Variations on a theme (the Great Board Games Desensitisation Process post)

[kaberett]

Hi, I'm Alex, my pronouns are they, I have hilarious boardgame-related trauma; I'm going to want five minutes to read the rules in silence before we start; and if I ask a question about gameplay that isn't addressed to you by name and you're not me_and, please pretend I didn't say anything.

As I periodically mention, mostly whenever I make notable progress of any kind, for a variety of hilarious reasons I find the vast majority of boardgames intensely stressful, and this gets worse the less I know the people I'm playing with. Like I said in my previous post, over the past two years I've gone from "cannot even start to play a game I've had long-term interest in, in my own home, with my partner, who I trust, with no-one else present, without bursting into tears twice just reading the rules" to "getting a bit of an adrenaline kick when I start my second new game of an afternoon with strangers, in a pub, when I was already primed for social anxiety for reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture".

In order to usefully trace this in any kind of detail, I should probably begin with (at least a sketch of) the beginning: I'm happy and comfortable playing Scrabble socially and non-competitively, mostly in silence while people whose turn it isn't read a book or exclaim over weird words they just found in the dictionary or whatever else. Admiring clever plays is nice; who actually wins any given game isn't a big deal. When I got old enough, and Mama was still alive, she and he and I and one other adult would play Scrabble every evening after dinner we were in Cornwall; nowadays my mother and I play with Papa. (Afterwards, Papa makes cocoa.) That's my baseline: that's a game I can Just Play, and it helps that I'm fairly good at it by amateur standards.

Other (non-Snakes-and-Ladders) games I had early experience with were chess and Monopoly. They are, to oversimplify, the context in which I got "being scared of not being good enough/not being able to strategise enough/spoiling everyone's fun", really thoroughly mixed up with needing to be quick and clever and dazzling to avoid being sneered at. So board games, apart from Scrabble, turned into setting myself up to fail, and to spoil everyone else's fun, so I avoided them as much as possible and was incredibly stressed and unhappy and prone to bursting into tears when I couldn't, which did not exactly Help with the sense that I was Ruining Everyone's Fun.

The Great Desensitisation Project basically happened because this is a hobby of A.'s I actually could, in principle, engage with, unlike a bunch of his other hobbies that for various reasons I Really Can't, and that he actually would like to do with me, and also I know an increasing number of people for whom Board Game Social is a Thing. I wanted to be able to participate, instead of knitting grumpily in a corner. So it went A Bit Like This:

1. I had a partner I trusted a lot, and felt very safe with, who was interested in me actually sinking time and effort into this, and who was willing to dedicate a lot of his own time and effort into facilitating same.
   
2. I started teaching A. Scrabble. As Resident Expert, I got to set tone and expectations about how it would work and how we'd interact over it, and get a sense of A's general attitude to games. This wasn't a zero-stress option for me, but all the stress was around "will this person who's important to me enjoy something this important to my sense of continuity of self?" rather than "I'm not good enough".
   
3. We talked a lot about what my problems were, and why they were there, and what sort of thing I might need; a really central point was "repeated affirmation, at the beginning of basically every attempt to play a game, that it's completely okay for me to tap out and abandon mid-game, and I won't be ruining everything and you won't think less of me". Also prominently featured were "I need you to let me sit down with the rulebook and read it by myself for 5-10 minutes before I even start asking you clarifying questions; do not try to insist that it would be faster and easier for you to just explain the rules to me" and "I am going to find this intensely stressful and I'm likely to snappish about asking clarifying questions due to anxiety; I'd rather this weren't the case but if you're not prepared to deal with that and be soothing at me through it we shouldn't try this".
   
4. The first not-Scrabble game we tried together was Thud!, which I'd spent a long time curious about but had never realistically had the opportunity to get to grips with. It was something I actively wanted to do, independent of A., but he had a copy and he had time and willingness and patience. It helped that he'd not played it much either: this meant that we got to do the thing of playing collaboratively, working it out together, rather than playing in competition. (This is also how we're doing Scrabble teaching at the moment -- both racks visible to both players, with lots of discussion.) It was still pretty grim -- I still cried a lot, I still needed to take breaks, I was still anxious and snappish about asking clarifying questions, I needed a lot of reassurance and snuggle during and after. But also I did it, which was useful.
   
