How to stop hating yourself

For most of my life, I have struggled with negative self-talk. I don’t remember when it started, but by the time I got to middle school, I told myself on the regular that I was a failure, that no one liked me and no one ever would, and so on. As an adult, that’s led to imposter’s syndrome as well as me consistently devaluing my own successes and accomplishments as soon as they happen. If I complete a project or get a big promotion, I’ll instantly tell myself it doesn’t count or that it doesn’t matter. Every year, I dread my birthday and New Year’s, seeing both as opportunities to examine all of the things I haven’t yet achieved and how much time I’ve “wasted.”

Intellectually, I know that this is wrong. I’ve written articles I love, helped other writers grow, and even recorded a solo full-length album while working a full-time writing job back in 2017-18. These days, I host two podcasts per week on top of a full-time editing job. I’m in a happy long-term relationship with a fascinating, beautiful woman. I have some seriously awesome best friends and a solid circle of acquaintances. The list goes on.

Yet, even with all of that, I was still beating myself a lot -- until recently. I’ve changed a lot about my self-care routine this past year, and it’s been a huge help, but this blog post isn’t going to be about how regular bedtimes and a different drug cocktail have helped me turn my life around -- although that stuff has certainly been useful, and I’m lucky to have the resources to make those changes. This blog post is actually going to be about the One Weird Trick that my psychiatrist told me about in our most recent appointment. It’s made a huge difference for me in terms of how I approach negative self-talk, so I’d like to pass it on for the benefit of people who might need it as much as I did.

My psychiatrist’s tip actually reminded me of one of my favorite posts on the internet, “Why Procrastinators Procrastinate.” It’s an old article and it certainly has its issues (it opens with a bizarre take on “obese people” and “overeating,” for example), but its larger framework has stuck with me. In addition to struggling with self-hatred, I also struggle periodically with procrastination, and in my experience, both of these bad habits allow each other to multiply endlessly. I’ll procrastinate something for a bit, then barrage myself with negative self-talk about how I didn’t get it done sooner, which will make me even less motivated to dive in because I’ll be feeling bad about my abilities, and so on. The article I linked acknowledges that aspect of procrastination and does so in a funny and relatable way.

The most interesting part of the article is its evocative description of the difference between the people who don’t suffer from chronic procrastination, and the people who do. The person who doesn’t procrastinate is depicted as a “rational decision-maker” at the helm of a ship’s wheel inside of a human brain, directing it forward on a steady, well-planned course. Then there’s the chronic procrastinator, who actually has the same exact “rational decision-maker” at the helm in their brain -- except there’s also a sneaky little monkey in the room, bouncing around, tempting the decision-maker with all manner of distractions and indulgences and excuses to stop working.

For a long time, I viewed this framework as both a humorous and useful way to think about my worst impulses. I saw those impulses as being outside of myself, like some pesky little animal who kept on bugging me and waylaying my best interests. But this wasn’t actually a useful framework to get me to stop procrastinating, nor did it stop me from insulting myself over it. Although the original article has a follow-up with some tips on how to stop procrastinating (such as, break your big-picture tasks down into manageable steps), I never found it to be particularly illuminating. When I got stuck in a bad cycle, I’d find that I couldn’t start any task, no matter how small, because I was so busy inwardly yelling at myself. Well, both at myself and at my procrastination monkey. 

It turns out that yelling doesn’t work. But I wasn’t sure what I should do instead.

I described this ongoing problem to my psychiatrist, who gave me the tip that’s changed my entire approach to negative self-talk. He invited me to view myself as both an adult and a child. My child self is still a part of me, still a fundamental aspect of my personality. She’s smart and curious, and she loves to “play pretend” or to hole herself up in the attic to read fantasy novels for hours on end. Then there’s my adult self. She’s smart and curious, too, but she’s also better at long-term planning and prioritizing what matters. She’s had enough life experiences, both good and bad, to see the big picture clearly. Except she’s got to put up with child me, who’s still a part of me and hanging around all the time -- and she doesn’t want to do any work. She hates school and authority and any type of ruleset that she perceives as being unfair or pointless. She just wants to have fun!

child me

age 13, or thereabouts, sitting on the edge of an armchair

You’ve probably already noticed the key difference between this framework and the previous one. Instead of dealing with an obnoxious monkey -- an uncontrollable, wild animal wreaking havoc on my innocent brain -- I’m dealing with a young child. And it’s a child for whom I have a lot of affection. I remember how unhappy and unfulfilled I felt back then, as well as the extent of my curiosity and creativity -- the admirable qualities that made me into the adult I am today. I can’t blame my inner child for wanting to log off work and get in some playtime. Honestly, she makes some damn good points. Sometimes she bugs me, but even when that happens, I have to admit she’s making a decent case.

