I know it’s senseless. I know it’s unreasonable. I know it’s unhealthy. There is, objectively, no reason to be in a bad mood because I lost a game being played for fun that has no stakes attached.
To be clear, this isn’t directed at the person who beat me (unless it’s someone who’s really rubbing my face in it). I want to win, I’m doing my best to win, I wouldn’t ask them to do any less, and I wouldn’t get any satisfaction from a victory against someone who was pulling their punches anyway. My negative feelings are largely directed inward: when I lose, I feel like a failure even though I intellectually understand that you’d have to be a complete tool to judge anyone else so harshly for losing at a game.
I’ve been like this as long as I can remember. I’ve definitely gotten a much better handle on my emotions when I was young, but I’m sure it it still comes through, even if people don’t say anything. It’s not fair to the people I play with, and I wish I wasn’t this way. I actually greatly prefer cooperative games over competitive games because of this, because that way if I lose, the other player(s) is/are in the same boat - we all failed together, so I can’t be judged negatively in comparison to anyone.
Anyone else have similar issues? Anyone who can offer insight as to why I might feel this way?
I struggle with the same thing, I play online card games and it’s very easy to get super tilted since it’s heavily luck-based by nature. I don’t like feeling like I’ve wasted my time when I lose, I don’t like feeling like a failure when I lose because I consider myself a good player.
I often wonder why it winds me up so much. It might be that I put too much value into my performance, or it might be because there aren’t a huge amount of things in my life that feel like they’re in my control - and when I lose in a game, it’s like “fuck, I can’t even do this” and I lash out.
Point is, you’re not alone comrade. I’ve considered giving up these games altogether because they feel like poison for my mental health, but I believe that the anger is almost certainly coming from somewhere else. It’s not the games.