How I Learn to Deal With FFXI Anger

Getting Pissed from FFXI

Can you think of the last time you were really pissed off at someone? So much that you shake IRL just at the thought of them? Its safe to say this feeling of being pissed off doesn’t help us in getting what we want. Often, it would only work against us, resulting in more unnecessary pain and stress.

Even the most gentle of personalities can temporarily turn into a vicious monster, if pushed far enough. Believe it or not, that’s me.

From Top to Bottom

I was going through hard times of my gaming career (yes lol, gaming career). Arrangements IRL were heavy conflict with in-game. With the amount of responsibility and duties that I have to do versus the time I had to do them, I was constantly stressed, turning this game from enjoyment to obligation. This has been going on for awhile. I feel obligated, upset and often frustrated. Words of anger freaking blew out of my mouth. I have to say I’m a pretty polite and most of the time thoughtful but… whatever that happened that night, didn’t seem like who I used to be.

Through the past 1 month of complete no FFXI-ing (since 2003), I’ve come to a deeper understanding and the ability to forgive (although still hard). The same tool I mentioned in dealing with difficult FFXI people can also be used to deal with our own negative emotions.

Feeling like Shit!

Being pissed off doesn’t feel very good. It’s a pretty fucked up feeling. I don’t know about you but… when I am pissed, I can’t even sleep or eat (losing my appetite) and yes, all happens “over a video game” (what a loser huh lol). The pissed off clouds our judgment causing us to respond wildly out of emotions. Pretty sure you were there at one point. For me, I got so intense that words tumble out of my mouth with strong hate from each and every word. Thinking back… how the fuck did I allow myself to get in such a fucked up state in the first place? So WTF happened?

Put it this way. All Emotions is our body’s response to a thought, triggered by an external situation. But whatever we just experience is seen through the lens of our own interpretation. Just like everything, everyone have unique lenses of interpretation, and is colored differently based on our unique mental concepts. Thus interpretation conflicts are pretty much… always there. That’s where mines begin. I interpret something different, and shit hits the fan.

Perfect example. When you hear a neighboring LS break, you don’t really feel anything other than “aww sorry” or “haha”. But when its my own LS, its different. I feel the pain, frustration and I try to make it right.

Basically, when you label something as “yours” and you feel that you are about to lose it or lost it, we feel stressed. Weather it is my LS, pride, work, time I’ve put into the LS, my point etc, feels threatened. This very feeling is what brought pain in the form of anger or strong negative emotions. As known as completely pissed off.

Remember when you were a child and your parents takes away your toy to make you do something? You start crying? We were taught that something that is stamp as “yours”, are something that define who we are. We’ve identified with it and falsely think that if its gone or about to lose it, we lose everything completely. This is what happened to me. I feel like my ego was tremendously hurt. I know my ego has nothing to identify itself… its like… gone.

In my mind, I feel I was entitled to more, weather it is more credit for doing things, more point, respect or power. Among all those, I failed to see that my mind will always want more. Greed is fucking addictive state of mind, always growling, blinding our true reality, while telling me that I’m doing a reasonable thing.

Ingredients of getting Pissed Off

1. Unfairness: We believe that we have been treated like shit and not being fair, which I did. We tell ourselves that we deserve more (which ai also did)
2. Blame/Loss: We blame other peeps or situations for having caused our loss, for taking advantage of us unfairly (Again, I blame LS heading towards HNM direction). The blame often only resides in our head and is a product of our imagination. We fail to see things from other people’s perspective because we are selfish (Can’t agree more)
3. Pain: We experience pain and mental distress. The pain causes physical responses in our body, which disturbs
4. Focus: We focus on the things we don’t want, and energize it by emoing about it passionately, and repeating it to as many people that will listen. This creates a spiral dive to our anger.

The interesting thing is that I wasn’t the one that is experience it. The person who I was blaming was also feeling a sense of loss, unfairness, pain and the need to blame the other person. So who is right? Well both are right and both are wrong.

Why Do I Deal with the Pissed Off mode?

I never really learn the reason to even try to resolve it until I am flying. Very often, I get angry at my horrible landings. I ask myself why the fuck did I not do that, I get pissed at myself and.. I put myself into the fighting mode and believe it or not, that’s how people crash their planes. They fight with it. When you fight, you are in your negative emotional mode, that kicks you into the survival mode, as if our body is “we’re in danger”. When you enter such stage, your body is disrupt from the natural flow of energy to your own body, affecting your heart, digestion and everything. Therefore, being pissed off is like a poison, slowly deteriorate yourself from normal function, balance and last but not least, interpret things appropriately.