That’s why I always endeavor to respect her. Instead of the monkey that I had insulted and derided -- by extension, insulting myself -- I now approach my inner child with the care and love of a cool babysitter. My psychiatrist put it this way: if you were going to convince a child to stop playing Super Smash Brothers and do their homework, would you insult them? Would you hurt them? I sure hope the answer is “no,” because those techniques wouldn’t work at all. They would traumatize your child, and also, their homework wouldn’t get done. Okay, maybe the work would get done -- but at what cost, especially in the long term? Positive reinforcement has been shown to work a hell of a lot better, no matter how old you are.

I haven’t completely beaten procrastination or negative self-talk. There are some more tips that my psychiatrist has given me that I’ve been trying, such as immediately rewarding myself with self-praise whenever I start a task (it feels corny, but it does help). More importantly, though, I’m spending a lot less time insulting myself. I’ve realized that a lot of the impulses about myself that I find annoying are actually reflections of my own inner child, and that’s a side of myself that I value a lot. In other words, these aren’t my “worst impulses” at all, or bad habits that I need to stamp out. They’re just a reflection of the childlike passion and sense of joy that I wish I still had -- and, hey, turns out I do still have it. It’s been inside me all along. I want to cherish that and encourage that, not squelch it with constant haranguing about the importance of getting all of my chores done.

My brain will always be a work in progress. But at least I’ve found a way to hate myself slightly less, lately. I hope it helps you, too, whoever you are.

Permission to Try, a.k.a. It's Not That Hard

This is, more or less, the text of a speech that I gave at the University of Northern Iowa last week. I knew I was speaking to a bunch of college students, many of whom want to get jobs in the games industry, so I wanted to tell them the words that my past self needed to hear. At their age, I heard from a lot of people that journalism was "too hard" and that I should pursue a safer writing position, like writing corporate newsletters or advertising copy. No one ever told me that journalism (especially games journalism) was already dominated by the voices of people who grew up being told that nothing was too hard for them. So, this is a speech for the people who grew up told that they're going to have to make compromises and that they will not be able to achieve their dreams.

I want to give you permission to try.

Implicit in that suggestion is that I also give you permission to fail. Learning how to play a game, or how to figure out what kind of job you want to do, or what kind of creative work you want to create, is about failing and learning from failures.

But it's also about getting over the initial fear of trying in the first place, especially when you are already marginalized in some way, or considered to be an "outsider" to the field that you want to try.

I am going to tell you a story.

When StarCraft 2 came out, I was already working as a games journalist and had been for some time. My editors asked me if I would review this game. I hadn't played the first StarCraft, but I wanted to try the second one. I had been reviewing games professionally for years by this time, and I wrote about any game that my editors assigned. I still do!

My boyfriend at the time heard that I was going to review the new StarCraft game, and he told me: "You can't do that. It's too hard."

Now this was absurd, right? I had been playing games all my life, and I had been working as a professional games reviewer for years before I even met this guy, and yet his gut reaction was to tell me that I could not do it.

At the time, I called him out for this. I told him that I had dealt all my life with men telling me that I wouldn't be able to play Warcraft 3, that I wouldn't be able to play Soul Calibur or Street Fighter, and that I wouldn't be able to play CounterStrike or Halo or Call of Duty. Still, though, he wouldn't stop insisting to me: "No, StarCraft is different – it's WAY too hard for you."

There was subconscious sexism in his comments to me – and we eventually did break up because this guy turned out to be more sexist in other more explicit ways later on – but there was also the fact that THIS GUY WAS NOT GOOD AT STARCRAFT HIMSELF! This was something he had already tried and failed. And deep down, I think he hated the idea of me succeeding at something that he could not do.

Today, StarCraft 2 is one of my favorite games. I play it for multiple hours every single week! Is it very hard? Yes! Did it take me years and years to finally learn how to play it? Yes! I actually had to find other, more forgiving friends to talk to, people who did teach me how to play the game in more effective ways, people who told me it was hard but ALSO gave me the tools that I needed to succeed. Now, my experiences playing StarCraft 2 are some of the happiest hours of my lifetime.

You should always be suspicious when someone tells you that something is "too hard" for you.

Many people will say this about hardcore competitive games. They'll also tell you this about games journalism, which is a very competitive industry. There are very, very few slots for staff writers in games journalism, and given that journalism has done a garbage job of adapting to a post-print media, internet-driven world, there's still very little stability and very little money for all involved. It's very hard to be noticed in the field, unless you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.

But I would hesitate to tell you that I think it is "too hard."

On the contrary, I think that being good at any of this stuff is almost entirely psychological. It's about our own expectations of ourselves, and whether we give ourselves permission to try in the first place.

