Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Gaming

I have recently noticed that I seem to get upset when I have a particularly bad loss while playing the game “League of Legends”. Within the LoL community, this effect is known as tilting, in which a player becomes frustrated and thier gameplay is negatively impacted due to their anger/frustration/sadness of losing.

In the past, I have used Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in order to help deal with depression and other negative thoughts. In the interest of studying CBT, I would like to explore how CBT can be used to deal with various emotions and thought patterns within video games, particularly LoL.

In subsequent posts, I will be outlining various techniques that could be of use when playing LoL, but most of the techniques can be used for other games with some tweaking.

Today I would like to focus on using CBT to deal with ELO HELL! A common belief when playing ranked is that your teammates are holding you back and that you have no control over winning/losing a game. This is an example of having an External Locus of Control. Having an external locus of control means that you place the outcome of a situation in the hands of someone else. When you do this, you relieve yourself of all power and essentially consider the game to be a game of luck as to whether your teammates are good or not. In order to gain back some control over the outcome of a game, I would suggest the following:

1. Watch high elo players play smurfs in your elo or lower. Watching a master/challenger player play in a lower elo can provide many insights into how the right decision making and mechanics can help you win more often.
2. Focus on things that you can do to improve your chances of doing well in the match. When you focus on what you can do better, you improve the chances of winning a match, due to the fact that if you do well enough, you can carry over your success to your teammates as well. For example, if you do well enough in your lane to take down the enemy turret, you remove vision from the map, therefore making it easier for your teammates to move around.
3. Try to recognize when you are placing blame on your teammates and realize that they are just people who make mistakes. When we expect too much from others and they don’t perform to our expectations, it is very easy to become upset and blame them for losing the game for us.

However, it is important to not go too far in the other direction and place the outcome of the game or your teammates behaviors squarely on your shoulders.

Hopefully these tips will help you have more success and control over the outcome of a game.