HF autist, ADHD but sorta medicated(probably too low of a dose).
I’ve been trying to acknowledge/identify something that I feel has been having a lot of negative effects on my life lately. When I’m working on learning something or solving a problem, I’ll often hit a point of frustration where all my interest to move past it is suddenly lost.
This will be something like dealing with something annoying at work. But also in creative pursuits, ie I slacked on practicing guitar for a couple weeks and now some knowledge I had is just gone and I’m frustrated I need to start a few steps back.
Things like games with few save points were never fun for me. On many occasions, I’d drop a game completely after forgetting to save and losing hours of progress.
Basically once I get this feeling of frustration, I glaze over and start feeling really tired and annoyed. Like I hit a wall and the only thing that stops it is going to sleep. A few times I’ve straight up gone to bed hours early just to avoid simmering in the frustration.
First, it’s 2024. There are plenty of games that have figured out how to respect the gamer’s free time. Don’t hesitate or feel bad about dropping a game if it pretends being annoying/frustrating is an acceptable element of it’s difficulty curve. Life’s too damn short to be miserable playing a Souls-Like or something if it’s just not for you.
Second, I deal with something like you’re describing. What works for me is to recognize when frustration, anger or whatever is getting the better of me and just accepting that I’m just not going to be productive for that period. I invest in some self care, which can sometimes be as simple as laying in bed and stewing, or putting on some familiar sitcom until it’s time to go to bed.
It might be a day that I’m writing off; if it’s bad, it might be a week. But once I take that pressure off myself, sometimes it helps me get back on track faster than if I just tried to bury everything and soldier through.
Don’t worry about me, I’m not a huge gamer, just thought it was a good example. I’m very grateful for hell divers, its just fun.
For the rest of the comment, sounds like we’ve got very similar mechanisms already!