Transcript: GenCon TV Panel: GenConversations Roundtable Socializing Distantly and General Well-Being
WITH TIME STAMPS AND SPEAKER IDENTIFICATION
Source video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5izZFAV0QQ
- GenCon TV Host: Derek Guder (DEREK) - GenCon
Speakers (clockwise from top left):
- Hawke Robinson (HAWKE): "Grandfather of Therapeutic Gaming" founder and Executive Director of the non-profit RPG Research www.rpgresearch.com and President of the for-profit RPG Therapeutics LLC www.rpg.llc.
- Adam Davis (DAVIS): Game To Grow www.gametogrow.org
- Adam Johns (JOHNS): Game To Grow www.gametogrow.org
- Rachel Kowert (RACHEL): Take This www.takethis.org
0:00 DEREK: Hello everybody! thank you for sticking around after TableTakes and joining us for another one of our GenConversations, which I love, is that is our title we have just continued to use until we come up with a better one, which I have a feeling at this point won't happen, and we will just fall in love with that.
So this week we are joined by Hawke Robinson. Regular viewers should recognize him. We've had him on TableTakes many times. He works for RPG Research and RPG Therapeutics. He has been working in games, RPGs, and therapy, for quite a long time. The Washington State Department of Health [Registered] Recreational Therapist with a background in computer science, neurosciences, music, and recreation therapy.
We're also joined by Adam Davis of Game to Grow, who has a master's in education, with a focus on drama therapy. He's also a founder and Executive Director of Games to Grow, a non-profit based out of Seattle that uses games, most notably D&D in therapeutic social skill groups for kids and teens.
Adam Jones is also from Game to Grow. this is the other founder and Executive Director of the organization. A licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, noting that Game to Grow serves around 80 youth per week in game based groups which have all transitioned [to] online games through teleconferencing.
And Dr. Rachael Kowert, from "Take This!", who is a research psychologist and the research director of Take This which is the first mental health and nonprofit formed to work specifically within the gaming industry in gaming communities she has been studying games and gamers for 10 years with a specific focus on the social impact of games.
So now that I've introduced all of you, I want to give you a chance for anything else that you want to share about yourselves, your organization, or your current personal state of how you're adapting to our social isolation times.
?RACHEL?: I'm spending a lot of time on Zoom
2:12
yes I think I'm I consider myself
2:17
extremely extroverted and this has been really hard that's all the social isolation stuff has been really hard I
2:23
had to make some real adaptations to to make all this work I consider myself not very extroverted
2:29
at all mostly introverted and I still have found this particularly challenging to be in a blue void just looking at
2:37
boxes with faces in them it's been hard as much as much as I am mostly introverted I have I have also adjusted
2:44
to this online space though it has been challenging yeah one of the questions I want us to cover is but aren't
2:51
introverts immune to this problem which I have a feeling you might have an answer for how about you Hawk well
2:58
fortunately for our business we were we've been online for a long time so we
3:04
don't we like to Commission about a 10% hit of our normal programs oh and then now it's inflated the other way the
3:11
biggest concern is I actually am ill get much sleep less three weeks because I've been on call for a lot of mental health emergencies
3:17
I'm on the phone a handoff can happen to do interventions and such had to do
3:22
about a dozen interventions just in the last two weeks and so bit tired going
3:29
out there trying to help people get through this but all right we're running mostly business as usual it's just
3:34
community centers and schools that get shut down but we've helped them because we already had our own online platform
3:41
we've helped them by using re-engage and they're trying to get those last few folks who don't have any internet try to
3:47
get them back into actively being social so that's just been a very challenging
3:53
we need a lot of welfare checks and bursts in the realms great well thank
3:59
you for taking the time for joining us especially as it sounds like you are you know on the front lines of trying to
4:06
keep people safe and healthy through this so one of the first things I want
4:12
to discuss the like the overall topic that we're gonna gather here today to discuss is both the importance of
4:19
maintaining some sort of social connection with people during this time
4:25
when you may be trapped home alone or you may be trapped home with just a very small subset of people that depending on
4:31
your circumstances maybe you don't normally spend a lot of time socializing with and then to discuss some of the
4:37
ways to make though that socialization a little easier more productive more
4:43
helpful to you so why don't we start off with just the question of what are the
4:49
repercussions what is the importance of maintaining social contact you know what
4:55
are the repercussions of being locked away for a month how bad how bad really
5:01
is that how bad is it being with your husband 24 hours a day
5:09
you know socialization is a key component of our well-being and not having that socialization and everly
5:15
inevitably leads to an increased sense of loneliness and loneliness is associated with a whole lot of not good
5:23
outcomes increased stress poor decision-making depression
5:29
cardiovascular disease and stroke there's a 1996 paper that looked at
5:35
different factors that relate to mortality and they found that social isolation was twice as harmful to a
5:41
person's physical health in terms of their mortality as obesity so not good
5:47
one of the things that I think may be is is really interesting about from from a
5:52
research perspective and from a psychological perspective about this pandemic is we don't really know exactly
6:00
how damaging all this is going to be we have a lot of research that tells us that you know we need social connectivity and we need opportunity to
6:07
connect with others but this is at a scale that's unprecedented and both systemically on a really large
6:16
aspect of society being able to work together but also individually there's a lot of isolation here that is gonna have
6:25
these really long-standing really long term impacts as well as short term
6:30
impacts and we can do kind of our best there's lots of research that helps support that of what kind of challenge
6:37
that's going to present for most people but we also need to have some recognition of we don't we don't entirely know because
6:43
this is so unprecedented I'm gonna respond to this with a little dose of optimism and that's that I think this is
6:49
a great opportunity for us to realize how much social connection matters um I
6:55
like I said before am a little introverted and I like my me time and I'm just about done being by myself now
7:02
I'm really excited to be around other people like Adam and I we we've been running came to grow since its inception
7:08
and we were in wheelhouse workshop for years before that and like I used to see
7:14
Adam like every day for like eight hours like I like don't see him anymore and now I see him a little box and we have
7:20
scheduled meetings and like there's a big part of the of that framework that was it was more than just like my habits
7:27
my routines it was like there was some sort of very human phenomenon where like I'll bet our heartbeats were
7:33
synchronized you know there's like these these neurobiological phenomenon of being together with other people that we
7:39
will we will see the damage from this certainly but I'm my hope my takeaway is
7:44
that we see just how valuable and how good we had it before and we are using a
7:50
lot of Internet resources now came to grow has shifted all of their groups online we run a 12 groups a week all
7:57
using zoom now and that has been fantastic and sort of like a hawk was
8:03
saying we're planning on on taking that and expanding it and using that not just as something to do in bad times but also
8:10
this is an opportunity for us to reach more people who we didn't realize we could have meaningful social connections with and my personal friendships I have
8:17
friends with people that I that I never see because we're both so busy and in
8:22
kovat I've actually seen them more in boxes on screens than I ever did before and that's that's an opportunity for us
8:29
to realize that we can actually connect with people in a meaningful way using the Internet it's not just you know
8:34
blurps of text every once in a while we can actually sit down and have a conversation with the staff we have a total of 12 people in game to grow as an
8:42
organization and we can set up video chats with zoom and like have a happy hour where we don't talk about work we
8:48
just have meaningful human connection and we've been doing one-on-one staff meetings where I've had several staff members say that
8:54
just hangout time where we got to see each other's faces was so important and
8:59
so valuable and so my my optimistic takeaway on the other side of the oh my gosh we're gonna be so damaged after
9:05
this is I really I really believe in the the vibrancy of the human condition I think we're gonna come back out the
9:11
other side of this better than we were before yeah that's the thing that I've been really hoping will happen to is we've
9:18
seen more companies conventions in particular you know that's obviously the industry that I'm coming from but you
9:23
know as conventions have to cancel and then many of them have some sort of online component I'm really hoping that
9:30
we're able to polish that up and maintain it as we go forward and get back to normal so that we can still
9:37
extend that experience beyond the people who were you know mentally emotionally
9:43
financially physically capable of coming could still get involved in some way what about you huh so there's a lot of
9:52
things that you hit on there whenever there is a highly disruptive long-term
9:59
critical situation crisis that happens in society we have lots of research
10:04
about the isolation effects the crisis effects and all the Pinkham corticosteroids all those things that
10:10
happen in flood the system the longer that sustained all of the physiological
10:15
and neurological consequences of that sustained stressor and you know as I
10:21
said I've been doing a lot of these mental health checks and one of the key things is a lot of people if their
10:27
structure and routine is completely thrown out the window and what the research shows in general the people who
10:33
are able to be most resilient in times of crisis are those who have clearly defined purpose and meaning which then
10:40
helps them guide what they do day to day and a lot of what I've had to do is go into people and they're down you know a
10:46
scale of one to ten they're now doing one or two you know they don't want to go into the mental health facility
10:52
because they're afraid of getting sick but they they are having suicidal thoughts mediations but we walk through
10:58
and spend a few hours and do a little pro bono to help during this crisis and
11:03
we work out a structure and plan for the next month
11:09
for the next three months of what they're going to do day by day engaging in meaningful purposeful activities both
11:17
for themselves and in social engagement with others and by the time even with just those initial visits we've got
11:23
another - about a five they gone from hopeless to hopeful and really just very
11:28
quickly turning that around with that structure and meaning purpose and this whole virtual experience they threw in
11:37
there that I've been involved online since 1979 before was the internet it was ARPANET and darknet as at the University of Utah and such and one of
11:44
my businesses they still have dim portal specializes in virtual office and workplace that companies founded in 2002
11:51
because every company I worked at we needed work with partners around the world and I kept I messed up the same
11:56
infrastructure and around 2008 2010 yahoo and HP me others started
12:01
dismantling a lot of their virtual office and workplace programs they were trying to get people to be more touchy
12:07
feeling in-person which had a lot of consequences but one of the things they
12:13
complain about is people felt lonely in those work office situations evaluated them what we found as they were missing
12:19
all of the watercooler and socialization aspects they were all just work work work work they didn't
12:25
integrate just having fun and interacting and a little conversation all that human stuff that goes on was
12:31
being lost when they would do their version of a virtual office and so by bringing in you know chat rooms or you
12:38
know you've got an off topic chat room and you can post links and your means and the silly stuff you're still working
12:43
over here but you get to do these other things and that you do like you say set up little virtual events so Zoe Kahn is
12:51
they've decided to go ahead and virtualize that coming up in just a couple of weeks and that's going to be a
12:57
full virtual convention that they're doing you know there's no way folks and such you know many others are awesome
13:03
and having these fun little social things where you get to stop stressing and dwelling hopefully nature off the
13:10
news for a little bit and and try to you know we are adaptable creatures right
13:18
that's that's one thing all of history is shown for human beings is we do adapt to stressors and change
13:24
and an events like this and you know necessities mother invention right we
13:30
will adjust and adapt to this there will be a change it will be a sociological to hold societal change but we'll get
13:37
through this and people just need to technologists don't always take into account all the psychological stuff as a
13:43
technologist it's like logic it's an interesting dichotomy there but yeah
13:48
having that human aspect where we can't actually touch each other physically but
13:54
we can try to touch each other in all the other ways that we're used to interacting even though owner of virtual environments really I think you I think
14:01
you bring up a good point too about how the folks who have a sense of purpose and structure will be a lot more
14:07
resilient to a lot of these shocks and that immediately made me think of the
14:13
number of people who have lost their jobs or been furloughed or are you know just don't have as much work now and for
14:21
a lot of people their job is is their purpose in life or at least you know a
14:27
de facto purpose in life so I think that that's something else to to think about in this is not just a situation where we
14:35
are isolated from each other and we don't have the opportunity to interact with each other it's also where many
14:41
people have lost their jobs which is going to have huge impacts on them financially but it will also then
14:47
further kind of cascade you know into their mental state in a lot of cases and make it a little more difficult for them
14:53
to deal with a lot of these things so you know I think a lot of us joke about how well now I can finally get that
14:59
hobby thing that I've you know been been waiting to do for a long time but you know this might highlight just how
15:05
important it is to actually do that and you know to try to set some sort of goal
15:10
or accomplish a thing during this period you you know the other three of you want
15:17
to add to some of the points that he brought up or um I'll just add to kind
15:23
of speak to your point on that a little bit of what Hawke said is that idea of structure that idea of