As a woman, I frequently meet people who express extreme surprise that I write about games for a living. They are even more surprised when they hear the type of games that I like to play the best – when they hear that I like competitive games, in particular. Women are not expected to be competitive. We are socialized out of it; it is considered unfeminine and unattractive to scream obscenities at a Street Fighter match, and these spaces are often male-dominated as a result. Also, much of the language of trash-talk in these communities is actively sexist.

Perhaps it seems unfair for me to compare competitive gaming communities, with their rape jokes and sexual harassment problems, to the issues that I have faced as a woman journalist in the games industry. I'm sorry to say that the comparison is not too far off. Although the types of sexism that I hear from male journalists tend to be couched in a sort of condescending politeness, it has the same end result. It is still about men who are surprised that I am still here, when I visibly do not "belong" or "fit in" with the other people who have succeeded.

I also have to worry about the same types of things at journalism networking events that I do in the competitive gaming scene. I worry: will people think I am just someone's girlfriend or someone's wife? What should I wear? All of these men are perceiving me by default as a sexual object, not as a potential employee or professional network – NOT as a COMPETITOR. I am compared only to the other women in my field, never on the same playing field as the men. I watch men with less journalistic experience than I have who get promoted and get valuable staff positions because they are friends with the right people, or because they seemed like "a guy you can have a beer with."

In competitive gaming scenes, the people at the very top of the leaderboards are always men. The people who win the most matches are men. At games journalism institutions, the people in charge are always men, too. The mastheads are predominantly men. Does this mean that men are just inherently better at videogames than women? No. It means that women have been systemically pushed out of competitive communities due to sexual harassment, condescension and excessive scrutiny. The exact same thing is true for games journalism. Men are not inherently better at games journalism, but they would appear to be if you only looked at who gets hired.

Men can look at the games industry itself and literally see themselves: on mastheads, on game development teams, and in the representations of characters in virtual worlds. They are therefore given permission to TRY at every turn. They are actively invited in. This space already includes people who look like them, act like them – people they can have a beer with.

Both young men and women are told that games journalism is "too hard," and that they shouldn't even try. That the few positions that exist there are very prestigious, that only a few people will receive them. But men are able to look at who DID succeed, and see themselves. So even when people tell them "it's too hard," that contradicts their own observations.

A lifetime of people telling you that you cannot do something … it does get to you. I have had to learn how to play games and enjoy them IN SPITE OF harassment, IN SPITE OF people telling me that it will be "too hard" for me, IN SPITE OF not seeing myself represented at all, either in the publications that I read or the games that I love the most.

So I am going to tell you, if you look at something, and you don't see yourself represented in that space ... it's not because there is something inherently wrong with you. It doesn't mean that you are not qualified to be there. Other people will tell you that. But they are wrong.

It is hard to get into games journalism if you are a man. It is much harder if you are not, or if you are marginalized in any visible or perceivable way. But we need your voice so desperately. I need you. I, personally, would love for you to try.

I believe that you can do it, because I have done it. I cannot promise you that you will be wildly successful. For example, the one man on this panel about women in games has more Twitter followers than all three of the rest of us combined, and although I don't know his salary I can absolutely promise you it's higher than mine and it probably always will be. [I actually cut that sentence out of my talk because I felt guilty in the moment, but screw that -- I'm leaving it in this time.] I am not famous; I don't make a lot of money; I am not wildly successful – but I have survived in an industry that has done nothing but told me to leave. Not only that – I do work that I love, work that I'm proud to share.

The creation of that work is not going to be particularly glamorous. Hard work never is; it's gritty, and it's sleepless, and it's thankless, and it's often very lonely work, being a creative person in any field. It means staying up late and writing when all your friends are partying. It means spending long hours working instead of playing the games you want to play or watching whatever cool TV show or movie everybody else has seen. It does take sacrifices, and the end result will be that you may still not be appreciated for anything you've done.

I am not going to be able to sell you an inspirational image of defeating everyone and standing on top of the mountain saying I TOLD YOU SO!!! That would be very satisfying. But for most people, it's not going to happen.

I can promise you that survival is possible, and that joy is possible, and that creating excellent work that you can be proud of is possible – and that your work is desperately needed. If you don't identify as a gamer? Your opinion has value. If you think you aren't qualified and that you don't know enough? Just remember how many less-qualified people have poorly written blogs already, and how eventually those blogs became career opportunities for them. You already have the only qualification you need, which is your own experiences and opinions. They are missing from the world.

I'm going to close this talk with a link to a piece written by a journalist I know about how to pitch and sell articles to publications. It's written for outsiders specifically, especially people who've never sold an article before. It's at tinyURL.com/TryPitching. So … no excuses. Go try it.