Why do so many FF XIV players have anxiety??

[Liam_Harper]

And this is wrong really wrong, because anxiety actually is being used as a medical term for pretty heavy mental disorder.
I had anxiety relative to my health issues when i was thinking about the worst every day, every hour thinking i am going to die in early age, any pain in chest triggered panic attack, feeling heartbeating thinking i am having arythmia and afraid to go to sleep, feeling sick for every serious medical case info (someone having cancer), feeling dizzy, world shaking or having fatique and so on, even tingling in hands associated with having hands in one strain position i was able to call a stroke.
This is anxiety not that tankiexy/healxiety stuff, whenever i hear someone has "anxiety" because they need to play a tank in video game i facepalm with both hands, its ridiculing the serious condition that is anxiety disorder.
Its like someone calling themselves schizophrenic because they cant decide the job to play in the game, please stop this.

It's a shame that you can suffer a condition like that, understand how bad it really is and what you go through ...and then judge other sufferers as making it all up.

Anxiety disorders are a very wide spectrum. It can be physical, mental or both. They might not all be as bad as what you go through and sure there may be some who apply the label to themselves without understanding it, but it's very real for a large number of people and a struggle and unpleasant to live with, affecting your everyday life in many ways. In general mental anxiety disorders are where your brain perceives danger where there isn't any and is highly sensitive to others emotions, particularly with social interaction and very sensitive to rejection. This applies to gaming with other people, the dangers of all the things you might mess up, the potential social rejection if you were told you suck, were insulted and kicked and the awful impact it would have causes your brain to overact. It's not that you can't do it, a lot of us do, it's just very difficult.

If you don't understand something, don't judge it. Anxiety isn't a "cool" trend we adopt for fun. It's something many of us would give a heck of a lot to be free from.

[Arthrun]

I'm always hearing about tank anxiety and I don't get it. It's just a vidya game. You just pull the stuff and keep running. What is there to be anxious about??? Are you guys taking your nerve pills?

eh I know this is a bait troll and I shouldn't respond to it. People have tank anxiety because people are jerks in general. A tiny mess up and they get yelled at and called the lowest scum for the rest of the run.

To be honest I just want to kind of punch people in the face when they make posts like these. Because I feel that people who posts like this just deserve to have a forced forum vacation for judging other peoples problems. You do not know the people on the other side of the screen, people like you are the reason society is so messed up.

I give this post a 5/10 in bait troll posting because he was successful in getting me triggered for how low people seem to be able to go for a reaction.

[Rilifane]

I have issues like this whenever I'm doing extreme or savage content. I feel that if I mess up and cause a wipe, everyone will hate me for it. I rarely use dps in ant content because parsers and "you are doing 0.00001 less dps than the top player, you suck go kill yourself."

Exaggerating a lot with the dps obviously but that's what my mind does.

Yeah in general that isn't true at all, but it doesn't stop that feeling. It's prevented me from doing any of that content since early stormblood. I won't even attempt it anymore.

Work your way up at your own pace.
I was incredibly late to the raiding party, I only started this tier with raiding in FFXIV in general, so no prior experience of any kind... not even with old content, neither sync nor unsync. I switched jobs two times over the past few weeks, first to RDM and then to BLM, both jobs I had never touched before but caught my interest for the most random reasons (*coughBackflipcough*) and I got them from 1/ 50 to 80 in one go.

So I spent time on balance, bashed dummies, spent more time on balance, bashed more dummies and joined practice parties. Worked my way up from "practice from start, only guide exp needed" through "practice from [insert late mechanic here] onward" to "going for kill, enrage exp please". Didn't matter that I already had enrage or kill exp, I started from the bottom with each new class.

I died to the most stupid things at first because playing a fight on a different class feels completely different even if you know the mechanics. So did others. That's what "practice from start" parties are for. Many people were there who either just switched classes, practiced an alt job or even had no experience whatsoever with a certain boss.
Most people are way too focused on staying on their feet and doing their job anyway to watch you like a hawk.
And nobody chews anyone out for a "shit forgot surecast, my bad" or "fuck totally forgot that one...". Even in kill parties people sometimes make stupid mistakes because humans are humans and it happens.
But coming prepared helps a lot with the nervousness you have. Preperation in form of committing your rotation to muscle memory by tormenting some unassuming dummy over and over, practicing the earlier phases even if you have seen enrage etc.
Try it. You might be surprised.

[Awha]

Troll bait or not it has created an interesting conversation. Though I do believe a lot the confusion stems from not looking into the context. While different, but I do feel it is similar. Yesterday during our raid a trial member asked for me to stop sperging in chat when they were screwing up.

Most the group got upset over this comment because I happen to be on the spectrum and when I laughed at how they were taking far more personally then I am it sort got me thinking, people really view it as an attack or marginalizing behavior when they use a condition, term, or whatever in either a negative or wrong context from what they deem appropriate. Though actions like this utterly confuse me sure we can disagree and even choose to not associate with the person for their beliefs and thoughts, but if someone wants to use a word in certain context that differs from my own who am I to say they are wrong. I can correct the terminology but the context they use and view it in is their own subjective view and while they may try to use it as a personal attack it only becomes one if I let it.