5. Over subsequent months I increasingly actually went along to boardgame socials accompanied by A. I didn't participate in any games at all, but I would watch intently and suspiciously from behind my knitting and occasionally ask questions. Hosts would be informed before I accepted invitations that I'd be watching rather than participating, and given a chance to say they'd rather I not come along after all. This was where having rehearsed the breezy "oh no, I have hilarious board game-related trauma, I'm just watching" came in very useful, because people (bless them) were very concerned about me feeling left out and were very eager to include me, and it was Not A Good Idea.
   
6. After some of this, I started learning new games at home (very, very occasionally) with A., from his collection. The first few were still always stressful, but from there I reached the point where I was familiar with non-Scrabble games and could play them with sebastienne and shortcipher, also Trusted Humans who knew the Alex Rules, in my own home, without strangers present.
   
7. A thing with boardgame socials is that people don't tend, in my circles, to play a game more than once. What I actually wanted to do (and did a little, increasingly, at home with Trusted Humans) was watch one play-through suspiciously, to get my head round the rules, and then do another round that included me. However! At one about six months ago, I watched people play one round of a game and more-or-less got the hang of it... and then a second round did get played, with expansion packs I felt more-or-less okay about winging. So that was the first time I played a game with strangers, having done the introductory spiel (ha) about not answering my questions unless you were A., and to my delight I did in fact successfully bluff A. into believing my in-game motivations were Other Than They Were. Nobody hated me! Nobody got cross with me! Nobody condescended to me! It was pretty great.
   
8. ... and then this weekend just gone, I managed to play two new-to-me games with people I didn't know terribly well, in public, and I didn't cry at all. I was still snappish when I was correcting A. on the rules (having just hypervigilantly memorised the lot of them, to a panicked degree that most people don't bother with, because that's not the point); it helped that by this point I'd got comfortable with the idea that a lot of these people would be playing any given game for the first time, too, so I wouldn't be the only one, and that I felt much more socially secure in the group as a whole (despite not knowing a significant chunk of them).

I still wouldn't say I enjoy games (other than Scrabble), as such, or even that I can see how I would -- but I'm getting an enormous sense of accomplishment over the real and substantial progress I'm making in managing my anxiety and feelings of inadequacy, and the experiment in increased social contact it provides a framework for. I'm sort of expecting -- intellectually, not emotionally -- that the next step is starting to find it satisfying and interesting to try to solve for a complex set of constraints in the ways that I enjoy solo gaming or puzzles, and interesting to get more stuck in to the social wrangling involved. At the moment, though, a lot of it is honestly having a very self-centred metric for success and victory, and making it very clear to everyone choosing to play with me that I will be prickly and irritable, and therefore being okay myself with being prickly and defensive and irritable.

I am, as ever, interested in your various thoughts. <3

Comments

[alexseanchai]

progress! eeeee

[kaberett]

yep :D

[hilarita]

Try Agricola! It has a single-player mode that is not only good in its own right, but helps you work out strategies and stuff for the multi-player game.

[aldabra]

I get that.

I liked Pandemic, which is co-operative to the extent that you're all collaborating on how to plan each person's move and nobody is tempted to undercut that to steal a private victory instead. But I think it probably needs three rather than two to play it.

[davidgoldfarb]

Pandemic plays just fine two-player.

[kaberett]

Hello! I don't think we've met.

In this post I am discussing trauma around board games, and in particular interacting with strangers around them. I'd appreciate it if further discussion of the mechanics of unfamiliar board games could happen Somewhere Else. Thank you!

[davidgoldfarb]

Okay. Sorry.

[kaberett]

Thank you!

[davidgillon]

The word that pops to mind, to describe how you went about this, is 'wisely'. So glad that it's working, and that sense of accomplishment is entirely justified.

And there's something utterly appropriate in treating gaming as a puzzle to be solved :)

[kaberett]

:-) ♥

I'm sort of hoping I'll start actually enjoying the games in and of themselves at some point, beyond just "this makes the people I'm playing with happy", but nonetheless I'm very pleased with myself!

[davidgillon]

That would definitely be good.

[forthwritten]

This is really interesting!