15:30
of routine and a lot of times the the pieces that you have set up as a routine
15:37
weren't necessarily intentional before all of this you know you went into your
15:42
kitchen and you made yourself a coffee and a bagel or a pop-tart or something
15:47
like that and then you took off to work and you drove to work and you listen to a podcast you know some of those things are just things that you did out of
15:53
necessity or you know I need my coffee in the morning because that's how I wake up or I you know the pop-tart just happens to be the
15:59
fastest way for me to get a breakfast but those were also the routines that you had created for yourself that you had in place that helped remind you of
16:07
the system that you have and the transition that you need in order to get
16:12
to work and maybe even if you're still working but now you're working from home you don't necessarily have those routines there but certainly if you've
16:19
been furloughed or if you've been laid off the opportunity for that routine is has really gone out the window
16:24
and it's much harder sometimes to create those routines in a really intentional and a really purposeful way for yourself
16:31
and it's amazing how small those routines can be and still be significant
16:37
and still be important to you something as simple as when I wake up I take the time to make myself a cup of coffee you
16:44
can go a long way to setting up some of the other parts of your day or you know I'm still gonna make sure to when it
16:51
comes around to three o'clock I'm gonna I'm gonna make some transition of whatever it is that I'm doing to now
16:57
listening to my podcast that I always used to listen to right around that same time so sometimes those routines existed
17:05
before and now you have to take a little bit of effort just to make those a little bit more purposeful for yourself I definitely I know I shouldn't lie I
17:13
made the mistake of getting into podcasts just before this so now I have a huge backlog that I'm just not
17:19
listening to myself to my commutes to work where the time that I called my
17:24
family so you know I have a half hour commute to work and that was the perfect time for me to call my parents call my
17:29
sister stay in touch and then I realized you know we've been working from home for over a month now and I realized I
17:37
hadn't talked to my mom in such a long time and she texted me was like are you okay and I was like oh of course like
17:43
I no wonder I feel extra disconnected right now that was part of my routine that I was you know staying in contact
17:48
with people in these other ways that were just habits but once the commute broke down there's this sort of
17:54
cascading effect of the the chain link of the of those events were disrupted so
18:00
there's there is a cascading effect that we're and I really have to pay attention to like Adam said being being
18:05
intentional and reflective of around this is not it's not just about the cup of coffee it's about the thing that the cup of coffee leads you to that moment
18:12
when it's brewing or you think about your day and all these little things can be disruptive in a way that we really
18:17
have to be pretty critical reflective around around what our needs are as well
18:22
not just oh that cup of coffee but I need that time where it's brewing where I just hear it bubble for a little bit
18:28
that that time is important to me my commute home is actually really valuable to me because I go from running a group
18:34
home in that same half-hour period I go from you know the the engagement of
18:40
running a group before the kids that we work with to being at home with my family and I need that 20 minutes to go
18:47
from group to home to transition and so I haven't done a thing now where I will tell my wife she'll say are you done and
18:53
I say yes but I'm commuting and I am now only gonna listen use her idea like I'm
18:58
listening to rock and roll music as if I'm driving home um before I come out of my office this is my this is my personal
19:04
commute time and that transition has been really important for me and I I would imagine for other people who are now working from home or not working and
19:10
not having that opportunity that's a big impact as well right so now that we've
19:16
kind of talked about how important it is and how probably just a general point to
19:22
is that you know the the situation that we're going through the the isolation is
19:28
not a thing that's only a problem for people who you know have a history of
19:34
illness or needing therapy or anything like that it's a thing that's affecting everybody to some degree what maybe like
19:45
now that we can talk about some of the kinds of things that our interactions
19:50
like what kind of regular interaction is important and necessary for mental
19:56
health so you we talked about wanting to have interaction with people but I imagine
20:01
that you know just opening waving through your door window to the mailman when they drop off your package doesn't
20:07
really count so what kind of things do people need to look out for I think
20:13
we've all personally mentioned some anecdotes but you know is there broad
20:19
categories or kind of specific interactions that people can maybe very
20:25
intentionally make sure to preserve in their life or build structures around during this time Before we jump into the
20:32
well sure key if you just cover a little bit about what what is really going on
20:38
here is we're having a global experience of an existential crisis yeah you know
20:45
people are really facing mortality there's a lot of studies done that if you tell people if you go up to them you
20:51
know in studies and say you're going to die you're going to die just stop and
20:57
think sit and think with that about that for a minute and what's really
21:03
fascinating it explains what we've seen happen with the quote unquote Greatest Generation with world war one world war
21:09
two Depression era where you know you had a lot of people who didn't make it through there they're a lot of horrible
21:14
things that happened but then you have an entire generation that tended to be more resilient and what few later
21:20
studies have shown is surprisingly so we used to think that every at-risk youth
21:26
who goes through all these horrible abuses and deprivation is doomed to failure but what a lot of research
21:32
studies are actually showing is many of them are more resilient because they
21:38
learn skills and mechanisms to get through that that then take them through other crises on the crises that others
21:44
never developed those skills to deal with them agents and so here we are you
21:51
know Viktor Frankl you know wrote about this when in the concentration camps hell even in the face of the worst
21:57
Horrors imaginable you still had people who were had meaning Direction purpose
22:03
set up the routine and were able to get through that still have some optimism and the research actually supports that
22:09
optimism that this as painful and challenging as it is for some people it's you know there will be
22:16
people that without help and support won't get through that if we don't know this for them so that's what we're here for they do but for the vast majority
22:23
people this is actually going to improve people's outlook because when you say
22:28
you're going to die what research shows is people then start focusing on go no wait I'm this healthy they start
22:34
protesting against the death and focus on what they have how healthy they are what everything they have in life that
22:41
they can appreciate it tends to trigger that in a lot of research studies so it's just so I just wanted to just for
22:48
people to say me think about that for a second and you know back to Adams point about being more optimistic that we will
22:56
most likely come through this better and and and more optimistic than before
23:03
after having struggled through this challenge so this is our society's communal goth phase where we're all
23:09
going to kind of contemplate our morbidity and come through it a little more excited and vibrant afterward we
23:17
can only hope right I mean you touched
23:23
on it to Derek and Adam about being becoming more social we call it social
23:28
distancing really as physical distancing and we're all trying to seek out more social closeness because of the physical
23:34
distancing so if through this like you're saying hawk we have you know more
23:40
online conferences and we have more online happy hour if you have a game to grow groups with people all over the
23:46
country because now you know you can connect with them and you don't have to be in the same co-located space then
23:52
that is something to be optimistic about like that's fantastic you know I think it's it's interesting to think about how
23:59
much you need or how what kinds of social interactions you need and perhaps
24:07
and Rachel Hawk might be able to speak to this a little bit better if there's some specific research kind of pointing
24:12
to an amount my thought would be that it would be much more about what you need
24:17
for yourself in that and that self reflective process of you know maybe for me waving at the mailman is
24:24
is the amount of social interaction that I need to help me like start on that processor or work down that road and we
24:32
kind of mentioned this difference between introverts and extroverts right at the beginning we were all kind of
24:38
checking in but oftentimes the the real difference in the real meaning behind though those are how much recharge you
24:45
get from interacting with others or how much energy it costs you and or how much sort of them how tired do you get from
24:51
those experiences and for an introvert often that often times they recharge a lot more when they're there by
24:57
themselves and they have that alone time and for an extrovert it's it's sort of the exact opposite where they recharge when they have more time interacting
25:03
with other people and the majority of people I might even say everybody is actually on the spectrum from one to
25:09
another very rarely do you find somebody who's really extreme than one boater or another and even when you do they still
25:16
kind of have a threshold you sort of have a certain amount of time that you want to spend by yourself before you're ready to jump back in and and be around
25:22
other people and then the amount of time you want to spend around other people before you're ready to to step back and take a little bit of time for yourself
25:29
and neither of them has anything to do with how much you like socializing or how much you enjoy being around other
25:34
people it's just more about whether or not it costs you energy and whether or not I get you energy so as you're trying
25:41
to figure out like how much do I how many how many video chats do I need a schedule for myself each day so that I
25:47
can be I can be engaged and so I can have social interaction I think the real answer to that is how many do you need
25:53
so that you can feel a little better how many do you need so that you can feel like you're you have social support and
25:59
so that you have people in your life that you know are there and care about
26:04
you and so that when you are now spending time alone you don't feel like
26:10
it's draining you further and further and I think that's ultimately a question that people need to reflect on for themselves and answer for themselves to
26:17
some extent to build on what Adam just said about knowing that people care about you I think that that is really
26:22
one of the most important things I will defend waving at the mailman I'm to
26:29
acknowledge someone else's fundamental humanity I think is a profound thing in
26:34
a very dehumanizing world so I think it is very crucial that we wave at the mailman or there was there
26:39
was an article that I can't remember now maybe one of the researchers and the discussion can come back to south it was
26:45
about the the the sheer value of when someone comes onto an elevator with you which now we don't go down elevators
26:51
because there's they're too small but when someone gets on an elevator with you waving at them and asking them what
26:57
floor they want has a neuro neurological biological phenomenon about being
27:02
recognized as a person so the first step is recognizing someone else's humanity but really it's about seeing them as an
27:09
authentically multifaceted person not just the utility of a human being but their authentic humanity and then caring
27:16
about them is really what it comes down to knowing that your presence actually matters is the thing that that makes the
27:23
difference there so I will defend waving at the mailman but I think it one step further and say hey mailman thank you so
27:29
much and then one step farther and learn the mailman's name that's those are the steps that we need to take still keeping
27:35
your 6 to 8 feet of distance but acknowledging and appreciating someone else for what they do not just for me
27:41
but for what they do their sheer existence I think is where we need to go
27:47
Rachel yeah I mean I think everyone's threshold is different like Adam was
27:52
saying for some people waving at the mailman might be enough I also wave at the mailman thank you delivering my mail
27:59
but you know friendships if you want to go more of a scientific bottom level you know it's a transactional it's a
28:05
transactional relationship where you get social and emotional support so for me I need those office hours that I have with
28:12
my colleagues that take this where even if I'm not talking to them I feel like they are there you know and I need you
28:19
know the calls and my best friend back home to see how she's doing and see how you know mom life is with toddlers
28:25
because we both have young children and for other people that might not be as necessary so I think that everyone is
28:31
different but you need to know you need to figure out what levels best for you to maintain your level of well-being I
28:37
know I have some friends who live alone and it's exponentially harder for them when they live alone and or have no
28:44
paths because they can go entire days without speaking with people can be really hard so knowing that we
28:50
have the technology to connect an arrow we're going to talk about that later in the different ways we can connect online during this period is really important
28:57
so to get to the point of everyone you
29:02
know obviously is gonna have a different level of interaction that they need I suspect that there's a lot of people who
29:07
have just never had the need to have a level of introspection to get a gauge of
29:12
that so now that you are tossed in the deep end you know this is I imagine a
29:18
very complicated topic and will also vary a lot from people to people or person to person but if someone needs to
29:25
figure out how much interaction that they need are there any techniques or
29:31
advice or you know thought exercises that you can recommend to folks other than just continuing to schedule calls
29:39
until your social interactions until you feel satisfied like is it just drink
29:44
from the fire hose until you're full or is there a better way to approach it to people a big part is all ot over
29:53
quantity right this is you know there's a lot of studies about you know screen
29:59
time you know being a recreational therapist but the previous generations were no screen time it's all evil it's all bad but then later research said
30:06
well it depends and one of the things that about half a dozen different studies and over the last 1012 years
30:12
neuroscience and such have found that is about an hour to two of like video games is good for development right around the
30:20
45 to 90 minute spot doesn't matter the game whether it's Tetris whether it's a shooter whether it's role-playing game
