Help

[Guest_18636635]

I am a mentally ill person who has a hyper fixation on a certain game. On this game, i have 5 years worth of progress and i just got hacked and lost it all. I understand everyone loses stuff yada yada and i get it but this for some reason impacted my mental state a lot. This happened around 30 minutes ago but i am struggling to cope and i’m afraid of what i’m going to do and i can’t get these things back and im scared. Like really scared. Any helpful tips?

[therising]

A warm welcome to you at such an overwhelming and stressful time in your life.

I'm not sure whether you've managed to contact a high end expert on computers or gaming but if you have and they've advised that there's nothing that can be done to retrieve your progress, have you considered speaking to a counselor or someone on the online gaming community who's faced this challenge in such an intense way before? Perhaps they can give you tips and support when it comes to how they managed facing the challenges that come with such a loss.

Sometimes I think we don't necessarily realise just how much we have invested in something, until that thing suddenly disappears or changes form in some way. Whether we've got so much of our nature invested or our time, our sense of joy or even our sense of identity, whatever it is is going to be impacted in some way. If the game's the only thing that led you to a sense of happiness, could this be a push when it comes to the need to start looking for other things for a sense of joy or satisfaction? If you do have a great sense of your identity tied into the game, could this be not just a loss but an opportunity to expand on who you are or who you see yourself as? When it comes to the time you've invested in the game, could you consider the 5 years as not being lost but being about what you managed to gain from those 5 years? Did you manage to gain a sense of determination, a sense of perseverance, a sense of achievement and problem solving skills? Could you see it as a period of self development and now begins a new period of self development but maybe in a different form? Kind of like having graduated to a whole new level, beyond the game. A next level challenge.

I know all this is easy for me to say, as I haven't faced the kind of loss that you have but I have faced loss in other forms. The feeling of having no choice but to process a loss and accept it can be so hard. There can be so many emotions involved, a huge amount. Some can be simple emotions and some incredibly deep. It can be a little easier when we can find people who can relate to how we feel, as well as having them help us make better sense of what it is we're actually feeling.

[sbella02]

Hey, welcome to the forums and I'm sorry to hear that this is causing you such distress. Fellow gamer here, I've also been in the same position, my Wii crashed a few years ago and I lost about six or seven years' worth of progress on a game I loved. I was devastated. Really, really devastated. 

Games can be a form of escapism, I find. They offer us a different world - particularly when we're struggling in our own lives, games can either help us to disconnect for a while or even make sense of what we may be feeling, depending on the kind of game. They can even help shape how we see and interact with the world, as some games can teach us valuable life and social skills. Games can have a lot of influence in our lives, and losing progress can be devastating, as you've described, because it can feel like we're losing a part of ourselves.

If you haven't already, try contacting the game company/developers and see if there's anything you can do to recover your data. They may be able to help a lot.

If you can't recover your data, I would try and reframe the loss of your progress as a gaining of experience, knowledge, and joy, as Therising has suggested. Think about what this game has done for you, and what you've learned about yourself and the world while playing it. Reminisce about achievements and feats and good moments you've had on the game. 

I ended up starting the game again, after I'd mourned the loss of my old data, and it took me a while to get back to the same status that I had achieved in the previous save file, but I did manage to overcome the distress that it caused me and even exceeded the progress I'd previously made. Because I'd already learnt the ins and outs of the game, it took me a lot less time to do so than it did in the beginning, and I did eventually feel content. 

How are you feeling about it now? Please feel free to keep chatting, we're here to support you, and I'm happy to offer my advice and reassurance having been in a similar position before.

All the best, SB