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How to NOT get mentally overwhelmed...


Sammiie
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For a long time, RP has been my go-to escape. I can't imagine my life without at least one outlet for RP... But my unwillingness to let go has also led me to feeling really mentally overwhelmed many times. 

 

As an RPer, what do you do when you start feeling overwhelmed? How do you avoid getting there? How do you balance the mental highs and lows when dealing with motivation and muse? 

 

 

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I've learned that when I have that overwhelmed feeling, it's time to take a step back and breathe. I will remind myself that this is my hobby and that everything doesn't have to be done right now. The world isn't going to fall apart if it's not done right now. That has always been a problem for me. I feel like I let people down if I don't do things immediately. If I don't do what everyone wants and do it now. Or if I miss those posts and they aren't done in one day. That's when I know I have to take a day or two to myself. Evaluate things. Remind myself that tomorrow is another day. I'm learning to balance the life I have now in the big blue sky world with my online one. I may take a day and unplug. Just not mess with anything. Or there are days when I want nothing more than to curl up and make posts or work on the forum stuff that's on my desk. Once I take that breath though, I begin to see where I need to go to decompress. When I have done all I wanted to, then the world is back to rights and I'm all good. It happens less these days, but once I was very, very guilty of people pleasing and burning myself out. I've since stopped doing that.

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For me, I never try to push myself to do something I don't feel (to an extent).

Like if I am feeling really emotionally and mentally exhausted or drained ,I might not push myself to write and instead do activities that might be different from writing. This includes taking a walk, listening to music, playing games I like, watching shows or movies I haven't seen or haven't seen in a while. This can sometimes get the muse flowing and I get inspired and am able to go right back to writing.

Now there are times where I have experienced extended times of low motivation, normally I work my way up to getting to a point where I can push myself a little to just write (doing the things above). I don't try to pressure myself on post length or anything and normally let me partners know that I am going through a bit of a muse rough patch and that my posts might be shorter as I work my way back up to normal posting levels. At these stages just making myself comfortable in my environment (getting a snack/drink, lighting incense, putting on music or whatever) can help get me in the writing mindset and I am at least able to produce something (even if it's not my proudest piece). I like to think that even the small little lack of motivation posts are one step closer to my rapid fire filled with muse posts. I just give myself some grace and remind myself that it's okay to not always feel inspired.

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The past few years, I have generally keep the number of threads I am part of to a minimum because of real life obligations so I haven't really had the problem of feeling overwhelmed. However, I do find that being part of multiple forums, I tend to invest most of my time into one forum while often neglecting threads on the others, so I do feel that only focusing on one forum plays a big part in keeping role-playing manageable.

 

As for dealing with an existing stack with a lack of motivation, I recall I used to arrange threads in order of how many people were taking part in them and making a post each day, starting off with the thread with the most people in. I found that was a good way of getting things done little by little each day.

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On 11/24/2019 at 10:31 AM, River said:

Remember why you do this.

 

When I joined staff of the site I admin about a year ago (although I was a moderator at the time and didn't become an admin until a few months later), I found that most of my stress came from the days when I would slip into staff work and waste the entire day not writing, during which the amount of replies I owe would skyrocket.

 

But, I started RPing because I wanted to write collaboratively. So when those days happen, I close Discord, close the admin CP, I put all of my owed posts into one Word doc, and I keep writing. Watching my word count go up makes me feel better.

 

I also have severe ADHD, and one of the ways that manifests itself even through medication is that, if I have too much to do, I get overwhelmed and do none of it. My solution then is a to-do list, and the first box on that list every morning is "make to-do list." I'm starting out from a place where I've already accomplished one task. It was a simple one, yes, but now I don't have a line of completely unfilled check boxes, and usually the rest come easier.

This is exactly what I needed to read. Thank you.

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  • 1 month later...

When I get overwhelmed, I take a big step back and have a break for as long as I need to recover. That involves ending my current threads and getting down to just a few, or maybe even zero. After threading day in day out for so long I eventually get burned out, so I need to do this to refresh my interest and retain my sanity.

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^ This. I step back. I try to wrap stuff up. I take a break. I read some new books. Watch some new things. Creative output needs input. And I can get burned out without that. 
 

music is a huge inspiration for me. New music and music that speaks to a character or plot is damn near essential for me to Maintain interest. Otherwise I become severely overwhelmed by a crushing weight of guilt that cycles constantly because I don’t post fast enough or to the right people or I feel one thread more than another or whatever. The anxiety weighs me down. And without intermittent breaks I might shut down altogether. It’s important to take care of yourself. 
 

sorry for typos. On phone. Too lazy to fix errrors. 

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  • 2 months later...

I actually faced this today. I also have ADHD and anxiety and I spent far too long just staring at a thread that was waiting for a reply but I couldn't make my brain work. Instead I started to play one of the computer games I play with other friends outside of my RPing life. I did that for a few hours but I didn't feel any different, so then I got off the computer entirely and sat down to watch the Masked Singer with my mother. After the show I hopped back on my game but I found my muse flickering to life so I posted between bits in the game. I guess you could say I made posting a secondary focus instead of a primary one for a little while and it seemed to help me.

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Juggling being a mod and editing the site, and also keeping up with writing. But it's worth it in the end. I try to make a quality game I would like someone else to make if I was just a player.

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