30:26
whatever you get different benefits but but benefits after you start to hit that
30:31
hour and a half two hour mark some of the deficits that start to kick in with with stress and in sedentary and other
30:39
lifestyle things that happened start to overtake that on a daily basis this kind
30:44
of makes it a little more complicated but that was very specific to videogames other studies also show that if you just
30:50
have like the TV on on loud shows interrupted by commercials all of that you will actually get more and more
30:56
fatigued leaving that running rather than recharging you come home from a long day
31:01
to have been better for the television and you don't recharge your batteries well with the the socialization it's a
31:08
different thing to you so some people some my loved ones and such they really
31:13
recharge with just one or two of us there and just side by side maybe doing our own thing but we're there we have
31:21
each other's presence there but three four or five people is exhausting and
31:26
and so definitely recognizing where that work stream doesn't work for you and the
31:32
key thing with the online screen now that we have to do more screen is make it quality don't make it all fluff do
31:40
the social stuff but recognize when you're getting fatigued from that this process our brains have to go through
31:46
for this two-dimensional space there's stuff that happens our brains have trouble dealing with the conversion of
31:52
trying to understand things in three-dimensional space that's part of why I lot of people who do this conference you get fatigued with the
31:57
conferencing itself you know we've seen it with our studies every time we bring any electronics into a tabletop
32:03
role-playing game it tends to disrupt their level of immersion you know on a scale of one to ten by a point or two or
32:09
more and it's very fascinating so so we need to integrate breaks into whatever
32:16
we do we need to physically get all of our programs you know every hour or so
32:21
there's a mandatory physical break get up for at least five minutes physically move run to the bathroom do a cheating
32:27
to you but actually stand up and do something that's gonna be really easy right now to just sit in front of that
32:34
screen because there's nothing else there and just take it and take it in but it's lit it's like eating junk food right eating Twinkies eating Twinkies
32:40
and creams you're gonna feel worse and worse and keep being more and feel worse and worse as opposed to consuming the
32:47
better quality that raises you up and helps you feel better but that is going to be very individual and you're gonna
32:52
have people are gonna have to get an idea of well okay I like this amount of streams and podcasts and it starts to wear on me and
33:00
you know this amount of music streams or something you know or and then this must
33:06
show you know YouTube how to videos this much of talking to friends and family you're gonna want to kind of get a feel
33:12
for what works and really become mindful of that so basically experiment and I think
33:19
about what you're digesting as put some thought into is this what I want or do I
33:24
need something different exactly III almost feel kind of kind of building on that idea Hawk that it's really that
33:32
moment you know you you have that social interaction you have that video chat or you play games on you know online with a
33:38
friend after you're done take a moment to ask yourself some of those questions take a moment to say like do I feel
33:44
better did I enjoy that experience so it helped me feel any better and then take
33:49
take a little extra after that to say what about it helped what about it made me feel better was it was it that it was
33:56
friends was it that I was talking with other people was it that it was games and maybe I need to like introduce a
34:01
little bit more games in the into my life maybe a combination of all of those things and each time that you're gonna
34:07
have those those social interactions that's there's an opportunity there for you to have just a little bit of
34:13
reflection and a little bit of time where you really think about that for
34:18
yourself and that's that's hopefully kind of I guess building on what Adam
34:23
and Hawke have been talking about the whole time that this opportunity that we have to to maybe do something much more powerful as or as a result of all this
34:30
that's the kind of intentional thinking and the kind of reflective thinking that really is gonna help you in other parts
34:36
of your life moving forward from here if you can take that from every moment from every interaction that you have and a
34:42
moment where you say well about that what did I like about that what do I want to make sure I get more of next time there's a lot of opportunity in
34:48
there for you to to take that into your next gaming session into your next work
34:53
leading all your notes online exactly and some of what I think you're talking
34:59
about which I think Rachel could talk about the most she's done more Studies on games than anybody I know but I think
35:05
that there's something around the socialization aspect that is sort of Hawk was saying around it's eating
35:11
Twinkies your body has a desire for it your body has a desire to be social whether we're introverted or not there
35:17
is some we are inherently social beings so we have this this desire to connect with other people and sometimes we do
35:24
that through watching someone else on a screen whether we're interacting with them or not there's part of your neurons will fire
35:31
as if you're being social but oftentimes it's it's the diet coke of socialization
35:36
it's the Twinkies that you're not actually getting your needs met but it feels kind of like you are but you're
35:41
not so you're still hungry and then you sort of double down like Hawk was saying on trying to consume more and more and more
35:47
and then you end up with no time and no sleep and then the cycle continues but it's exacerbated yeah I mean there is
35:54
something to be said about alone together right so having a stream on in the background or having a podcast on in
35:59
the background and you're not actively socializing with these other individuals but it does satisfy you want some level
36:05
there's a great study there's a great study that was done by Emory Daniel and David westerman about Jon Snow and when
36:13
Jon Snow spoiler Jon Snow died on Game of Thrones they lost a point yet they
36:26
analyzed this the emotional sentiments of the tweets that people expressed after that event and they were similar
36:32
to the emotions that you expressed when a close family friend or member passed away so even if we don't have these
36:38
relationships people on stream or the people in the podcast these parasocial relationships definitely they satisfy us
36:44
in some way they evoke the same emotions that they do with a close friend or family member that isn't to say can
36:49
fully account for not for any other other kind of socialization but it can
36:55
it does do something the emotions are the same actually if I could that's such
37:01
a good point Rachel and I kind of want to build on that point right now there's a lot of people that are consuming a lot
37:06
of media watching a lot of Netflix show watching a lot of shows watching a lot of you know stuff on Disney plus one of
37:12
the things to keep in mind is how you are emotionally impacted by the media that you consume and to be aware of what
37:20
kind of media you're watching just from an anecdotal perspective I consider
37:25
myself really influenced emotionally by this shows that I watch I cried during Pixar movies a lot and I am very
37:34
drastically impacted by shows that I that I feel like are depressing or like a really really a struggle I love the
37:40
show Bojack horseman I cannot watch more than one or two episodes of Bojack horseman without feeling like I'm
37:46
getting depressed I'm I'm becoming depressed as a result of the emotional interaction with the show Adam and I
37:51
like to call this narrative transference but there's lots of other names for it that come from other perspectives and
37:57
the the functional idea especially in a time like this is that you it'll be very
38:02
easy to fall into I'm just binge watching the show or I'm just making my way through it and it's important for
38:09
you to reflect once again that reflection and intentionality about what does that show giving to you what what
38:15
place is that show putting you in and you may find that that the shows that you're watching are contributing to your
38:22
mental state maybe in a positive way and maybe in a negative way and it may be a time to go ooh do I
38:28
really want to watch another episode of tiger cake or should I transition some things over and and you know watch a
38:35
little bit of something that's bring more heart and more more joy and into my day because I can feel myself becoming a
38:41
little bit more I was about to say Adam
38:51
I also feel a lot of transference when I watch shows and that's why I'm about to start a big cat zoo so you know it's my
38:57
new side project of course you're in a
39:09
terrible mood why would you so before we start talking about some of the specific
39:16
tools that people can use and techniques to socialize here one thing that I think was mentioned off hand a couple times
39:22
was a little bit about kind of being alone together thing where just the
39:29
benefits of being in a space with another person even if you're not interacting with that person still
39:35
counts as social you know interaction on the level and shouldn't be discounted
39:41
but I think something that people find very awkward and I think there's a
39:46
pretty heavy stigma against is the idea of just video calling somebody and not talking to them and just letting them
39:53
kind of be there like that was a thing that my wife and I did when she was in Ireland and I was in
39:59
the US you know sometimes we play video games sometimes we would talk with each other like we absolutely would engage
40:04
with each other but sometimes it was like like we just talked a couple hours ago I don't have anything say I've got
40:10
some work I want to get done like I need to do this but it's nice to just have
40:15
you nearby or because the time zone difference she would be going to sleep when I would be working on something so
40:21
she would just put the video on and go to sleep and you know a lot of people thought that was very weird but I
40:27
especially I think now you know I how valuable or do you think some of those
40:33
things may be to people so Allah I notice everybody kept using the word reflecting in what they were watching
40:41
and such which there's a a controversial theory in the neuroscience world about
40:47
mirror neurons and such about that there definitely are some motor neurons that up to 10% of certain types of motor
40:53
neurons mirror other activities so you watch somebody do an activity the part
40:59
of your brain is firing and mirror to that but it's still a controversial topic it's not a fully established
41:05
there's a lot of debate but it's a fascinating topic if at least part of it is true that what we're consuming there
41:12
is triggering these these these reflections and experience it's really important to realize that so if you are
41:18
watching a bunch of stuff that makes you feel bad odds are that's not going to help you feel better
41:23
so you want to really be mindful of that when you start binge watching on top of binge watching on top of binge watching
41:29
on top of binge watching without relief remember when when you're a zebra running from the lion and you got you
41:34
know 30 seconds of stress and then you get a break assuming you get away versus 30 hours of stress 30 weeks of stress it
41:43
really runs you down so it's really important to be aware again not even you're not taking in too much of that
41:48
junk food that's not making you feel better about the parallel stuff Avedon
41:53
interaction patterns talk about this about different recreational activities and you've got the intra-individual
42:01
which is a kind of internal mindfulness and meditation and contemplating it and
42:06
just imagination daydreaming and such very good to do something you should have a part in your life sometimes it's
42:12
tempting with all this stuff out here to shut down the internal part of yourself
42:17
and you know the Viktor Frankl okay unexamined life but you know this whole
42:25
thing of being aware and reflecting on what your purpose and meaning is such as stopping and doing that rather than just
42:31
take and take and take and take in and not stopping for a moment so take those breaks you know the extra individual is
42:38
where you're by yourself interacting doing something that's a very important part of there's a key tenet of
42:44
recreation therapy is that you are doing something active rather than just passively receiving you know when you're
42:51
reading you're actually doing something more active than just passively receiving in a tactile way but it's a
42:56
little more passive but it's less passive than just watching a stream listening to a podcast exception you've
43:02
got this back and forth here doing the video games that's it back and forth those are interactive when you're side
43:08
by side is considered aggregate you get whole groups of people doing things aggregate whether or not there's no
43:14
competition there no there not it's not cooperative they're not helping each other but you're in parallel doing stuff
43:20
in just that human presence can elevate mood when you're doing this so see everybody in workshops all the time
43:26
where you're painting ceramics and stuff but we do this in retirement communities and for kids and there's a bonding that
43:34
happens even though it's just could you hand me that paintbrush things like that or hey did you see this just that little
43:40
bit but really just the a parallel activity gives us some of that command human connection and with that
43:47
reflection that you're talking about role playing games hello where we have to say well stop for a moment what is
43:54
your character don't so first stop and think about how your character would feel and verbalize
44:00
that out of character met a discussion here how do you think of character feels when this NBC's being rude to it okay
44:08
now how is your character going to actually you've stopped you've done an assessment realized how the character
44:13
feels and then you decide on an action because we can do that in the game based setting and it emphasizes that process
44:20
that we don't often stop and with all of this going on it's gonna
44:27
be really easy to just bombard my bar on card and shut off that internal process
44:32
and it's really important that we set aside time for that of internal and quiet air time and such Hawk you
44:42
mentioned Viktor Frankl a few times and I just wanted to make sure the audience knew that that book man's search for
44:47
meaning is a fantastic book and spoiler alert the first parts about the
44:53
Holocaust so it's pretty dramatic but the second part of it is actually really empowering and really cool there's a quote from Viktor Frankl that I like a
44:59
lot that I'm sure Hawk knows it better than I don't wanna misquote it but he says between every stimulus and response there is a space and in that space is
45:07
our power I've always loved that and it really ties really nicely into role-playing games where you can just stop there's initiative of course but
45:14
you can always just pause and get an internal monologue what are your thoughts and feelings about this our to
45:20
choose our response and in our response lies our growth and there you go that's
45:26
the quiz I like my paraphrase in mr.
