#mhapeter

Hi friend!

I love me some Minecraft, too!  I've experienced some of the same things playing multiplayer with my buddies.  And honestly, the issue extends to other things - facebook, twitter, IRC, Mumble, other games, forums...It's probably a more general feature of any activity that involves other people.  Singeplayer Minecraft is nice because you kind of know what to expect.  Add other people and the experience can be way more fun, but it can also become very stressful, depressing, and just no fun at all.

I've been thinking a lot about this recently.  I love hanging out with my friends online, doing voicechat and playing Minecraft.  It usually starts out great and it lifts my mood.  But that only lasts until someone in a bad mood gets on, or someone is being annoying.  It's easy for a fun activity ending up leaving me stressed out and angry.  So here's what I've been trying to do lately:

1) know your own moods.  If I'm already a little on edge, the odds that someone will piss me off go way up.  It's better to engage in another activity for a bit and calm down.  If you go in to something expecting people to piss you off, they will.

2) Bail early.  This is a hard one.  But I've found that my big mistake is continuing to hang out on the voicechat server, or in Minecraft, or both, when things have stopped being fun.  There's always this hope that things will turn around and get better, but how often does that happen? 

It's hard to know exactly when to leave.  Ideally, you want to leave exactly the microsecond before things start going downhill.  There's no way to know when this is, which is a problem.  One thing to do is set a time for stuff.  If you say, "Okay, I will play Minecraft for an hour," and you stick with it, you can maximize that initial phase where things are fun and either leave well before they get crappy or only have to put up with a limited amount of crappiness.

3.) It might be tough, but if the rules of the particular server are going to maximize the stress and panic, you need to go to a new server.  You probably have friends and stuff on your current server, so a compromise is to split your Minecraftin' across a few places.  Play singleplayer if you really like building and exploring, or want to just relax down in the mines.  If the MP server is all about raiding (and maybe building stuff together?), go in expecting that.  Minecraft is like 10 different games rolled into one.  Maybe, at the absolute best of times, your favorite server is the perfect blend of everything, but it may not be realistic to think you'll get to have the optimal experience all in that one place.

Hopefully, if you are having a more relaxing Minecraft experience in SP, or on a friendly server, you can go back to this server and enjoy it for what it is. 

It's really easy to have a good time on twitter, tumblr, in a game, on a forum, and come to expect that that one thing will always be super great.  It has helped me to spread things out a bit.  If people on twitter are being butts, I close the window and go do something else (I'm really trying to get better at just closing stuff when it's not great).  I usually have it open on my laptop.  Just leaving it open when people are annoying me, even if I'm not tweeting INCREDIBLE observations, can make me feel crappy. 

Happy Minecrafting!  Remember: if you're not having fun, you can just close it and go do something that IS fun. It should help to deal with in-game stress if you aren't expecting the one server to meet all of your Minecraft needs.

Hiya!  Tuesday PeteChat (TM) will be up in just a sec.  It's nightly "struggle to put the kiddo to bed" time.  He takes after me in his aversion to sleeping when he is supposed to.  I have no one to blame but myself.

I'll just note again that I'm trying to keep up with MHA stuff, but my little family is going to be moving soon and there is a ton of stuff to take care of.  I've super stressed out so it's a challenge to get in the mental place to answer asks and stuff.  Thanks for your patience with me as I go about rebooting my life!

Hi friend,

Just to catch people up to speed, parasuicide is a suicide attempt that is non-fatal.  The term usually refers to people who make suicidal gestures but without the actual intent to end their lives.  The difference between parasuicide and self-harm behaviors is summed  up nicely in your question.  Parasuicide is meant to make people take your condition more seriously.  So parasuicide is an outward-directed behavior.  Self-harm behaviors are ways that people cope with intense feelings (or the lack thereof - an attempt to break through a feeling of numbness) and are inward-directed. 

So here's the problem with taking a "sublethal overdose" - there is basically no way to determine where the line is.  All sorts of things affect how chemicals work in our bodies.  Things will affect you differently than they affect me, for starters.  So there isn't really any guide out there on close-to-lethal dosages of things.  Even a decent calculation can fail dramatically.  Here's an example: heroin users are way more likely to overdose if they use in places other than the place the usually go.  The exact same dose may be fine at home but, go to a new location, and you can end up dead.  That is pretty wild to me, but it's an established phenomenon.

Here's another thing to consider: even if a parasuicide doesn't fail and turn into a real suicide you can end up doing permanent damage to your body.  No substance is entirely benign.  Taking doses of things that leave you unconscious can easily overwhelm your filtration systems and leave you on the transplant list.  If the intent is to show people how serious things are so you can get more help, you're thinking about recovery.  I don't think anyone dreams of recovering but being left with major, lifelong, medical problems.

I understand the frustration when people around you dismiss your suffering, or maybe dismiss the reality of mental illness all together.  People are shitty like that.  But this is the worst possible way to go about getting help.  It could cost you your health or even your life.

Parasuicide is also the strongest risk factor for eventual suicide. Having gone through some of the motions of ending your own life, it makes it all the easier to try again for real.  As bad as things get, the decision to end your own life is the kind of thing you don't want to make easier, yeah?

If you have a doctor (even your family doctor) or therapist and you tell them that you are thinking of ending your own life, they should take it very seriously and help to convince the people around you that this is a real thing that needs to be taken care of.  You might think that admitting how you feel could be very scary and weird.  But imagine trying to explain what you've done if you wake up from a coma in the hospital.  Now that's scary.

Please don't think parasuicide is a realistic or desirable option.  There are much much safer ways to get serious help.  Trying to do something just shy of ending your own life is a huge gamble to take.

We're here to help you find other options, ok?  We don't want you to even chance hurting yourself in this way.

Love,

Sure!  I have an hour to spare before I need to sleep.

Hi dork!

Thanks!  I get as down as anyone, but I like answering questions here and it tends to pep me up.  There is an element of choice involved, but it's not in actively trying to write jokes or be "funny."  The choice is in ignoring the little voice in my head that tells me that people will think I'm super weird and won't like the way I am.  I could pretend to be an ultra-serious person, but I'd much rather just be me you know?  And if people don't like it, I guess I don't care that much any more.  I know who my friends are, I like being me, and I know there are people out there who are kinda like me.  If people don't like us, we'll be too busy laughing together to notice.  :)

Keep laughing and smiling!

I'm not a dork; you are,

No problem!  I really enjoy it, too!

My chat is always available here.  I'm trying to be there Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, although the exact time is hard to nail down right now.

It's a super friendly group and we just joke around and get to know each other.  Super casual.  No biggie.

Well hello!

There are two ways to become an admin. 

1) Golden tickets have been randomly distributed in all LaserDisc copies of Jaws 3D.  The Golden tickets entitle you to a Willy-Wonka-Esque tour of the MHA offices, in downtown Jönköping, Sweden.  One lucky winner will be given the chance to stay on as an MHA admin AND win a new LaserDisc player!  Wow!   That's how I got in!

2) Read this post like a boring person and fill out the application.  Lame.

Here ya go!

I'll be by a bit later!