By Gemma Tendrich
A joke I often make is that the best way to get me to do something is to make a game out of it. But that isn’t entirely a joke. As someone who struggles with my executive function, it is common for me to get easily overwhelmed with simple tasks or find the day passing me by without being able to focus on anything. It leads to a lot of frustration and worsening depression when tasks that I know should be easy seem impossible to start or finish. I also struggle with social anxiety, with things as simple as phone calls causing panic attacks. But my love of games, specifically tabletop roleplaying games, has helped me better manage these issues.
For those unfamiliar, tabletop RPGs usually involve a group of people taking on the role of heroic characters as they work together to defeat monsters and explore a shared fantasy world. One player is the Game Master, the person who organizes the game and creates the world for everyone else to explore. While dice rolling is involved, a lot of the game involves the players describing what they do and acting as their characters. Everyone works together to make it a fun game, but the Game Master has the most responsibility to make sure everything runs smoothly each week. And, as surprising as it sounds, I found myself taking on the role of Game Master not long after discovering these games. Usually, the idea of scheduling and preparing stuff for a deadline would make me anxious. Even more so, the idea of trying to gather a bunch of people together should have made my social anxiety go through the roof. And yet, because of this game, I found myself taking on the role of organizer and leader for a group of friends. Each week I would talk to everyone to find the best time to meet up. I would spend the week before each game preparing new challenges to throw at the players. I found myself reaching out to strangers to ask them to join our game and making new friends. All of these things would have seemed daunting if not impossible to me in the past but somehow I was able to.
I hadn’t even realized that I had been getting over my social anxiety and struggles with focus and planning until long after I started playing. But something about tabletop RPGs made something click in my head. My real-world responsibilities aren’t games, but realizing how easily I was able to plan and interact through games has given me tools to help me focus and connect. The accountability of having others looking to me to schedule and plan our games has helped me set up systems where I hold myself accountable for tasks through timers or the help of friends. Another big part of games is getting rewarded for completing tasks, so I’ve found myself setting up little rewards for myself to help trick my brain into treating my chores like games. And, as silly as it may sound, sitting around at a table pretending to be an elven wizard or an evil dragon has helped me come out of my shell socially. There is comfort in pretending to be a character for a bit and with time it has caused me to be more open out of the game and less anxious around strangers. After all, if I can do a silly goblin voice in front of people once a week for three hours, making a phone call doesn’t seem so bad anymore.
Gemma Tendrich is a SUNY Plattsburgh alumni who majored in English Literature and Creative Writing. Originally from New Jersey, she now resides in Plattsburgh, New York. She lives with depression, anxiety, and multiple learning disabilities and tries to incorporate aspects of these experiences into her writing.
The North Country Center for Independence in Plattsburgh, NY is always looking for writing by people with disabilities in the North Country, on disability-related topics. If you are interested in writing a guest post for the NCCI Blog, send an email inquiry or draft article to: apulrang@icloud.com.