I am both intensely anxious about card games and board games and also learning to play them isn't something that would bring me joy or enable me to socialise with people I want to spend time with so I have almost no motivation to overcome that anxiety, but as always your explanation of the steps you took to desensitise yourself is clear and interesting.

[kaberett]

<3

Yeah, this is very much one form of socialisation with people I want to spend time with that I am working on honestly primarily to make them happy, but I am very glad you found this clear and interesting and also SYMPATHY.

[lilysea]

Thank you for sharing! ^_^

I found this interesting, both the board-game bit, and the meta-process, which I can see being adaptable to other activities.

I find board games and card games very stressful/unpleasant, because due to chronic illness brain fog/mental exhaustion I can't remember rules well and think quickly on my feet.

People tend to be all "No, this game is easy" or get puzzled when I explain that I can't brain enough to card game/board game.

[kaberett]

The meta-process is definitely generally adaptable and is a broad framework I use for a lot of stuff; I was getting the impression that writing out the specifics might be of interest to at least some people, though!

One of the other things I'm very clear about, to people, is how much I need them to not tell me that a thing is "easy", because of how badly it messes me up if I then struggle with it. me_and (and to a lesser extent sebastienne) do get to answer the question "how difficult do you think I specifically will find this [taking into account my current context and emotional state]?" or "do you think this is the sort of thing I'll enjoy?" re board games, but that's based on lots of observation of Me Specifically rather than a general idea of what People In General find hard. This comes back to my framework of confidence versus competence, I think -- "I'm confident you can master this skill" vs "I believe you to already be competent in it".

[alatefeline]

I find this deeply familiar and reassuring although possibly for all the wrong reasons! There is no one social entertainment genre I find to be an anxiety button - though phones, paperwork, complex and/or large financial transactions, and other sterotypical Important Adult Things definitely bother me - but NEW THINGS and NEW PEOPLE and LOTS PEOPLE in general ALLLLLL set me off tremendously. The sense of accomplishment at successfully kindasorta enjoying something that was really tough to psych oneself up for without overdoing it...it's precious, and fragile, and bizarre. ;) And I find that for me, the game is the easy part, but it's still VERY diffciult to sit ina room with some random people and not become a hidey cat! But it is one of the only eays I have found to successfully socialize offline, so to me it is worthwhile.

I wish you luck in pursuing your interests and/or possibilities, to exactly whatever extent works for YOU as a unique being!

[kaberett]

<3 You are great and I am enormously fond of you and I am very glad this acted as a useful mirror/solidarity/etc Thing!

I find it really helpful to take my knitting along even if I then don't even touch it, because having something socially acceptable to do with my hands in a way that makes it easier for me to concentrate, rather than looking like I'm just sitting there panicking, helps me A Lot.

[alatefeline]

Ooooooh good point.

<3

[jedusor]

*\o/*

Every time I learn a new board game, I tell whoever's teaching me that I will not understand the pre-game explanation, I will only understand actual gameplay with commentary. Every single time, even when I'm the only one learning and there is no benefit to doing so, they insist on doing the pre-game explanation anyway. I used to keep repeating "no really, just start playing and I'll pick it up by asking questions" as they doggedly continued to explain; at this point I just let them run out of breath. I don't understand why otherwise respectful and considerate people do this--it feels kind of like trying to explain emotional labor to a cisdude, where they just don't have the basic perspective to have any idea what I'm talking about. Anyway, it used to be stressful for me when I thought my failure to understand the explanations was some reflection on my intelligence, but now that I'm more comfortable accepting and expressing my way of processing, it's just kind of irritating.

[unsentimentalf]

Hi, I have a friend who needs to learn games the same way and gets very frustrated that she isn't allowed to do so. I think one of the problem for explainers is that it is unfortunately very common to encounter people who throw a fit when playing games the first time because a rule they weren't told about about crops up halfway through and supposedly ruins their whole game. Explaining the rules thoroughly thus becomes a bit of a defence mechanism for explainers so that it's Not Their Fault when the yelling starts later. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be able to adjust to your needs, but it might explain why they get so hung up about having to do it 'properly' even when you don't want or need them to.