45:32
book but that all that's the good I like yeah it's a little mm-hmm
45:38
it's one worth reading several times actually I wanted to circle back around
45:49
to Derek's original whole kind of question and how Hawk definitely you
45:55
touch those so you really got to it though but this kind of idea of is it
46:01
still socialization is it still socializing with people if all I'm doing is like sitting and not talking or or
46:07
even doing completely separate activities but happened to be next to each other and Hawk I think your example
46:13
was perfect of like a room full of people all working on you know painting ceramics like you still feel social you
46:20
were sharing an activity but even when you're doing completely separate activities there's still such an opportunity there to feel connected to
46:28
somebody my my wife and I have started she's playing Animal Crossing and I've
46:35
been playing monster hunter world with some friends and I'll literally have headphones will both have headphones on the off in our
46:42
own things but we're sitting in the same room and we're getting some kind of shared experience from that there's
46:47
there is something that we still get to have and some of that is just in the
46:52
break periods and some of that is afterwards and some of that is being able to like look up from my game and
46:58
see somebody is there and they're also sitting and having a good time and I do think there's a value to that I do think
47:04
there's something to that experience and it's so much harder to get without intentionally scheduling it if you're
47:10
not living with somebody in times like right now and you really kind of have to go hey will you come be on video chat
47:16
with me while I play a video game and you play video game we're not going to talk to each other so much that's a
47:22
harder proposal to send off to your friends or your family but worth doing
47:27
absolutely it's it's actually developmentally a stage in human development when children learn how to
47:33
parallel play as Hawk said earlier it's it there's it's got a name it's called parallel play and babies do this you can
47:40
watch babies learn how to interact with the world and one of the phases they go through through is parallel play where
47:46
they can engage with an activity in a somewhat social environment they're not you know there might be stacking blocks and knocking them over and they might
47:52
still be upset if another child comes along and takes a block but it's they're not building a castle together and
47:58
making up a story they're not fully engaged in in a relational space but they're engaging in parallel play
48:04
there's something that is calming to our our neurological systems when we have that because it is it's an 8 in us to
48:11
want to do that you know I don't want us suspect to Rachel take this does all the all the afk rooms do you know if there's
48:19
any any kind of evidence to the idea that the afk room is more powerful because there are other people there who
48:26
are also taking time and way from from the space I don't I there hasn't been
48:32
any research done specifically on the afk room in that sense but the phrase alone together came from research from
48:38
Niki back in the height of World of Warcraft and what he found is when he talked to people people would log into the game
48:44
out with a party not with a friend by themselves and sit at the end you can't even really do anything at the
48:50
world of warcraft but stand there and see the other people around them and they would report elevated mood and a
48:56
sense of being less alone and reduce sense of stress and all these things and all these different measures just by
49:01
being in a physical space digital space with other humans so it's not even about
49:08
if you live alone right so it's not about I have to have my spouse next to me although my husband and I do that too I love animal crossing but it's also
49:16
just about you can log into an MMO or these kind of games that afford this opportunity and feel less alone if I had
49:25
to hypothesize about the afk room I would say yes but I don't I don't know there has a bit research well so and and
49:36
I'm forgetting I have it in my notes from one of my courses that I've been teaching so we've done a series the last
49:41
four weeks on alone does not actually
49:47
mean lonely and then we talk about loneliness anxiety depression fear
49:54
terror then resilience adaptation
50:00
adjustment grit all these other things on the other side of the coin and what determines these in the at-risk etc and
50:09
unfortunately don't have in my notes right here the sourcing and like I can't believe I left it out of my notes there but some of the studies show that
50:17
between 23 to 32 percent of our brain
50:22
function brain mass depending upon the studies focus on thinking and dealing
50:27
with social interactions we spend an awful a big portion of our especially our prefrontal cortex all of that
50:33
learning all the rules and doing the interaction and when we're not getting that it's kind of like not working out
50:39
it's that's right we kind of feel like something's missing right because that part of our brain is not lighting up and
50:45
getting engaged so it's really important to realize that so much of certainly our
50:51
newer brains and such are really geared on taking on thinking and dealing with
50:56
social interactions and challenges and what to do next and so much of that and it's kind of like not not going out and
51:02
walking if you're not engaged in this activity so you're going to feel like something's missing
51:08
so do do put yourself in those situations to have those opportunities and there's a lot of great ways to do
51:14
that through recreation so I think we're coming up on the time of our discussion
51:20
that Hawk has probably gotten very used to you now which is where I say that we had an agenda that covered many more
51:26
topics we would like to continue talking but out of respect for everyone's time
51:31
perhaps we need to wrap up but we would love to have all of you back on again because that to let the audience know
51:36
you know the agenda Hawk added a ton of detail to it but we also had a ton of notes on like we were gonna have a whole
51:43
other section that was all about some of
51:48
the tools and techniques you can use to maintain the social interaction that we have just talked about the importance of
51:54
so you know I don't think we have time for that today unfortunately but I hope that the four of you maybe learn to come
52:02
back in the future to try to talk through some of those things so in the last couple of minutes there were a
52:08
couple questions that came up or at least one question that came up at chat that I thought was important to kind of cover and somebody said that as the days
52:18
and weeks go by with a lot of us that stay at home and in social distancing mode what what can they expect to feel
52:26
and what should people be doing differently to cope and I think we've talked a little bit about different ways
52:33
to kind of maintain social connection but I might be reading it wrong but I feel like the question is kind of
52:38
getting at what is normal to feel during
52:43
this time and what isn't and that's kind of a tricky question but you know as
52:49
you're going through this what are natural things to be experiencing that you're gonna want to tackle stress
53:00
distress I think I want it I want to throw this to Adam John's I think I
53:09
I definitely think the the space that you're looking for is there's a lot
53:15
that's that's gonna be different here you're gonna you're gonna experience a different world this is a different
53:20
world that you're currently living in and that's gonna shape and change your experience that you're that you're
53:26
having and the way that you interact with your world the space that I would be looking forward for yourself to be
53:33
reflective on to be alarmed about is is the space where you are the classic sort
53:39
of examples for for mental health are you losing joy from things that usually bring you joy are you finding it finding
53:46
that you have a short fuse that you're getting upset or you're angry or frustrated about things that you normally have a little bit more
53:52
resilience to be able to handle some of those things may seem like small pieces but they're also the pieces that are
53:58
oftentimes the very early warning signs of other stuff and there's lots of
54:03
physical stuff as well are you finding that you're having trouble sleeping through the night are you finding the
54:09
earth you're tired more during the day than you normally are and I would pay
54:16
close attention to those two those small things as indicators that you might need to make a change and you might need to
54:23
make reach out for help and I know we're short on time but hawk I'd love to pass
54:29
it back to you actually to talk about you've been doing all this crisis counseling do you have any really particular points that you think would
54:36
be really great to pass a lot of people they can watch so worried people wouldn't worry about tential loss and
54:42
that generally always outweighs the opportunities for gain right we're always there's so many more things to
54:48
worry about and we miss a lot of the opportunities so this tends to lead people to believe that all will remain
54:55
permanently as it is right now but remember changes on evitable things always always change right now people
55:03
are having their you know saludo genic understanding of a situation of the world their coherence of the world
55:09
greatly challenged and and so that shakes things up and so change generally
55:16
requires new ways of understanding our world so that we can cope with it and
55:21
it's often first view from our old ways of seeing things right the way we saw things before so only gradually do we start to
55:29
make way for new ways of thinking and acting and it's important how we
55:34
understand change in the context of growth and development that change can be a good helpful thing and very very
55:43
critical some very manual exercises sit down and work out a schedule plan for
55:49
the next month or so the next three to four weeks set up little events set up here call schedule put together little
55:55
social events set up your make a schedule you've got a little more time now maybe some people sit down and make
56:02
a schedule that you never quite got around to but being interjected in a balanced way don't overfill it
56:07
make sure there's time for just haha soak in the tub whatever you just enjoy you're being yourself there's a bunch of
56:14
resources out there so so Derek mentioned it briefly we've got a whole bunch of free games available social
56:20
games people can join it's Arby's research com4 slash offense you just sign up and and join one try to provide
56:26
everything you need you just show up remotely over it also related to all the
56:32
things you could do we set up a page our producers com4 slash social - gaming and
56:38
we're putting up all the resources and links for all the different things in valuating free low-cost and premium
56:45
options all the different ways because we work with all kinds of populations many one don't have internet they may
56:50
not have a flip phone they're cut off so we're always very mindful about not
56:55
excluding everybody giving everybody an opportunity to engage the activities so we're putting up a very detailed list
57:01
there of lots of choices when people feel they have a choice they feel like
57:07
they have a little bit more self-determination in life and and that really can be a powerful buffer against
57:14
crisis when they feel there are choices it's when you feel like you have no choices in the launcher that he can get
57:19
hopeless but if you experience it it's normal in a crisis anxiety fear worry
57:24
these are normal and set of fighting it be with it for a moment acknowledge it
57:31
right oh I'm noticing this now what are you going to do about that what are you for when you fight it it tends to build
57:38
up and build up and build up and creep up on you that's when it can be really toxic under mine so it's okay to feel
57:46
afraid I think on top of on top of the fear that people are feeling and maybe
57:52
anger depending you know the injustice of the world I think people are probably also feeling grief and they don't know
57:59
that they're feeling grief because we don't have a good conversational cultural conversation around grief but I
58:05
think that there's a lot of grief around the way the world is changing and the narratives and the habits are changing and how do we how do we relate to that
58:12
is it is a loss and and I think we have to process that loss and I think understanding that sort of dull echo as
58:19
grief and and you know some of us are afraid because of our particular health
58:24
scenarios and that might be entering into the equation but a lot of us who are staying at home because we're protecting other people its lost we have
58:32
to process it is lost to the normalcy maybe lost to a job but I think I think REE REE categorizing our experience as
58:40
grief would be a big help for a lot of people to understand that it's okay to not be okay to steal take this as line
58:46
it's it's okay I mean we are where we need to be right now feeling feeling bad
58:51
feeling that sort of emptiness inside is normal right now and it's okay to be less productive it's okay to not be
58:58
doing your pushup routine or whatever your your homework out it's okay to eat twice as much pizza that one time you
59:05
know reflect on it or whatever but it's okay to struggle right now and I think that's the the lesson that I would love
59:12
people to take away from this is it it's appropriate to be upset in the midst of
59:18
a global pandemic well I think the to kind of continue that not only is it okay or expected to feel a lot of those
59:25
things but it's also okay and encouraged to reach out to your social network and
59:31
your friends not only to support yourself but because chances are really
59:37
high that they are feeling a lot of the same emotions too and even if they haven't arranged out yet you reaching
59:44
out to them to help yourself may very well provide them an opportunity to connect
59:49
with you and help them as well you know I think that's that's a thing that a lot
59:55
of friends that I know I want to trouble with is remembering that their friends
1:00:00
want to help them and that their need for help is not a burden but it's kind
1:00:06
of the point of the friendship in a lot of ways so how have you talked about how
1:00:13
busy you were so to be and be respectful of your time I want to thank all of you
1:00:19
for joining me I hope all of you had fun and found this constructive I know a
1:00:24
number of people in chat we're talking about their experiences posting a couple links asking a few questions so I want
1:00:30
to thank everybody in the audience for watching us is there anything that any of you want to say again about your
1:00:37
organization's or about anything you're working on personally that you want to highlight very quickly before we wrap up
1:00:42
oh I'll plug game to grow you can find more information about us at game to grow org but we've been recently thanks
1:00:49
to all of the online work that we're doing we are have launched a webinar program we've had a few webinars so far
1:00:57
but we're going to be launching that big time elizabeth comer has run two webinars for us and they were fantastic and you can learn more about that by
1:01:03
going to again DeGroat at oregon signing up for the newsletter but we're also probably going to be launching online
1:01:09
groups so all of our groups historically have been in the greater Seattle Kirkland Tacoma area but now that we
1:01:15
have this proof of concept that online groups can be as socially enriching as in-person groups we will very likely be
1:01:22
starting online social enrichment programs so you can learn more about that at our website as well but join our
1:01:27
newsletter and follow us on twitter at game to grow at work we'll do a lot of non sing of the various outreach efforts
1:01:33
we have there i'm just want to mention that take this you can learn more about us at take this org we have a lot of
1:01:39
