stuff
It can be hard to change opinions if you’re being yelled at, so to speak, so I appreciate it
Life is too short to be miserable. You will die the same way unless you take action to course correct and start living more brightly.
bruh
You can’t expect to make change in your life by doing nothing. You have to take action. That’s all that’s being said here and nothing more.
Technically true, which is the most generous I could possibly be. It is not good advice. Telling someone to live more brightly is, begging your pardon, freaking useless.
Edit: to be clear, a lot of the rest of your advice isn’t bad or anything. I just really hate this particular phrasing. It will not help, I guarantee it.
Fair enough, some help is better than no help
Been there, sort of. Lifelong depression does tend to make you “negative” and apparently some people hate that. NTs are not necessarily genius communicators who’ve worked at it a lot, it’s just that most people per definition tend to communicate their preferred/“natural” way. This means that whatever is pissing them off is a) not necessarily wrong, b) not necessarily what/why they think it is, and c) something you’ll likely have to work at whether you’re “in the wrong” or not.
Kinda depressing, eh?
Unfortunately, sometimes negativity is contagious - sharing something negative with someone is likely to worsen their mood. I won’t conjecture why that is - I can only really say that whenever people dump long lists of everything wrong with the world on me, I rarely feel great about it afterwards. Negativity is often warranted, usually realistic, sometimes funny in specific ways etc., but mostly it is still just negativity.
Try and be mindful about this: what are you communicating? Is the content or tone negative? Did you get onto a negative track from something more positive? It is not easy, but you could unironically put up a visible reminder. Don’t overdo the self-censoring either, though, that’s also not healthy.
Also, are you taking up a lot of space in the conversation relative to others? This can add some friction too if the disparity is big enough. I have been both the loud person (usually from boredom) and the person getting annoyed at someone individually being like 50% of a chat. One man’s dead chat is a reasonable level of activity for another, after all.
(All the above is personal experience - reasonably sure the buzzkill stuff is an actual thing but I wasn’t able to find a citation or anything.)
It’s hard when you don’t have any IRL friends and don’t even fit in online. The truth is that trying to be social online can be even harder because it’s so shallow. When it comes to groups like that, they can be more exclusionary then having personal time with someone because the group is there for a purpose and anyone who brings down the mood gets shown the door.
That’s true. I’ve terrible experiences irl too. When I joined an LGBTQIA+ group at school they ostersiced me for saying that I personally had no issue talking to someone who had questions about the communities I fell into. Like that was a terrible thing to them so they shunned me. It was so funny because we had a room you could go to to hang out/study/chill in and when I’d walk in they’d all get up and leave. Other times I’ve just been furniture for the group. Like they say ‘we want you here/we like you being here’ but when I’d try to engage they’d just shut down. Now with COVID and no place to even try to find friends I gave up. I’m in too much pain and can’t afford to go do things so yeah.
My sister was diagnosed with autism and she became a trans lesbian Republican. A lot of progressives hate her and can’t understand why there are gay people who become Republicans.
Hey man if all you like is destiny amd WoW you rock that shit and fuck anyone who would put you down for doing what you love. I played hundreds of dwarf fortress and I ain’t stopping.
I work on my single player backlog now and then, but otherwise I usually rock the same old games. DF, Deep Rock Galactic, warhammer total war. Just thousands of hours. Sall good. It’s my life, and when the time comes it will be me dieing not all these haters telling us what to do.
Find what peace you can dude, don’t let the haters take that away from ya.
As for the socializing thing, it’s hard to say what it is from what we know about the situations. If I had to guess, it sounds like you over share. Everybody thinks “shit fuck God damned it” or whatever when shit goes sideways in game. However not everyone yells it into the microphone. Consider using push to talk and vent your frustration off air if you must.
Keep trying, eventually you will either get better at effective communication or you’ll fall in with a like minded crowd.
Interacting is hard and people can be awful, especially online. (As you well know). Try to find the positive attributes you can focus more on - cool names, clever comments, good play, indeed even them showing a good attitude.
Cop to tending to sound negative - honestly might help a lot. “You may think this sounds critical but I’m trying to help” - set some context since it’s easy to misunderstand without interacting in person.
As trite as this may sound don’t give up on the things that bring you a measure of joy.
Good luck, I hope you know folks DO give a crap.
