Does any of you play games to cope with anxiety? If yes, what's your favorite one? Personally i love animal crossing and dead by daylight.

I have a genuine fear of playing video games due to my magical thinking OCD. It’s driving me crazy. I get this overwhelming sense of anxiety when I play them. I have a correlation between video games and a health thing that started around the time I was playing video games a lot. Now I feel like every time I play a game it’s gonna cause that problem to come back. Any suggestions on how to conquer this?

I got harassed in an online game (marvel rivals for anyone curious) today bc I was “playing bad.” I think they realized I’m a female player too (my username makes it obvious) so it gave them more fuel to harass me. I kinda threw the match after all the rudeness. I obsess a LOT over what my teammates think of me, whether I play well, and one negative interaction and I’m spiraling for a long time. I reported the rude players but now I’m too afraid to play again. I feel OCD makes it really hard to play online bc i’m constantly obsessing over my errors and sometimes can’t enjoy the game at all. I also obsess over winning, and it becomes addictive in a way. Anyone else relate?

In 2023, as I was finally getting sober from harder substances, I found myself in one of the scariest mental spaces I'd ever known. I was still smoking daily, my relationship was rocky, and one night—it all hit me. It felt like I had slipped into a video game. Nothing felt real… or maybe everything felt too real. The world around me was distorted. I had always dealt with anxiety, but this? This was something else. I was spiraling—drenched in guilt over everything I'd ever done, every person I thought I hurt, every wrong I tried to make right all at once. It was suffocating. At 23, I tried checking myself into a mental hospital—something I hadn’t done since I was 17. I was desperate to understand what was happening. My relationship took a hit as I spilled every ounce of guilt I carried to my partner, unable to stop the cycle. It wasn’t just anxiety. It was OCD. And while the diagnosis was terrifying at first, it was also reassuring. I finally had a name for the storm inside me. I wasn’t alone. People I admire—like Jenna Ortega—deal with this too. It’s not just me. It’s real, it’s hard, but it’s also something I can face. Since then, I’ve made big changes. I stopped smoking—realizing it only made the noise in my head louder. I started therapy. My partner didn’t understand at first, but as we both learned more about OCD together, we grew stronger. We’re now engaged, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But now it’s time to reconnect—with myself. I want to find the me before everything. The creative, passionate, connected me. I want to start streaming games again and hopefully rebuild the following I lost. I want to connect with people again—I don’t have many friends left, but I’m determined to find my people again. I’m also diving back into my art. Journaling. Sketching—even when I don’t like it. Because it’s the act of creating that heals, not just the end result. I won’t let OCD run my life. I will prevail.