resources i mentioned it in the chat related specifically to some of the topics that are now getting discussion
1:01:45
because of social distancing like how to practice self-care self-care when working at home how to maintain hope
1:01:51
these sorts of things and we look forward to having to take this at Gen
1:01:57
Con this year really everything will all be wonderful and perfect
1:02:06
and in addition to RPG researches so those are community open programs if
1:02:12
it's a more critical situation there is RPG therapeutics that's that is a more formal therapeutic practice and such so
1:02:20
if you know somebody a loved one or another person you're concerned about who you think might benefit from a
1:02:26
little more structure we've been doing therapeutic care online or over over a
1:02:33
decade and so we figured out how to optimize these circumstances with the
1:02:39
social games and activities to target very specific needs for individuals so
1:02:44
if it's a more intensely therapeutic thing you're looking for you're just looking if you're just lonely and you
1:02:50
want to sway some of those things than just arbitrary surgeons I'll just go just have some games and enjoy and
1:02:56
socialize that way if you think it's a little bit more serious than that some relationships are breaking down
1:03:01
because of the tension having trouble of communication issues etc then an RPG
1:03:06
that we have plus we've all of our workshops we had about 12 workshops out there this year we've been they're
1:03:12
available online as well we've got some coming up in about two weeks and such some of them are one-day workshops some
1:03:18
of the three-day workshops to Train individuals and professionals on how to
1:03:23
bring these programs your role-playing games and other activities into your practice to help address it now and
1:03:31
since we have you know over 20 years of virtual office in workplace helping people with the integrated app they have
1:03:37
no considerations and great great well
1:03:44
thank you again for everyone for joining us and if you're watching remember that we have a whole slate of other shows to
1:03:52
check out we won't have game night tonight unfortunately game night is on hiatus for a little bit as we're all adapting
1:03:58
to our new normal but on Mondays at 6 p.m. we had board games with the brothers Murph
1:04:03
we're very energetic they'd like to engage with chat and play games in a very social way when then on Wednesday
1:04:10
at 9 a.m. Pacific minis with the Murph's where the two brothers will paint some minis one of them is a little more
1:04:16
experience and the other so they kind of help teach each other how to explore you know painting more game collection
1:04:22
miniatures games things like that at 11 a.m. we have this game gets dicey where a lady in LA and the gentleman in London
1:04:30
play board games online together so if you are curious about what games are available online how they play and you
1:04:36
kind of want to see some of it in action before having to take the plunge yourself it seems like a timely show to watch and then at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday
1:04:43
we have fireside with Peter Atkinson this season he's interviewing people who have there when Wizards of the coast
1:04:50
bought TSR and kind of gave birth to a third edition so if you want to hear some of those stories from the people
1:04:56
who were deeply involved in that process you should check that out and then at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesdays we have the West
1:05:02
Gator regulars who are a group of local authors playing through a DD campaign together and it's a very literary
1:05:08
campaign I would say so you should check that out too and finally on Fridays at 2
1:05:14
p.m. Pacific we have table takes which is our news and discussion information show and then after that hopefully we
1:05:21
will keep continuing with these Jim conversations that we've been having and hopefully we can entice all of you to
1:05:27
come back to finish the rest of the agenda that we put together and I also mentioned some other topics we want to
1:05:33
cover so hopefully we'll have some fairly regular guests coming back remember to follow the channel subscribe
1:05:39
if you would like to if you've missed any episodes the majority of them are on YouTube if they're not you can always
1:05:44
catch the video on demand on Twitch itself and thank you again everybody
1:05:50
thank you so much
<H2>WITHOUT TIME STAMPS OR SPEAKER IDENTIFICATION</H2>
hello everybody thank you for sticking around after table takes and joining us for another one of our Jen conversations
which I love is that that is our title we have just continued to use until we
come up with a better one which I have a feeling at this point won't happen and we will just fall in love with that so
this week we are joined by Hawk Robinson regular viewers should recognize him
we've had him on table takes many times he works for RPG Research and RPG
therapeutics he has been working in games RPGs and therapy for quite a long
time the Washington State Department of Health recreational therapists with a background in computer science neuro
sciences music and recreation therapy we're also joined by Adam Davis of game
to grow who has a master's in education with a focus on drama therapy he's also
a founder and executive director of games to grow a non-profit based out of Seattle that uses games most notably D&D
in therapeutic social skill groups for kids and teens Adam Jones is also from
game to grow this is the other founder and executive director of the organization a licensed Marriage and
Family Therapist noting that games to grow serves around 80 youth per week in
game based groups which have all transitioned online games through teleconferencing and dr. Rachael court
from take this who is a research psychologist and the research director of take this which is the first mental
health and nonprofit formed to work specifically within the gaming industry in gaming communities she has been
studying games and gamers for 10 years with a specific focus on the social impact of games so now that I've
introduced all of you I want to give you a chances or anything else that you want to share about yourselves your
organization or your current personal state of how you're adapting to our
social isolation times I'm spending a lot of time on Zoom
yes I think I'm I consider myself
extremely extroverted and this has been really hard that's all the social isolation stuff has been really hard I
had to make some real adaptations to to make all this work I consider myself not very extroverted
at all mostly introverted and I still have found this particularly challenging to be in a blue void just looking at
boxes with faces in them it's been hard as much as much as I am mostly introverted I have I have also adjusted
to this online space though it has been challenging yeah one of the questions I want us to cover is but aren't
introverts immune to this problem which I have a feeling you might have an answer for how about you Hawk well
fortunately for our business we were we've been online for a long time so we
don't we like to Commission about a 10% hit of our normal programs oh and then now it's inflated the other way the
biggest concern is I actually am ill get much sleep less three weeks because I've been on call for a lot of mental health emergencies
I'm on the phone a handoff can happen to do interventions and such had to do
about a dozen interventions just in the last two weeks and so bit tired going
out there trying to help people get through this but all right we're running mostly business as usual it's just
community centers and schools that get shut down but we've helped them because we already had our own online platform
we've helped them by using re-engage and they're trying to get those last few folks who don't have any internet try to
get them back into actively being social so that's just been a very challenging
we need a lot of welfare checks and bursts in the realms great well thank
you for taking the time for joining us especially as it sounds like you are you know on the front lines of trying to
keep people safe and healthy through this so one of the first things I want
to discuss the like the overall topic that we're gonna gather here today to discuss is both the importance of
maintaining some sort of social connection with people during this time
when you may be trapped home alone or you may be trapped home with just a very small subset of people that depending on
your circumstances maybe you don't normally spend a lot of time socializing with and then to discuss some of the
ways to make though that socialization a little easier more productive more
helpful to you so why don't we start off with just the question of what are the
repercussions what is the importance of maintaining social contact you know what
are the repercussions of being locked away for a month how bad how bad really
is that how bad is it being with your husband 24 hours a day
you know socialization is a key component of our well-being and not having that socialization and everly
inevitably leads to an increased sense of loneliness and loneliness is associated with a whole lot of not good
outcomes increased stress poor decision-making depression
cardiovascular disease and stroke there's a 1996 paper that looked at
different factors that relate to mortality and they found that social isolation was twice as harmful to a
person's physical health in terms of their mortality as obesity so not good
one of the things that I think may be is is really interesting about from from a
research perspective and from a psychological perspective about this pandemic is we don't really know exactly
how damaging all this is going to be we have a lot of research that tells us that you know we need social connectivity and we need opportunity to
connect with others but this is at a scale that's unprecedented and both systemically on a really large
aspect of society being able to work together but also individually there's a lot of isolation here that is gonna have
these really long-standing really long term impacts as well as short term
impacts and we can do kind of our best there's lots of research that helps support that of what kind of challenge
that's going to present for most people but we also need to have some recognition of we don't we don't entirely know because
this is so unprecedented I'm gonna respond to this with a little dose of optimism and that's that I think this is
a great opportunity for us to realize how much social connection matters um I
like I said before am a little introverted and I like my me time and I'm just about done being by myself now
I'm really excited to be around other people like Adam and I we we've been running came to grow since its inception
and we were in wheelhouse workshop for years before that and like I used to see
Adam like every day for like eight hours like I like don't see him anymore and now I see him a little box and we have
scheduled meetings and like there's a big part of the of that framework that was it was more than just like my habits
my routines it was like there was some sort of very human phenomenon where like I'll bet our heartbeats were
synchronized you know there's like these these neurobiological phenomenon of being together with other people that we
will we will see the damage from this certainly but I'm my hope my takeaway is
that we see just how valuable and how good we had it before and we are using a
lot of Internet resources now came to grow has shifted all of their groups online we run a 12 groups a week all
using zoom now and that has been fantastic and sort of like a hawk was
saying we're planning on on taking that and expanding it and using that not just as something to do in bad times but also
this is an opportunity for us to reach more people who we didn't realize we could have meaningful social connections with and my personal friendships I have
friends with people that I that I never see because we're both so busy and in
kovat I've actually seen them more in boxes on screens than I ever did before and that's that's an opportunity for us
to realize that we can actually connect with people in a meaningful way using the Internet it's not just you know
blurps of text every once in a while we can actually sit down and have a conversation with the staff we have a total of 12 people in game to grow as an
organization and we can set up video chats with zoom and like have a happy hour where we don't talk about work we
just have meaningful human connection and we've been doing one-on-one staff meetings where I've had several staff members say that
just hangout time where we got to see each other's faces was so important and
so valuable and so my my optimistic takeaway on the other side of the oh my gosh we're gonna be so damaged after
this is I really I really believe in the the vibrancy of the human condition I think we're gonna come back out the
other side of this better than we were before yeah that's the thing that I've been really hoping will happen to is we've
seen more companies conventions in particular you know that's obviously the industry that I'm coming from but you
know as conventions have to cancel and then many of them have some sort of online component I'm really hoping that
we're able to polish that up and maintain it as we go forward and get back to normal so that we can still
extend that experience beyond the people who were you know mentally emotionally
financially physically capable of coming could still get involved in some way what about you huh so there's a lot of
things that you hit on there whenever there is a highly disruptive long-term
critical situation crisis that happens in society we have lots of research
about the isolation effects the crisis effects and all the Pinkham corticosteroids all those things that
happen in flood the system the longer that sustained all of the physiological
and neurological consequences of that sustained stressor and you know as I
said I've been doing a lot of these mental health checks and one of the key things is a lot of people if their
structure and routine is completely thrown out the window and what the research shows in general the people who
are able to be most resilient in times of crisis are those who have clearly defined purpose and meaning which then
helps them guide what they do day to day and a lot of what I've had to do is go into people and they're down you know a
scale of one to ten they're now doing one or two you know they don't want to go into the mental health facility
because they're afraid of getting sick but they they are having suicidal thoughts mediations but we walk through
and spend a few hours and do a little pro bono to help during this crisis and
we work out a structure and plan for the next month
for the next three months of what they're going to do day by day engaging in meaningful purposeful activities both
for themselves and in social engagement with others and by the time even with just those initial visits we've got
another - about a five they gone from hopeless to hopeful and really just very
quickly turning that around with that structure and meaning purpose and this whole virtual experience they threw in
there that I've been involved online since 1979 before was the internet it was ARPANET and darknet as at the University of Utah and such and one of
my businesses they still have dim portal specializes in virtual office and workplace that companies founded in 2002
because every company I worked at we needed work with partners around the world and I kept I messed up the same
infrastructure and around 2008 2010 yahoo and HP me others started
dismantling a lot of their virtual office and workplace programs they were trying to get people to be more touchy
feeling in-person which had a lot of consequences but one of the things they
complain about is people felt lonely in those work office situations evaluated them what we found as they were missing
all of the watercooler and socialization aspects they were all just work work work work they didn't
integrate just having fun and interacting and a little conversation all that human stuff that goes on was
being lost when they would do their version of a virtual office and so by bringing in you know chat rooms or you
know you've got an off topic chat room and you can post links and your means and the silly stuff you're still working