I've found one solution sometimes when my friend is playing and someone insists on doing the explanation thing regardless is to suggest that we play through a test round to pick up the rules and then we can start again with the proper game. If it's only a practice round the person teaching the game tends to get a lot more relaxed about the learner making moves without yet knowing all the consequences.

[kaberett]

Ha, I am still very much at the stage where if someone insists on explaining a game to me rather than just letting me read the rules even after I've said twice (to be generous), I am categorically unwilling to play with them, because the risk to my mental health for the rest of the day/week, from that kind of boundary-trampling and subsequently being braced for what else the person in question will do, is Just Not Worth It to me. It helps that at the moment I'm not playing games without someone present with more general social privilege/seniority than me, who can therefore Reinforce The Point Quite Strongly if my saying it once doesn't work.

I am glad it is merely irritating to you, and yeah, WHY DO PEOPLE FEEL THE NEED TO DO THIS.

[alatefeline]

Rigid schema for the order of operations involved in enacting the social bonding experience surrounding a game?

Or they could just be human-shaped mosquitos going bzz bzz.

[sfred]

Hurray for you <3

[kaberett]

♥

[jeshyr]

I am immensely impressed at your efforts and progress around this! That's unbelievably awesome and I hope for more wins for you :)

[kaberett]

Thank you! <3

[silveradept]

Progress is an excellent thing to have, especially when it is easily notable and has clear effects on everything.

Here's to more progress.

[kaberett]

♥

(This has the excellent knock-on effect of Feeling Less Excluded and Feeling Less Like A Freak and More Low-Stakes Structured Social Contact, as I improve, so that's really good.)

[brainwane]

I am very grateful that you wrote and shared this, and I admire the way you went about this project. I so often feel like a spoilsport when it comes up that a board/card game social is not by default an event I will want to go to.

I would LOVE for more people to understand that there are some of us who really want to read the rules in silence first!! I will link this piece around and hope that it helps make its way around to people who host and participate in board game socials, if only in the hope of spreading the word that some of us want to do that.

I would also enjoy knowing more about the sorts of card/board games and mechanics that suit you, e.g., whether games where people are meant to interrupt each other feel more blah to you, or whether new-to-you games with lots of rules feel different than new-to-you games with very few rules. And I should write down my own current preferences.

A few years ago when I felt a lot pricklier about board and card games as a major recreational activity among my communities and friends, I wrote:

I already spend all my working time in a world where I'm practically the only woman and there are systems to master that I'm not very good at and I don't quite feel at home, and most of that's true of my blood family too, and I'm tired, and why would I just take on more of that in recreation?

I've come around a little bit now but there's still this part of me that feels that way.

I can't remember who wrote this on DW or LJ many years back, but they ran across this idea that when kids are deciding what game to play, if one of the kids doesn't want to play a particular game right then, then that should veto that game, because it's only fun if it's fun for everyone. The idea that one's own reluctance counts, that it's ok to say "could we play something else instead" and the group could try to curb its grumbling and cajoling -- I'm choking up.

[haggis]

That is really good to hear 😀. Especially this bit:

“I had a partner I trusted a lot, and felt very safe with, who was interested in me actually sinking time and effort into this, and who was willing to dedicate a lot of his own time and effort into facilitating same.”

I started following your journal around the time you broke up with That One Gentleman, who wasn’t interested in prioritising your ability to *breathe* so I am delighted you now have a partner that is this trustworthy.

[kaberett]

<333

he is SO GOOD.

[worlds_of_smoke]

The fact that you can always systematically attack your brainwrong always impresses me. And, ngl, it inspires me more than a little bit. <3

[kaberett]

<333 Thank you for saying!

It frequently takes me a while to, y'know, get around to it, and there's A Bunch of stuff that is just... sufficiently easy to avoid that it's likely to never make it to the top of the list, but I am so pleased I have all these tools available to me these days, and so grateful for all the support I get.

[sebenikela]

(hi, i wandered over from M's journal/your tumblr)

I have trouble with board games related to general fear of Doing It Wrong (whatever "it" is) and etc, and this was a really helpful....travel guide to the terrain? ... for if/when I decide I want to tackle this stuff. Thank you.

[kaberett]

(Yes hello!)

I am glad. More discussion welcome. <3