I’d talked with the leadership about how I’ve been considered negative in the past. Even pointing out that I’m not necessarily being negative but usually hard on myself or commenting how a change felt bad or good. But it always goes the same way.
Also I really doubt anyone gives a crap. I’m 39 and alone with one friend online, but she’s got kids and a life. When I talk about the stuff I like people think I’m being negative even if I say nice things.
Your post touched me enough to respond, so yeah man even this total stranger gives a crap. It’s hard to see that maybe, but I think most people would react positively if they thought others were receptive.
Basically if you put up a wall because you expect things to go poorly they put up theirs and it’s hard to connect so it’s a spiral. It took me a long time to realize that a simple gesture like “hey man cool T-shirt” to a stranger at work has helped me make connections. You share the game interest with them, bounce off that with a compliment or recognition and you’ll find they may reciprocate.
You’re guarding yourself, I get it…but the wall you build to shield yourself keeps others away as much as it keeps you in.
I hope this rambling makes some sense.
Putting up a wall isn’t something I do typically. Basically when I go into a group or whatever I am myself because I can’t really hide behind a fake persona or whatever anymore (for a number of reasons, not important here). When I’ve tried to be the person others expect they walk all over me or use me then toss me away. When I’m myself they reject me. So if I have a wall up it’s not very high and definitely doesn’t stay up. So I guess I don’t get it. I try so hard and it always ends the same either way.
I don’t have any lightning bolt insights to share. Honestly it sounds like you’re doing a lot of what I might suggest - sharing something you enjoy with like minded others and being engaged in that community to try to make connections. Maybe you’re sensing more isolation than is really there?
Have you tired things like hiking or other sorts of outdoor activities offline where you might meet people? Local library events? Stuff like that?
Dunno. If something is going, say an event is coming up, I’d say ‘hey anyone want to group up and do this? We can schedule a day/time even!’ and literally no one would engage with it. So it was a lot of just talking to myself.
I mean go anyway, if your online people won’t or can’t. At the least you do something or see something you like or might like (like an art museum, or cool park or event) and while there you’ll be around like minded people and maybe click.
Worst case you saw that new place, discovered that thing or enjoyed a familiar event.
You have to keep putting yourself out there, hard as it is and frustrating and disappointing as it may be. Why? Because that’s where what you want is.
When you do find it it will have been worth it.
I wish it was easier and that you were not struggling. Takes a tough soul to do so and admitting its hard takes guts. Give yourself credit for trying like hell.
I thought the whole point of playing Destiny 2 was hating it
Hah!
- Play better games. The meaningless pursuit of power is rotting your brain. Chasing gear is boring and asks nothing of you.
- Get different hobbies. Seriously. Games are rotting your brain. Go see a movie. Go bird watch or something.
- Is your representation of other people problem with you really accurate? Reading your post, I don’t think anyone could glean what’s really going on. Like, how are you negative? Are you verbally berating someone who doesn’t heal you in WOW? What questions are you finding acceptable in the LGBTQIA+ groups? Are you finding it reasonable for someone to imply all queer folks are pedos?
Socializing well is one of the hardest struggles of being a human, and even people that are naturally social still may not get along well with others. I like to recommend the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Think of it like a “For Dummies” book on socializing. It has a lot of real-life anecdotes for difficult social situations people overcome and how. I should mention I just pirated the audiobook for it though.
Also, like others have said, I like listening to Healthy Gamer on youtube/twitch. He’s a real, active therapist with a lot of experience helping people with these kinds of things, particularly for gamers. You can also just play it in the background while doing other things.
Itt: a ton of nice people take time out their day to write long, detailed, and helpful advice, which OP argues with at every turn. LOL
Sorry you feel like I’m arguing with them. But people telling me to ‘go see a doctor’ when I’ve already said I don’t have any money isn’t helpful. I’m also not going into every single fine detail of my health here so a lot of the suggestions are just not going to work. Also people keep saying ‘be positive’ or whatever and I can’t make people see what I’ve said (since it was all stuff in guild/clan discords), but I’ve done the ‘positive’ thing and it ended up the same way. Though usually the positive thing ended with me feeling more alone. So yeah I’m sorry that all of the ‘long thought out helpful advice’ isn’t really helpful to me. I was ‘arguing’ with people who were clearly not reading my original post when they jumped straight to ‘go spend money on a doctor/therapist’.