over here but you get to do these other things and that you do like you say set up little virtual events so Zoe Kahn is
they've decided to go ahead and virtualize that coming up in just a couple of weeks and that's going to be a
full virtual convention that they're doing you know there's no way folks and such you know many others are awesome
and having these fun little social things where you get to stop stressing and dwelling hopefully nature off the
news for a little bit and and try to you know we are adaptable creatures right
that's that's one thing all of history is shown for human beings is we do adapt to stressors and change
and an events like this and you know necessities mother invention right we
will adjust and adapt to this there will be a change it will be a sociological to hold societal change but we'll get
through this and people just need to technologists don't always take into account all the psychological stuff as a
technologist it's like logic it's an interesting dichotomy there but yeah
having that human aspect where we can't actually touch each other physically but
we can try to touch each other in all the other ways that we're used to interacting even though owner of virtual environments really I think you I think
you bring up a good point too about how the folks who have a sense of purpose and structure will be a lot more
resilient to a lot of these shocks and that immediately made me think of the
number of people who have lost their jobs or been furloughed or are you know just don't have as much work now and for
a lot of people their job is is their purpose in life or at least you know a
de facto purpose in life so I think that that's something else to to think about in this is not just a situation where we
are isolated from each other and we don't have the opportunity to interact with each other it's also where many
people have lost their jobs which is going to have huge impacts on them financially but it will also then
further kind of cascade you know into their mental state in a lot of cases and make it a little more difficult for them
to deal with a lot of these things so you know I think a lot of us joke about how well now I can finally get that
hobby thing that I've you know been been waiting to do for a long time but you know this might highlight just how
important it is to actually do that and you know to try to set some sort of goal
or accomplish a thing during this period you you know the other three of you want
to add to some of the points that he brought up or um I'll just add to kind
of speak to your point on that a little bit of what Hawke said is that idea of structure that idea of
of routine and a lot of times the the pieces that you have set up as a routine
weren't necessarily intentional before all of this you know you went into your
kitchen and you made yourself a coffee and a bagel or a pop-tart or something
like that and then you took off to work and you drove to work and you listen to a podcast you know some of those things are just things that you did out of
necessity or you know I need my coffee in the morning because that's how I wake up or I you know the pop-tart just happens to be the
fastest way for me to get a breakfast but those were also the routines that you had created for yourself that you had in place that helped remind you of
the system that you have and the transition that you need in order to get
to work and maybe even if you're still working but now you're working from home you don't necessarily have those routines there but certainly if you've
been furloughed or if you've been laid off the opportunity for that routine is has really gone out the window
and it's much harder sometimes to create those routines in a really intentional and a really purposeful way for yourself
and it's amazing how small those routines can be and still be significant
and still be important to you something as simple as when I wake up I take the time to make myself a cup of coffee you
can go a long way to setting up some of the other parts of your day or you know I'm still gonna make sure to when it
comes around to three o'clock I'm gonna I'm gonna make some transition of whatever it is that I'm doing to now
listening to my podcast that I always used to listen to right around that same time so sometimes those routines existed
before and now you have to take a little bit of effort just to make those a little bit more purposeful for yourself I definitely I know I shouldn't lie I
made the mistake of getting into podcasts just before this so now I have a huge backlog that I'm just not
listening to myself to my commutes to work where the time that I called my
family so you know I have a half hour commute to work and that was the perfect time for me to call my parents call my
sister stay in touch and then I realized you know we've been working from home for over a month now and I realized I
hadn't talked to my mom in such a long time and she texted me was like are you okay and I was like oh of course like
I no wonder I feel extra disconnected right now that was part of my routine that I was you know staying in contact
with people in these other ways that were just habits but once the commute broke down there's this sort of
cascading effect of the the chain link of the of those events were disrupted so
there's there is a cascading effect that we're and I really have to pay attention to like Adam said being being
intentional and reflective of around this is not it's not just about the cup of coffee it's about the thing that the cup of coffee leads you to that moment
when it's brewing or you think about your day and all these little things can be disruptive in a way that we really
have to be pretty critical reflective around around what our needs are as well
not just oh that cup of coffee but I need that time where it's brewing where I just hear it bubble for a little bit
that that time is important to me my commute home is actually really valuable to me because I go from running a group
home in that same half-hour period I go from you know the the engagement of
running a group before the kids that we work with to being at home with my family and I need that 20 minutes to go
from group to home to transition and so I haven't done a thing now where I will tell my wife she'll say are you done and
I say yes but I'm commuting and I am now only gonna listen use her idea like I'm
listening to rock and roll music as if I'm driving home um before I come out of my office this is my this is my personal
commute time and that transition has been really important for me and I I would imagine for other people who are now working from home or not working and
not having that opportunity that's a big impact as well right so now that we've
kind of talked about how important it is and how probably just a general point to
is that you know the the situation that we're going through the the isolation is
not a thing that's only a problem for people who you know have a history of
illness or needing therapy or anything like that it's a thing that's affecting everybody to some degree what maybe like
now that we can talk about some of the kinds of things that our interactions
like what kind of regular interaction is important and necessary for mental
health so you we talked about wanting to have interaction with people but I imagine
that you know just opening waving through your door window to the mailman when they drop off your package doesn't
really count so what kind of things do people need to look out for I think
we've all personally mentioned some anecdotes but you know is there broad
categories or kind of specific interactions that people can maybe very
intentionally make sure to preserve in their life or build structures around during this time Before we jump into the
well sure key if you just cover a little bit about what what is really going on
here is we're having a global experience of an existential crisis yeah you know
people are really facing mortality there's a lot of studies done that if you tell people if you go up to them you
know in studies and say you're going to die you're going to die just stop and
think sit and think with that about that for a minute and what's really
fascinating it explains what we've seen happen with the quote unquote Greatest Generation with world war one world war
two Depression era where you know you had a lot of people who didn't make it through there they're a lot of horrible
things that happened but then you have an entire generation that tended to be more resilient and what few later
studies have shown is surprisingly so we used to think that every at-risk youth
who goes through all these horrible abuses and deprivation is doomed to failure but what a lot of research
studies are actually showing is many of them are more resilient because they
learn skills and mechanisms to get through that that then take them through other crises on the crises that others
never developed those skills to deal with them agents and so here we are you
know Viktor Frankl you know wrote about this when in the concentration camps hell even in the face of the worst
Horrors imaginable you still had people who were had meaning Direction purpose
set up the routine and were able to get through that still have some optimism and the research actually supports that
optimism that this as painful and challenging as it is for some people it's you know there will be
people that without help and support won't get through that if we don't know this for them so that's what we're here for they do but for the vast majority
people this is actually going to improve people's outlook because when you say
you're going to die what research shows is people then start focusing on go no wait I'm this healthy they start
protesting against the death and focus on what they have how healthy they are what everything they have in life that
they can appreciate it tends to trigger that in a lot of research studies so it's just so I just wanted to just for
people to say me think about that for a second and you know back to Adams point about being more optimistic that we will
most likely come through this better and and and more optimistic than before
after having struggled through this challenge so this is our society's communal goth phase where we're all
going to kind of contemplate our morbidity and come through it a little more excited and vibrant afterward we
can only hope right I mean you touched
on it to Derek and Adam about being becoming more social we call it social
distancing really as physical distancing and we're all trying to seek out more social closeness because of the physical
distancing so if through this like you're saying hawk we have you know more
online conferences and we have more online happy hour if you have a game to grow groups with people all over the
country because now you know you can connect with them and you don't have to be in the same co-located space then
that is something to be optimistic about like that's fantastic you know I think it's it's interesting to think about how
much you need or how what kinds of social interactions you need and perhaps
and Rachel Hawk might be able to speak to this a little bit better if there's some specific research kind of pointing
to an amount my thought would be that it would be much more about what you need
for yourself in that and that self reflective process of you know maybe for me waving at the mailman is
is the amount of social interaction that I need to help me like start on that processor or work down that road and we
kind of mentioned this difference between introverts and extroverts right at the beginning we were all kind of
checking in but oftentimes the the real difference in the real meaning behind though those are how much recharge you
get from interacting with others or how much energy it costs you and or how much sort of them how tired do you get from
those experiences and for an introvert often that often times they recharge a lot more when they're there by
themselves and they have that alone time and for an extrovert it's it's sort of the exact opposite where they recharge when they have more time interacting
with other people and the majority of people I might even say everybody is actually on the spectrum from one to
another very rarely do you find somebody who's really extreme than one boater or another and even when you do they still
kind of have a threshold you sort of have a certain amount of time that you want to spend by yourself before you're ready to jump back in and and be around
other people and then the amount of time you want to spend around other people before you're ready to to step back and take a little bit of time for yourself
and neither of them has anything to do with how much you like socializing or how much you enjoy being around other
people it's just more about whether or not it costs you energy and whether or not I get you energy so as you're trying
to figure out like how much do I how many how many video chats do I need a schedule for myself each day so that I
can be I can be engaged and so I can have social interaction I think the real answer to that is how many do you need
so that you can feel a little better how many do you need so that you can feel like you're you have social support and
so that you have people in your life that you know are there and care about
you and so that when you are now spending time alone you don't feel like
it's draining you further and further and I think that's ultimately a question that people need to reflect on for themselves and answer for themselves to
some extent to build on what Adam just said about knowing that people care about you I think that that is really
one of the most important things I will defend waving at the mailman I'm to
acknowledge someone else's fundamental humanity I think is a profound thing in
a very dehumanizing world so I think it is very crucial that we wave at the mailman or there was there
was an article that I can't remember now maybe one of the researchers and the discussion can come back to south it was
about the the the sheer value of when someone comes onto an elevator with you which now we don't go down elevators
because there's they're too small but when someone gets on an elevator with you waving at them and asking them what
floor they want has a neuro neurological biological phenomenon about being
recognized as a person so the first step is recognizing someone else's humanity but really it's about seeing them as an
authentically multifaceted person not just the utility of a human being but their authentic humanity and then caring
about them is really what it comes down to knowing that your presence actually matters is the thing that that makes the
difference there so I will defend waving at the mailman but I think it one step further and say hey mailman thank you so
much and then one step farther and learn the mailman's name that's those are the steps that we need to take still keeping
your 6 to 8 feet of distance but acknowledging and appreciating someone else for what they do not just for me
but for what they do their sheer existence I think is where we need to go
Rachel yeah I mean I think everyone's threshold is different like Adam was
saying for some people waving at the mailman might be enough I also wave at the mailman thank you delivering my mail
but you know friendships if you want to go more of a scientific bottom level you know it's a transactional it's a
transactional relationship where you get social and emotional support so for me I need those office hours that I have with
my colleagues that take this where even if I'm not talking to them I feel like they are there you know and I need you
know the calls and my best friend back home to see how she's doing and see how you know mom life is with toddlers
because we both have young children and for other people that might not be as necessary so I think that everyone is
different but you need to know you need to figure out what levels best for you to maintain your level of well-being I
know I have some friends who live alone and it's exponentially harder for them when they live alone and or have no
paths because they can go entire days without speaking with people can be really hard so knowing that we
have the technology to connect an arrow we're going to talk about that later in the different ways we can connect online during this period is really important