So let us not take things personally sure we can question and seek understanding and even if the questions are askee with malice no need to view it as such and take it personally. Hope that makes sense, that event yesterday just got me thinking about this thread and the discussion going on.

[TaleraRistain]

Troll or not, I'll give a straight answer. And I'm not going to get into the word semantics of some other comments.

People get anxious when tanking or healing because they don't want to do something that someone else in the party will find wrong. The reason they don't want to do this is the incredibly prevalent idea that if someone does something you don't like in a group, you're free to "call them out" for their imperfection. Some may be constructive. Many aren't. Not everyone can just let this roll down their back. I can myself, since I know I'm a person and not a robot and people fuck up sometimes. But if you can't ignore this sort of thing and you have had an experience where someone raked you over the coals for your performance, then it's perfectly understandable how someone could get nervous or anxious when taking on that role in a group. You might say it's just a vidya game, OP, but there are many who treat even a basic MSQ dungeon as Serious Business and are willing to make someone else's life hell if they don't have everything go exactly as they want.

[Zell1226]

People should really learn not to care what strangers on the internet think about them. I understand having severe anxiety in real life where it affects you at home, your job or school, however random people in duty finder don't mean anything to you. If people are worried about how they perform the best way to improve is to study up whatever you're playing and put what you learned into unsynced solo fights. And if you're leveling, start from the bottom dungeons and work your way up like the game was designed, it'll help you learn your rotations and skill usage as time goes on. Read every skill and try to think how best to put it into practice, if applicable.

[Fluffernuff]

Not toward the OP or the bait thread, but this is aimed at the follow-up posts;



You guys all realize "Anxiety" is a word, right? that has... multiple definitions?

like. i dont know. "The state of being anxious"? how about an actual dictionary one;
"a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome." -straight off google. took 2 seconds.
It isnt limited to the diagnosis; though it is there.

im sorry, but having a disorder doesn't give you a monopoly on the use of a word. You people that would use a legitimate and crippling disorder as a weapon are- I dont have the words for it. even a certain historical group from germany had more tact and credibility than that.

you CAN be anxious or have a specific anxiety to something.... without having or co-opting an entire disorder. this should be common sense. If tanking makes you anxious and gives you some anxiety? you have tank anxiety.
It's not a diagnosis. It's not a co-option. It's a perfectly standard and basic human emotion toward a very specific activity.





EDIT:I feel the need to add this since the internet is what it is. I am not downplaying or even addressing those with legitimate fights with anxiety. I've not dealt with it myself but have attemtpted to aid those that do. Its very crippling. But I dont want your condition being used as a weapon. you are free to feel offended by people using something like "tank anxiety", but I hope you can at least see, reasonably, that the word and its usage doesnt revolve around attacking or belittling you. It does have other uses beyond that.

[Hazama999]

What you’re describing here is more akin to hypochondriasis—which is a somatoform disorder—if you’re thinking that every small physical ailment is actually a far more serious diagnosis. Anxiety disorders generally do accompany hypochondriasis, though; in all fairness.

That said, people can still feel anxiety or feel anxious without being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Feeling anxious is actually quite normal for a lot of people, especially if they are of a more introverted or shy personality type. It’s not really a misuse of the word; and it’s not really ridiculing anything. In all fairness, you don’t know how deep anxiety goes for anyone. It may just be crippling enough to be diagnosed as something “more proper”—it’s not really anyone’s place to say. Certainly not yours to attempt to police the use of the word.

As someone who was diagnosed with generalized anxiety over ten years ago, and as someone who has learned to deal with it, I don’t feel like others are “taking away from the seriousness of what I went through” when they say they have “tank-xiety” or “heal-xiety”. Same for when people call themselves “depressed”.

And interestingly enough, we don't use "hypochondriasis" as part of the diagnosis anymore. As of DSM-5, it has been replaced with "Illness Anxiety Disorder."

[Tint]

I actually have social anxiety but I mained healer for 2 years and then tank for another 4 years and I only quit now and switched to DD because they have destroyed Dark Knight :x

Especially playing DRK was a lot of fun. It was very hard at the beginning, but at least I read a lot of guides and played WHM before so I knew the content and knew exactly what I would expect from a tank. That helped so I basically had no problems with playing the job from a technical standpoint. But it was hard to overcome the fear to tank for these other people and it never was going away.

It got better with the time in regards to queueing up for content without fear, because I got more confident in my skill, but I think overall my social anxiety got worse. People are just not nice to tanks and maybe it is better for my health that DRK is not fun to play anymore >.>

Another big factor is that they stripped the defense of the tanks away. The party demands that I have to speed-pull large groups, but I have cooldowns for only 40 seconds wich I have to spread out over more than one pull plus the occasional TBN wich often gehts destroyed in 1 or 2 seconds. I feel terrible now playing tank because I often have to pull without any defense. All my confidence is gone and I don't feel safe anymore.

[FF16Necromancer]

Before anybody feeds it. There's a lot of trollish posts from the OP. This is very likely one of them.

Bless you... almost got baited myself by the trollish post.