Informal Ramble: Fighting Games, ADHD, and Me.

Note: I am not a medical professional, nor someone qualified to talk about ADHD in an authoritative manner. This is solely about my personal experience, and my advice may not apply to you.

This disability can be rough when it comes to fighting games. Fighting games demand a lot of focus, critical thinking, and discipline to improve at. I'm capable of doing these things at various times, but it's hard to remain diligent every skill all the time. The worst thing about ADHD, for me, is that I can be so into something and then have zero ability to focus on it when I want to. It's a genuinely painful feeling: being passionate about something, but not being able to focus on it.

I'm fortunate that ADHD isn't too interrupting for me these days. I suspect that it contributes to my bottomless passion and dedication for fighting games, but it also makes following up on that passion extremely hard. One thing I will say, though: I despise the notion that ADHD is some superpower when it comes to video games. If it's an asset to you in this genre, more power to you. It sure as hell isn't one for me.

So, what do I do about it?

My main philosophy, when it comes to how I approach fighting games, can be summed up in one sentence: I work with my brain, not against it. If I notice myself playing particularly poorly and losing focus, I accept it for what it is. I practice mindfulness and observe my thoughts, and use this as a time to understand more about my brain. More often than not, the simple act of accepting my thought process mid-match instead of fighting against it puts me in a state where I actually can focus better. Not all the time, but sometimes. At the bare minimum, it prevents me from being frustrated at my own mistakes. I'm not wired the same way as others. I may play for different stretches of time, have different forms of self-talk, and extreme bouts of both boundless motivation and severe burnout. I have to accept that it is okay. 

Somewhat off-topic, but my therapist has always told me that I don't need to be at my peak one hundred percent of the time in order to be a strong player. Sometimes, I'll play several levels below my average ability because I just can't focus for that session. It takes work, but not internalizing your skill level as whatever the last set you played is matters a lot. My entire skill level and ability as a player is so much more than whether or not I can focus well enough to play well on that day.

For my brain, it's about working with the autopilot and training it. The way that I view this has to do with the relationship between my conscious brain and my autopilot. These are two separate entities, and I have to send messages from my conscious brain to the autopilot in order for it to make the adjustments I need. Essentially, I think of this process as the transportation of ideas from my conscious mind to the part of my brain that plays video games. My channel of transportation is my notebook. 

I actually get made fun of for using my notebook a lot, but it's extremely helpful for me. Physically writing is better for improving memory. This isn't even a me thing, a 2021 study showed that information recall is significantly improved by handwriting. It doesn't even have to be in a specific format, organized a specific way, or even legible. Just writing is really, really good for this kind of improvement. I have embarrassingly bad handwriting for an educator, but that doesn't affect my ability to take notes and send information to my autopilot- which is the entire purpose of this in the first place.

ADHD isn't something that is always visible. A lot, and I mean a lot of strong fighting game players have it, and do well. We all have different ways of managing it, coping with it, and figuring out how our brains work.