Content warning: The articles of Mental Health Week deal with different aspects of mental health and sometimes include examples of negative emotions and unhealthy behaviors that can cause negative reactions in some people. Please be careful with texts that potentially contain triggering topics for you.
- Why just FTL?
- With stubbornness, despite and frustration against dark thoughts
- How FTL helped me
- FTL, my rescue ring
Whenever I was trapped in dark thoughts in the past and I did not see me looking for help with friends to keep the monsters away, I found refuge in video games. They have been one of my coping mechanisms for a long time, if I feel that I slide back into a depressive phase and everything feels a bit heavier and bleakless than it should be. Like many other gamers, I play (not only, but also) video games when I need a break from reality. Or myself and my own head.
He was never more clearly aware of how in a particularly hard night almost ten years ago as suddenly the desire in my head appeared not to be alive anymore. Although I had always struggled with depression over the years, it was the first time that my head is the question "Do you want to be alive?" answered "No".
Important note: Video games can help you in your dark moments, but are not a permanent solution. If you have depression or self-destructive thoughts: you are not al1. Please get help. For example, in the German Depression Help under 0800/33 44 533 or free advice centers.
Self-harm and suicide were an abstract concept for me until this moment. Something that other people do. Something that happens in fictitious stories when a * e author * wants to shock. There was nothing real, nothing that would affect me somehow. Until that suddenly did. And even at this moment, in which suicide looked like a valid solution for despair that took my breath, she felt like an abstract idea of another person. Not me.
What do you do in a moment when your own brain is cheating so yourself so and the thoughts are so dark that one fears to never see light again? If you almost paralyzed before terror and is not able to look for help? In my case, the answer was FTL: Faster Than Light. The game that should save me life.
Rae Grimm @ freaking muse
Rae has been fighting for 20 years with chronic depression. This text about the 2012-released FTL she has written for himself almost ten years ago and brought for the Mental Health theme week from the digital drawer. FTL still likes to play it today, but it has not been used as an emergency game since this one night. Incidentally, she still did not make a successful FTL Run.
Why just FTL?
No matter how much I think about it, I do not know why my choice has fallen on FTL this night. It was one of many games in my Steam library, which I bought on the advice of my former IGN colleague Robert in the Sale and forgot immediately. I can not even say more, why I had bought it at all, because though I'm known to be great SciFi fan, strategy did not belonged to my favorite genres at that time. For that, I just lacked patience and planning ability, because mostly I rather fall into the category "race with collected weapons in a situation and the best hope".
I never expect that I would like FTL. I did not expect that I would save my life.
What is FTL at all? Faster Than Light is a 2D Roguelike Space SIM and a strategy game with RPG elements. Instead of contesting epic and opulent space battles, we must focus on the management of ship systems, crew and resources to create it alive through all eight sectors and achieve the final boss. The indigence game of Subset Games (Into The Breach) requires a lot of micromanagement and planning security, if you only want to have the touch of a chance to defeat it. It is not a game that forgives the error. The difficulty level "Easy" I would compare with "hard" in other games and "hard" in FTL I translate with "go fuck yourself".
With stubbornness, despite and frustration against dark thoughts
So you should think that it would not be the best idea of all time to play such an incredibly frustrating game if you are using one of the darkest moments of one's own life. FTL finally confronted me again and again and again with my own failure. Round over round I had to watch how my ship got up in flames and I lost my crew to pirates, rebels, slave dealers and my own inability. Again and again I saw my Kestrel, my commitment and my Mantis ships rise in flames before I even reached the last sector. And if I managed to... Well, let's not talk about the massacre that happened when I finally got the final boss. It was a patience and frustrating as hell.
Because instead of being crushed from desperation, not even defeating a damn video game, I felt despite. I would not let me beat this game. I would not win it.
These motivations were unaware of me in these moments, the realization came only much later than I could admit how bad this night really has been. In the hours itself, I was far too deepened in listening to opposing ships to be aware of my own feelings. I had no time to listen to the lies of my depression. After all, I had to take care of my ship and finish a rebellion.
How FTL helped me
What FTL has made so effective for me was not just the escapism it offered. The game asked me to think, without exercising pressure. I did not have to act immediately, but could pause and set my own speed. It offered a fascinating story, changing history, but without demanding an emotional bond for whom I had no energy.
Games with elaborated characters or a profound history, as the Mass Effect series mine can be perfect escapism fantasies, but also urge us to get involved in you and your emotional roller coaster so you can work. That makes them perfect in the best case if I just need a break in everyday life. However, if I am in the middle of a depressed episode, they often demand more than I can give and make it harder to find back in the real world.
Instead of the emotional binding, which I prefer to play in mine (singleplayer) play, FTL allowed me the choice how much I invest or deal with the story. The focus was instead on a mechanical experience in my own speed, which forced me again and again to think and think, instead of throwing myself in a situation. It forced me to keep a cool head and to reconsider the consequences of my decisions - something that seemed almost impossible that night before I started Faster Than Light.
It certainly did not care that I did not win. Not a single round. I lost again and again and again. But FTL gave me a goal I could work on. It demanded concentration for which I had to eat my confused thoughts. It gave me something instead of the emptiness and despair that I was dragging to me, I could focus until I was too tired to keep my eyes open and went to bed. And yes, sometimes the cliché really true: the next morning the world looks different again. Sometimes even better.
Other items from our theme week to the complex "Mental Health" is here:
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more on the subject
Themed Week Mental Health: What awaits you & all articles in the overview
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FTL, my rescue ring
In the darkest moments of depression, it is almost impossible to ignore the dangerous siren singing of their own dark thoughts. Especially when there is nothing else to focus on. It feels like drowning: Without a lifebuoy, there seems to be no chance of survival, because after a long fight against the in-breaking waves sometime the power is missing, continue to fight and keep the head over water.
FTL: Faster Than Light was my rescue ring almost ten years ago. It reminded me first of how to breathe, then how to swim. How I could hold myself over water until I had the strength again to fight against the waves and find the shore that I had lost sight. And finally to look for help again in the form of a therapy.
It's hard to describe how incredibly overwhelming desperation can be. And it's hard to describe why a small, pixeled indigenous game could change something for me. I do not know if FTL could help someone how it helped me. I could not even say if it could help me again, as in this one night. Luckily, since then, I have not returned to a situation in which the question was at all.
Nevertheless, I will always be grateful for FTL that it was there when I needed it and even more that I still can love it today without being reminiscent of this one night. Finally, I did not manage to finish the game until today. But luckily I have some time for that. Thank FTL.
An important request: Since our articles from the Mental Health Week are more sensitive topics that have partially requested us a lot while writing, we ask you for a friendly and understanding comment culture at this point. Thank you and have fun reading!
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