I swap to a new instructor, and my landings are now like… commercial-style landings. He does something funny… he brings a type of medicine for me call…. “chill pill”. When he sees me fighting over my anger, he takes control of the plane and ask me to take this imaginary chill pill. Leave everything you did bad, all the negative thoughts about that landing on the runway and now fly the plane. He brings quite a lot of chill pill because I get so tense and stress from horrible ones.

Anger clouds my judgment. I’ve learned this many times and it still takes a ton of time to get it in. When I’m flying and I get pissed, I forgot about checking stuff, standard procedures… its pretty much spiral dive in the ability to control an aircraft… so now I am able to control my emotions much more, by imagining these imaginary chill pill, and eat them when I require a steady flow of energy into my mind.

Being pissed off not only hurts your mental state of mind, but it hurts us physically. I don’t have the biological expertise to get into that but it comes down to the point, is it really even worth shortening your lifespan to be pissed off? I barely have enough time to do everything I want, so no… I don’t want to shorten it. I don’t know about you though =P We don’t have Reraise! =P

Being pissed off clouds our judgment, and we become a vicious monster consumed with problems and pain. We make irrational, unreasonable, regretful and hurtful decisions (Which I completely did). In the case of my LS, the energy that I used to fight back was already something that wasn’t necessary, when I don’t have enough time to begin with.

How I am Getting Out!

I’m no scientist but here was just a few simple things I did… to get myself into another state of mind, back to who I really was.

1. Doing What you Like: Yes, doing what you like is a positive thing. Positive things. I took out my design laptop (which is basically just a laptop with stuff I like in it), and sent out like a ton of mails to my friends that I know in FFXI. Not Emails, Mails! I let myself do what I like, have my mind set with what I enjoy and slowly bring myself back to who I really was.
2. Eliminate the Don’t, and No’s: Instead of “I don’t want to play FFXI”, I would say “I want to play WoW” Its a perfect get away. Adding more positive things into your life. The brilliant side of the Virtual World is… you can log out from them. Well log out from your anger. Login to somewhere which doesn’t have anger. Don’t bring anger from E-world to the world. Your first step is to disconnect from the emo E-world.
3. Surrender/Forgive: Give up the ego’s that needs to be right, to blame, to be spiteful, control and revengeful. I surrender my duty of being a DH leader. Upon surrender of such power, I believe I’ve become much more mindful, watching my own thoughts and I’m slowly learning to separate my thoughts from my own identity (which is also my E-identity). Surrender that power was IMO the best move I’ve done. Upon surrender, you must also forgive. The longer you hold that anger, the harder it will be on you. Easier to say than to do. I do know and… I’m still struggling.
4. Laugh: After all this, I’ve engage myself with more real-life activities. Back to my bubble-tea spree. I lug my laptop every weekend to play 5v5 DotA. Silly laughter was brought back into my life. Reminds me of the fun time on Ventrilo for doing silly jokes, but now in real life. Being laughed for being a feeder, a farmer, oh man good times!
5. Get a Mac: Makes life easier to understand! (j/k on this one haha)

How I Angry FFXI away.

It’s not that hard to be calm over a video game. Well it was hard for me because everything was way out of hand. Obviously its easier to be said than done so… takes some time for sure. Regardless, I hope it was a good read for you.

I pretty much surrender my role/obligation/LS power/over 700hrs of unclaimed work for the LS, and with this, I feel like I just dropped a huge emotional/obligation baggage. I’m much happier now, relaxed and feel like I have time to do the fine things in life. I have control over my own life. One of my friend even said “Welcome to Life!”, as she sees me being happier, and smiling more, with more time to hangout with people that matters in my life, which keeps my anger away.

I’d hate to say but even though I think I was close to so many people in LS, the bond so so shallow.. its just a thin piece of wood that snaps easily. If the friendship in-game extends to real life, well that’s good and probably the ones that you’d keep after your departure but.. for those that didn’t made it through well.. sucks to be you. It ends when you leave the game. Its really not worth to put so much emotion to your video-game friend (who don’t care to know you beyond E-Life). I wouldn’t have been so angry if I didn’t put so much work and emotional into the LS, hence when I feel I lost it, I was angry.

I doubt anyone would understand what I’ve been through, as most people aren’t leaders. But for leaders that are still alive, I really admire you if you can stand strong :o I obviously went to a point that I cannot control my anger and blew up… but it was a good lesson for me. Regardless, hope you enjoy the read.