so to get to the point of everyone you
know obviously is gonna have a different level of interaction that they need I suspect that there's a lot of people who
have just never had the need to have a level of introspection to get a gauge of
that so now that you are tossed in the deep end you know this is I imagine a
very complicated topic and will also vary a lot from people to people or person to person but if someone needs to
figure out how much interaction that they need are there any techniques or
advice or you know thought exercises that you can recommend to folks other than just continuing to schedule calls
until your social interactions until you feel satisfied like is it just drink
from the fire hose until you're full or is there a better way to approach it to people a big part is all ot over
quantity right this is you know there's a lot of studies about you know screen
time you know being a recreational therapist but the previous generations were no screen time it's all evil it's all bad but then later research said
well it depends and one of the things that about half a dozen different studies and over the last 1012 years
neuroscience and such have found that is about an hour to two of like video games is good for development right around the
45 to 90 minute spot doesn't matter the game whether it's Tetris whether it's a shooter whether it's role-playing game
whatever you get different benefits but but benefits after you start to hit that
hour and a half two hour mark some of the deficits that start to kick in with with stress and in sedentary and other
lifestyle things that happened start to overtake that on a daily basis this kind
of makes it a little more complicated but that was very specific to videogames other studies also show that if you just
have like the TV on on loud shows interrupted by commercials all of that you will actually get more and more
fatigued leaving that running rather than recharging you come home from a long day
to have been better for the television and you don't recharge your batteries well with the the socialization it's a
different thing to you so some people some my loved ones and such they really
recharge with just one or two of us there and just side by side maybe doing our own thing but we're there we have
each other's presence there but three four or five people is exhausting and
and so definitely recognizing where that work stream doesn't work for you and the
key thing with the online screen now that we have to do more screen is make it quality don't make it all fluff do
the social stuff but recognize when you're getting fatigued from that this process our brains have to go through
for this two-dimensional space there's stuff that happens our brains have trouble dealing with the conversion of
trying to understand things in three-dimensional space that's part of why I lot of people who do this conference you get fatigued with the
conferencing itself you know we've seen it with our studies every time we bring any electronics into a tabletop
role-playing game it tends to disrupt their level of immersion you know on a scale of one to ten by a point or two or
more and it's very fascinating so so we need to integrate breaks into whatever
we do we need to physically get all of our programs you know every hour or so
there's a mandatory physical break get up for at least five minutes physically move run to the bathroom do a cheating
to you but actually stand up and do something that's gonna be really easy right now to just sit in front of that
screen because there's nothing else there and just take it and take it in but it's lit it's like eating junk food right eating Twinkies eating Twinkies
and creams you're gonna feel worse and worse and keep being more and feel worse and worse as opposed to consuming the
better quality that raises you up and helps you feel better but that is going to be very individual and you're gonna
have people are gonna have to get an idea of well okay I like this amount of streams and podcasts and it starts to wear on me and
you know this amount of music streams or something you know or and then this must
show you know YouTube how to videos this much of talking to friends and family you're gonna want to kind of get a feel
for what works and really become mindful of that so basically experiment and I think
about what you're digesting as put some thought into is this what I want or do I
need something different exactly III almost feel kind of kind of building on that idea Hawk that it's really that
moment you know you you have that social interaction you have that video chat or you play games on you know online with a
friend after you're done take a moment to ask yourself some of those questions take a moment to say like do I feel
better did I enjoy that experience so it helped me feel any better and then take
take a little extra after that to say what about it helped what about it made me feel better was it was it that it was
friends was it that I was talking with other people was it that it was games and maybe I need to like introduce a
little bit more games in the into my life maybe a combination of all of those things and each time that you're gonna
have those those social interactions that's there's an opportunity there for you to have just a little bit of
reflection and a little bit of time where you really think about that for
yourself and that's that's hopefully kind of I guess building on what Adam
and Hawke have been talking about the whole time that this opportunity that we have to to maybe do something much more powerful as or as a result of all this
that's the kind of intentional thinking and the kind of reflective thinking that really is gonna help you in other parts
of your life moving forward from here if you can take that from every moment from every interaction that you have and a
moment where you say well about that what did I like about that what do I want to make sure I get more of next time there's a lot of opportunity in
there for you to to take that into your next gaming session into your next work
leading all your notes online exactly and some of what I think you're talking
about which I think Rachel could talk about the most she's done more Studies on games than anybody I know but I think
that there's something around the socialization aspect that is sort of Hawk was saying around it's eating
Twinkies your body has a desire for it your body has a desire to be social whether we're introverted or not there
is some we are inherently social beings so we have this this desire to connect with other people and sometimes we do
that through watching someone else on a screen whether we're interacting with them or not there's part of your neurons will fire
as if you're being social but oftentimes it's it's the diet coke of socialization
it's the Twinkies that you're not actually getting your needs met but it feels kind of like you are but you're
not so you're still hungry and then you sort of double down like Hawk was saying on trying to consume more and more and more
and then you end up with no time and no sleep and then the cycle continues but it's exacerbated yeah I mean there is
something to be said about alone together right so having a stream on in the background or having a podcast on in
the background and you're not actively socializing with these other individuals but it does satisfy you want some level
there's a great study there's a great study that was done by Emory Daniel and David westerman about Jon Snow and when
Jon Snow spoiler Jon Snow died on Game of Thrones they lost a point yet they
analyzed this the emotional sentiments of the tweets that people expressed after that event and they were similar
to the emotions that you expressed when a close family friend or member passed away so even if we don't have these
relationships people on stream or the people in the podcast these parasocial relationships definitely they satisfy us
in some way they evoke the same emotions that they do with a close friend or family member that isn't to say can
fully account for not for any other other kind of socialization but it can
it does do something the emotions are the same actually if I could that's such
a good point Rachel and I kind of want to build on that point right now there's a lot of people that are consuming a lot
of media watching a lot of Netflix show watching a lot of shows watching a lot of you know stuff on Disney plus one of
the things to keep in mind is how you are emotionally impacted by the media that you consume and to be aware of what
kind of media you're watching just from an anecdotal perspective I consider
myself really influenced emotionally by this shows that I watch I cried during Pixar movies a lot and I am very
drastically impacted by shows that I that I feel like are depressing or like a really really a struggle I love the
show Bojack horseman I cannot watch more than one or two episodes of Bojack horseman without feeling like I'm
getting depressed I'm I'm becoming depressed as a result of the emotional interaction with the show Adam and I
like to call this narrative transference but there's lots of other names for it that come from other perspectives and
the the functional idea especially in a time like this is that you it'll be very
easy to fall into I'm just binge watching the show or I'm just making my way through it and it's important for
you to reflect once again that reflection and intentionality about what does that show giving to you what what
place is that show putting you in and you may find that that the shows that you're watching are contributing to your
mental state maybe in a positive way and maybe in a negative way and it may be a time to go ooh do I
really want to watch another episode of tiger cake or should I transition some things over and and you know watch a
little bit of something that's bring more heart and more more joy and into my day because I can feel myself becoming a
little bit more I was about to say Adam
I also feel a lot of transference when I watch shows and that's why I'm about to start a big cat zoo so you know it's my
new side project of course you're in a
terrible mood why would you so before we start talking about some of the specific
tools that people can use and techniques to socialize here one thing that I think was mentioned off hand a couple times
was a little bit about kind of being alone together thing where just the
benefits of being in a space with another person even if you're not interacting with that person still
counts as social you know interaction on the level and shouldn't be discounted
but I think something that people find very awkward and I think there's a
pretty heavy stigma against is the idea of just video calling somebody and not talking to them and just letting them
kind of be there like that was a thing that my wife and I did when she was in Ireland and I was in
the US you know sometimes we play video games sometimes we would talk with each other like we absolutely would engage
with each other but sometimes it was like like we just talked a couple hours ago I don't have anything say I've got
some work I want to get done like I need to do this but it's nice to just have
you nearby or because the time zone difference she would be going to sleep when I would be working on something so
she would just put the video on and go to sleep and you know a lot of people thought that was very weird but I
especially I think now you know I how valuable or do you think some of those
things may be to people so Allah I notice everybody kept using the word reflecting in what they were watching
and such which there's a a controversial theory in the neuroscience world about
mirror neurons and such about that there definitely are some motor neurons that up to 10% of certain types of motor
neurons mirror other activities so you watch somebody do an activity the part
of your brain is firing and mirror to that but it's still a controversial topic it's not a fully established
there's a lot of debate but it's a fascinating topic if at least part of it is true that what we're consuming there
is triggering these these these reflections and experience it's really important to realize that so if you are
watching a bunch of stuff that makes you feel bad odds are that's not going to help you feel better
so you want to really be mindful of that when you start binge watching on top of binge watching on top of binge watching
on top of binge watching without relief remember when when you're a zebra running from the lion and you got you
know 30 seconds of stress and then you get a break assuming you get away versus 30 hours of stress 30 weeks of stress it
really runs you down so it's really important to be aware again not even you're not taking in too much of that
junk food that's not making you feel better about the parallel stuff Avedon
interaction patterns talk about this about different recreational activities and you've got the intra-individual
which is a kind of internal mindfulness and meditation and contemplating it and
just imagination daydreaming and such very good to do something you should have a part in your life sometimes it's
tempting with all this stuff out here to shut down the internal part of yourself
and you know the Viktor Frankl okay unexamined life but you know this whole
thing of being aware and reflecting on what your purpose and meaning is such as stopping and doing that rather than just
take and take and take and take in and not stopping for a moment so take those breaks you know the extra individual is
where you're by yourself interacting doing something that's a very important part of there's a key tenet of
recreation therapy is that you are doing something active rather than just passively receiving you know when you're
reading you're actually doing something more active than just passively receiving in a tactile way but it's a
little more passive but it's less passive than just watching a stream listening to a podcast exception you've
got this back and forth here doing the video games that's it back and forth those are interactive when you're side
by side is considered aggregate you get whole groups of people doing things aggregate whether or not there's no
competition there no there not it's not cooperative they're not helping each other but you're in parallel doing stuff
in just that human presence can elevate mood when you're doing this so see everybody in workshops all the time
where you're painting ceramics and stuff but we do this in retirement communities and for kids and there's a bonding that
happens even though it's just could you hand me that paintbrush things like that or hey did you see this just that little
bit but really just the a parallel activity gives us some of that command human connection and with that
reflection that you're talking about role playing games hello where we have to say well stop for a moment what is
your character don't so first stop and think about how your character would feel and verbalize
that out of character met a discussion here how do you think of character feels when this NBC's being rude to it okay
now how is your character going to actually you've stopped you've done an assessment realized how the character
feels and then you decide on an action because we can do that in the game based setting and it emphasizes that process
that we don't often stop and with all of this going on it's gonna
be really easy to just bombard my bar on card and shut off that internal process
and it's really important that we set aside time for that of internal and quiet air time and such Hawk you
mentioned Viktor Frankl a few times and I just wanted to make sure the audience knew that that book man's search for
meaning is a fantastic book and spoiler alert the first parts about the
Holocaust so it's pretty dramatic but the second part of it is actually really empowering and really cool there's a quote from Viktor Frankl that I like a
lot that I'm sure Hawk knows it better than I don't wanna misquote it but he says between every stimulus and response there is a space and in that space is
our power I've always loved that and it really ties really nicely into role-playing games where you can just stop there's initiative of course but
you can always just pause and get an internal monologue what are your thoughts and feelings about this our to
choose our response and in our response lies our growth and there you go that's
the quiz I like my paraphrase in mr.
