Is playing video games too much hurting your social life or relationship with your Girlfriend or Boyfriend? Could you get a lot more done if you could only stop playing the Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, or PC? A whole lot of people would answer yes to this believe it or not, not most of them but still a lot of people play video games regularly, more so guys than girls for some reason.

Did you know that 65% of US households play video games? Of those who play, the average person games for around 18 hours a week or a total of 39 WHOLE DAYS out of the year, holy…crap…that’s A LOT of time that could be used for something a bit more worthwhile since gaming really doesn’t invest anything in our future or make us better people.

I remember when I use to play video games ALL THE TIME, to the point where it was making me call off work because I’d stay up too late the night before, nerding it up. I never wanted to leave the house or talk to people anymore because the imaginary worlds on the games seemed so much more colorful and better than life. I ended up destroying a great relationship with my girlfriend back then because of it, because I stopped spending quality time with her, don’t let that happen to you.

If you’re ready to kick that gaming habit then there are a few key things you can do, I’ve made a list of the steps for overcoming video game addiction because I love lists and I think it makes things easier to explain, so let’s get started.

 

Step 1: Become determined to change
Our first step is to make a serious agreement with ourselves to overcome this problem. If playing games has affected your life by making it worse then write down how it has done so and be honest about it. It’s better to accept things that are wrong with us than to deny them because it makes it easier to work on them, once we can actually see them. You could also ask yourself, if you’re a “towards motivated person” what would you rather have that is more valuable than playing these video games? What could you get done if less time was spent playing video games? Making something a goal and being serious about it makes it much more likely that we’ll follow through with it, when we do whatever it takes to overcome a problem it makes us UNSTOPPABLE in the world.

 

Step 2: Keep track of how often you play your video games
I know it’s kind of a pain, but whenever you sit down to play a game just mark it up and write down how many hours you spent playing it even before starting to quit the habit (being honest with yourself here is key). Doing this gives us an idea of what impact it’s having on our time and how to make it so we don’t play them as much in the future. If we have no idea about how much we play in the first place how are we going to play it less?

 

Step 3: Lessen the time you play
Get yourself an egg timer or you can use an alarm clock for this next step.
Even better than that, tell someone to come and pry you off of the video game at a certain time that’s less than what you normally play. Video games have the ability of making us completely forget that time exists and often we find ourselves playing for hours when we only intended to play for a “couple of minutes”. So getting a family member, girlfriend or boyfriend to come and get us when it’s time to pry ourselves away is really good because it gives us someone to be accountable to also. When it’s time to go…go, don’t wait till the next save or when you get to this or that check point, shut down the program or turn off the system.

Remember: it’s just a game and nothing bad in the real world is going to happen if we don’t save our game. Nothing good in the real world is going to happen either if we do reach that checkpoint.

 

Step 4: Slowly decrease the time spent playing
After a half a week or a whole one, whichever you feel more comfortable with, start to lessen the time spent playing video games. Try to get it down to say…just playing a game on the weekend for a few hours. There is nothing wrong with video games, it’s just that the addiction to them or making them a major activity in our lives causes problems. When we practice a little self-control, games can be a way to relax and as a kind of reward for doing what we need to do in the real world instead of something that has a negative impact on our effectiveness or relationships.

 

Step 5: Assess where you’re at in your recovery
Video game addiction is just like any other addiction, some people can’t do the thing they’re addicted to AT ALL or else they relapse back into their old habits. I’m this way with a lot of things in life so I just have to give them up completely. When I use to drink I wouldn’t be able to just have one or two beers I would end up getting drunk. So I had to give the habit up all together in order to stop living like an alcoholic.

If you find that you’re unable to kick the habit of video game addiction using the steps above then it’s time to take more drastic measures. If you play games on a computer and you’re serious about getting past it then it’s time to delete all your games and give them away or destroy them altogether. If you play console games and can’t play them in moderation, maybe once or twice a week max, then I’m sorry to say but it’s time to get rid of the console and the games. This may all seem a bit drastic but it will make it much easier to stop playing once the thing isn’t there anymore to tempt you.

 

I hope all of this helps you in your recovery as silly as it may seem to some people, I know not many people take video game addiction seriously but to those who have it or to those whose life has been affected badly by it, it’s a serious situation. Video game addiction is just like any other addiction, there are reasons for why we do it, steps to overcome it, and a withdrawal process.

If after you stop playing video games for a while you notice that you’re becoming depressed, then it’s not the video games fault or the lack of them, it could be signs of an underlying depression that the video game was only masking, the video game really fixes nothing and isn’t NEEDED to escape those feelings. In that way we can have withdrawals sort of, watch for them, and if you need a way to escape from those feelings then it’s much better to find some other form of positive escapism, maybe practice an instrument, sing, write poetry, walk through the park with your girlfriend or boyfriend, or anything else that is good and you like doing. Make more friends or do things that give you more self-esteem, be kind to others, and it can fix the reasons why we had to play video games in the first place.

If the depression worsens though, then please please PLEASE seek medical help as this could be a sign of a bigger underlying problem and something a professional can help with better than me.

Video game addiction can be overcome completely though, nobodies stuck, and it’s just a step in becoming a better person, just stick with it and I have faith anyone can get there. Thank you for reading my article.

To your best,

Aaron