Ever wondered how video games can help with our mental health? This streaming moment from the Dr. Gameology Twitch channel reviews the way we play the Samurai class in #FFXIV, and the best ways to use this as a metaphor for some of our most important goals in life.
Watch and Listen to this Mental Health Moment Right Here:
Hello to everyone who’s watching this on Twitch, on YouTube, Facebook, and everywhere in the Dr. Gameology atmosphere! We’re doing another mental health moment, and tonight we have been playing samurai in Final Fantasy XIV Online, and this class is new to me (relatively speaking). It’s a melee class. We have to get into the middle of the action, start swinging our sword around…But it’s also pretty methodical.
- We have to stick to our steps.
- We have to focus.
- We have to look at what’s going on around us and feel the flow of the interactions between ourselves and others,
- the bosses,
- and the aggression heading our way.
How to Play Samurai FFXIV
So, what does this have to do with mental health?
Well, the samurai class is actually a melee DPS class that is all about collecting stickers. Not actual stickers. These are psychological stickers! So, there are three different activities that we must do before we can unleash a critical hit!
I think a lot of people that I try to lend my guidance to as a mental health professional / as a friend / or as anything else really can benefit greatly from that kind of strategy.
What are the three things that you – yourself – watching this video right now would have to do today in order to unleash your greatest potential?
Is the bar too high, making it impossible for you to never feel like you’ve made it there? Are the activities actually being met and you’re just not looking anymore?
We have to notice our accomplishments in order to realize they happened a lot of the times, and sometimes the bar is just too unrealistic. For example, there are things that I wish I was doing right now, but they’re not things that are going to happen right now. They are things that are going to happen a year from now / six months from now / 90 days from now / two weeks from now…
But you know what? There is a step today that I could do that would help that one week / two week / ninety days / six months / one year ACTUALLY come to pass.
The way we follow through with weaponskill cast time determines when the right time will be to make our moves matter. Good skill speed can be the same as having our resources lined up and being able to successfully predict the path to overcoming our challenges. Just like with auto attack delay, the Samurai class teaches us to wait for some of the best moves we are going to make.
Keeping it Simple
One activity that would give me a sticker in the psychological book of my life!
And then, what about the things that I have been doing but they don’t count because I should be doing them? You don’t get extra credit for something that should be done.
Well, you know what? If you think like that, you’ll be pretty negative about yourself.
Playing the samurai class; getting two stickers allows us to throw out an AoE burst. Area of Effect means that we are impacting everything around us.
That’s a big part of mental health actually!
In video games, AoE’s are heals or damage, but in life, AoE’s are the way that we connect with everything around us.
- Do we build them up?
- Do we receive energy back from them?
- Do we make things around us better just by virtue of us being around them?
Two stickers…
and the last one is really just about believing in yourself.
If you’re able to imagine that you can do it and find an actual step for today to make something happen, better than nothing!
If you do nothing, you’re no closer to that goal that happens later.
But if you do just a little bit more than nothing . . . you will find MOMENTUM! (Sometimes accidentally).
You’ll turn around one day, and you’ve been doing something for 90 days in a row
Sticker number three happens when we believe in ourselves.
The samurai class in Final Fantasy XIV is a constant reminder of doing three small things and making something WONDROUS happen around us.
In the game, we’re swinging a sword, but in life that sword is a metaphor.
And also, it’s been a lot of fun this week finding the right glamour to really reveal the samurai that I think that I have in my mental health / and then the one that’s inside your mental health as well too.
If we think about the way we live life, and we see it in the way that we play games, games can be a tool for helping us become better. Whether by AOE or ranged attack, melee or magic, the way we enjoy the game helps us find our ideal path through life. In games, we level up, and as we succeed we learn ways to level up in life as well!
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I’m really enjoying the opportunity to talk about these things with all of you. It’s been amazing to make the psych squad become a thing (Those are my listeners and followers and people that have become part of my community), and I would love to be able to share these ideas with more people.
The more the merrier…
… and that’s basically it! That’s the Mental Health Moment for tonight = Samurai class / Final Fantasy XIV Online. So collect your stickers unleash, your potential, and as always…
Continue The Journey
Thank you so much everyone. Hope to see all of you soon!
For more insights for who we become when we play games, check out these episodes of The Gaming Persona Podcast
S2: E26 | The Quarry: Player Choice & Games With Multiple Endings
Key words: ff14 samurai, physical damage dealt, long and bloody conflict, physical damage, spell cast time, previously executed iaijutsu