book but that all that's the good I like yeah it's a little mm-hmm
it's one worth reading several times actually I wanted to circle back around
to Derek's original whole kind of question and how Hawk definitely you
touch those so you really got to it though but this kind of idea of is it
still socialization is it still socializing with people if all I'm doing is like sitting and not talking or or
even doing completely separate activities but happened to be next to each other and Hawk I think your example
was perfect of like a room full of people all working on you know painting ceramics like you still feel social you
were sharing an activity but even when you're doing completely separate activities there's still such an opportunity there to feel connected to
somebody my my wife and I have started she's playing Animal Crossing and I've
been playing monster hunter world with some friends and I'll literally have headphones will both have headphones on the off in our
own things but we're sitting in the same room and we're getting some kind of shared experience from that there's
there is something that we still get to have and some of that is just in the
break periods and some of that is afterwards and some of that is being able to like look up from my game and
see somebody is there and they're also sitting and having a good time and I do think there's a value to that I do think
there's something to that experience and it's so much harder to get without intentionally scheduling it if you're
not living with somebody in times like right now and you really kind of have to go hey will you come be on video chat
with me while I play a video game and you play video game we're not going to talk to each other so much that's a
harder proposal to send off to your friends or your family but worth doing
absolutely it's it's actually developmentally a stage in human development when children learn how to
parallel play as Hawk said earlier it's it there's it's got a name it's called parallel play and babies do this you can
watch babies learn how to interact with the world and one of the phases they go through through is parallel play where
they can engage with an activity in a somewhat social environment they're not you know there might be stacking blocks and knocking them over and they might
still be upset if another child comes along and takes a block but it's they're not building a castle together and
making up a story they're not fully engaged in in a relational space but they're engaging in parallel play
there's something that is calming to our our neurological systems when we have that because it is it's an 8 in us to
want to do that you know I don't want us suspect to Rachel take this does all the all the afk rooms do you know if there's
any any kind of evidence to the idea that the afk room is more powerful because there are other people there who
are also taking time and way from from the space I don't I there hasn't been
any research done specifically on the afk room in that sense but the phrase alone together came from research from
Niki back in the height of World of Warcraft and what he found is when he talked to people people would log into the game
out with a party not with a friend by themselves and sit at the end you can't even really do anything at the
world of warcraft but stand there and see the other people around them and they would report elevated mood and a
sense of being less alone and reduce sense of stress and all these things and all these different measures just by
being in a physical space digital space with other humans so it's not even about
if you live alone right so it's not about I have to have my spouse next to me although my husband and I do that too I love animal crossing but it's also
just about you can log into an MMO or these kind of games that afford this opportunity and feel less alone if I had
to hypothesize about the afk room I would say yes but I don't I don't know there has a bit research well so and and
I'm forgetting I have it in my notes from one of my courses that I've been teaching so we've done a series the last
four weeks on alone does not actually
mean lonely and then we talk about loneliness anxiety depression fear
terror then resilience adaptation
adjustment grit all these other things on the other side of the coin and what determines these in the at-risk etc and
unfortunately don't have in my notes right here the sourcing and like I can't believe I left it out of my notes there but some of the studies show that
between 23 to 32 percent of our brain
function brain mass depending upon the studies focus on thinking and dealing
with social interactions we spend an awful a big portion of our especially our prefrontal cortex all of that
learning all the rules and doing the interaction and when we're not getting that it's kind of like not working out
it's that's right we kind of feel like something's missing right because that part of our brain is not lighting up and
getting engaged so it's really important to realize that so much of certainly our
newer brains and such are really geared on taking on thinking and dealing with
social interactions and challenges and what to do next and so much of that and it's kind of like not not going out and
walking if you're not engaged in this activity so you're going to feel like something's missing
so do do put yourself in those situations to have those opportunities and there's a lot of great ways to do
that through recreation so I think we're coming up on the time of our discussion
that Hawk has probably gotten very used to you now which is where I say that we had an agenda that covered many more
topics we would like to continue talking but out of respect for everyone's time
perhaps we need to wrap up but we would love to have all of you back on again because that to let the audience know
you know the agenda Hawk added a ton of detail to it but we also had a ton of notes on like we were gonna have a whole
other section that was all about some of
the tools and techniques you can use to maintain the social interaction that we have just talked about the importance of
so you know I don't think we have time for that today unfortunately but I hope that the four of you maybe learn to come
back in the future to try to talk through some of those things so in the last couple of minutes there were a
couple questions that came up or at least one question that came up at chat that I thought was important to kind of cover and somebody said that as the days
and weeks go by with a lot of us that stay at home and in social distancing mode what what can they expect to feel
and what should people be doing differently to cope and I think we've talked a little bit about different ways
to kind of maintain social connection but I might be reading it wrong but I feel like the question is kind of
getting at what is normal to feel during
this time and what isn't and that's kind of a tricky question but you know as
you're going through this what are natural things to be experiencing that you're gonna want to tackle stress
distress I think I want it I want to throw this to Adam John's I think I
I definitely think the the space that you're looking for is there's a lot
that's that's gonna be different here you're gonna you're gonna experience a different world this is a different
world that you're currently living in and that's gonna shape and change your experience that you're that you're
having and the way that you interact with your world the space that I would be looking forward for yourself to be
reflective on to be alarmed about is is the space where you are the classic sort
of examples for for mental health are you losing joy from things that usually bring you joy are you finding it finding
that you have a short fuse that you're getting upset or you're angry or frustrated about things that you normally have a little bit more
resilience to be able to handle some of those things may seem like small pieces but they're also the pieces that are
oftentimes the very early warning signs of other stuff and there's lots of
physical stuff as well are you finding that you're having trouble sleeping through the night are you finding the
earth you're tired more during the day than you normally are and I would pay
close attention to those two those small things as indicators that you might need to make a change and you might need to
make reach out for help and I know we're short on time but hawk I'd love to pass
it back to you actually to talk about you've been doing all this crisis counseling do you have any really particular points that you think would
be really great to pass a lot of people they can watch so worried people wouldn't worry about tential loss and
that generally always outweighs the opportunities for gain right we're always there's so many more things to
worry about and we miss a lot of the opportunities so this tends to lead people to believe that all will remain
permanently as it is right now but remember changes on evitable things always always change right now people
are having their you know saludo genic understanding of a situation of the world their coherence of the world
greatly challenged and and so that shakes things up and so change generally
requires new ways of understanding our world so that we can cope with it and
it's often first view from our old ways of seeing things right the way we saw things before so only gradually do we start to
make way for new ways of thinking and acting and it's important how we
understand change in the context of growth and development that change can be a good helpful thing and very very
critical some very manual exercises sit down and work out a schedule plan for
the next month or so the next three to four weeks set up little events set up here call schedule put together little
social events set up your make a schedule you've got a little more time now maybe some people sit down and make
a schedule that you never quite got around to but being interjected in a balanced way don't overfill it
make sure there's time for just haha soak in the tub whatever you just enjoy you're being yourself there's a bunch of
resources out there so so Derek mentioned it briefly we've got a whole bunch of free games available social
games people can join it's Arby's research com4 slash offense you just sign up and and join one try to provide
everything you need you just show up remotely over it also related to all the
things you could do we set up a page our producers com4 slash social - gaming and
we're putting up all the resources and links for all the different things in valuating free low-cost and premium
options all the different ways because we work with all kinds of populations many one don't have internet they may
not have a flip phone they're cut off so we're always very mindful about not
excluding everybody giving everybody an opportunity to engage the activities so we're putting up a very detailed list
there of lots of choices when people feel they have a choice they feel like
they have a little bit more self-determination in life and and that really can be a powerful buffer against
crisis when they feel there are choices it's when you feel like you have no choices in the launcher that he can get
hopeless but if you experience it it's normal in a crisis anxiety fear worry
these are normal and set of fighting it be with it for a moment acknowledge it
right oh I'm noticing this now what are you going to do about that what are you for when you fight it it tends to build
up and build up and build up and creep up on you that's when it can be really toxic under mine so it's okay to feel
afraid I think on top of on top of the fear that people are feeling and maybe
anger depending you know the injustice of the world I think people are probably also feeling grief and they don't know
that they're feeling grief because we don't have a good conversational cultural conversation around grief but I
think that there's a lot of grief around the way the world is changing and the narratives and the habits are changing and how do we how do we relate to that
is it is a loss and and I think we have to process that loss and I think understanding that sort of dull echo as
grief and and you know some of us are afraid because of our particular health
scenarios and that might be entering into the equation but a lot of us who are staying at home because we're protecting other people its lost we have
to process it is lost to the normalcy maybe lost to a job but I think I think REE REE categorizing our experience as
grief would be a big help for a lot of people to understand that it's okay to not be okay to steal take this as line
it's it's okay I mean we are where we need to be right now feeling feeling bad
feeling that sort of emptiness inside is normal right now and it's okay to be less productive it's okay to not be
doing your pushup routine or whatever your your homework out it's okay to eat twice as much pizza that one time you
know reflect on it or whatever but it's okay to struggle right now and I think that's the the lesson that I would love
people to take away from this is it it's appropriate to be upset in the midst of
a global pandemic well I think the to kind of continue that not only is it okay or expected to feel a lot of those
things but it's also okay and encouraged to reach out to your social network and
your friends not only to support yourself but because chances are really
high that they are feeling a lot of the same emotions too and even if they haven't arranged out yet you reaching
out to them to help yourself may very well provide them an opportunity to connect
with you and help them as well you know I think that's that's a thing that a lot
of friends that I know I want to trouble with is remembering that their friends
want to help them and that their need for help is not a burden but it's kind
of the point of the friendship in a lot of ways so how have you talked about how
busy you were so to be and be respectful of your time I want to thank all of you
for joining me I hope all of you had fun and found this constructive I know a
number of people in chat we're talking about their experiences posting a couple links asking a few questions so I want
to thank everybody in the audience for watching us is there anything that any of you want to say again about your
organization's or about anything you're working on personally that you want to highlight very quickly before we wrap up
oh I'll plug game to grow you can find more information about us at game to grow org but we've been recently thanks
to all of the online work that we're doing we are have launched a webinar program we've had a few webinars so far
but we're going to be launching that big time elizabeth comer has run two webinars for us and they were fantastic and you can learn more about that by
going to again DeGroat at oregon signing up for the newsletter but we're also probably going to be launching online
groups so all of our groups historically have been in the greater Seattle Kirkland Tacoma area but now that we
have this proof of concept that online groups can be as socially enriching as in-person groups we will very likely be
starting online social enrichment programs so you can learn more about that at our website as well but join our
newsletter and follow us on twitter at game to grow at work we'll do a lot of non sing of the various outreach efforts
we have there i'm just want to mention that take this you can learn more about us at take this org we have a lot of
resources i mentioned it in the chat related specifically to some of the topics that are now getting discussion
because of social distancing like how to practice self-care self-care when working at home how to maintain hope
these sorts of things and we look forward to having to take this at Gen
Con this year really everything will all be wonderful and perfect
and in addition to RPG researches so those are community open programs if
it's a more critical situation there is RPG therapeutics that's that is a more formal therapeutic practice and such so
if you know somebody a loved one or another person you're concerned about who you think might benefit from a
little more structure we've been doing therapeutic care online or over over a
decade and so we figured out how to optimize these circumstances with the
social games and activities to target very specific needs for individuals so
if it's a more intensely therapeutic thing you're looking for you're just looking if you're just lonely and you
want to sway some of those things than just arbitrary surgeons I'll just go just have some games and enjoy and
socialize that way if you think it's a little bit more serious than that some relationships are breaking down
because of the tension having trouble of communication issues etc then an RPG
that we have plus we've all of our workshops we had about 12 workshops out there this year we've been they're
available online as well we've got some coming up in about two weeks and such some of them are one-day workshops some
of the three-day workshops to Train individuals and professionals on how to
bring these programs your role-playing games and other activities into your practice to help address it now and
since we have you know over 20 years of virtual office in workplace helping people with the integrated app they have
no considerations and great great well
thank you again for everyone for joining us and if you're watching remember that we have a whole slate of other shows to
check out we won't have game night tonight unfortunately game night is on hiatus for a little bit as we're all adapting
to our new normal but on Mondays at 6 p.m. we had board games with the brothers Murph
we're very energetic they'd like to engage with chat and play games in a very social way when then on Wednesday
at 9 a.m. Pacific minis with the Murph's where the two brothers will paint some minis one of them is a little more
experience and the other so they kind of help teach each other how to explore you know painting more game collection
miniatures games things like that at 11 a.m. we have this game gets dicey where a lady in LA and the gentleman in London
play board games online together so if you are curious about what games are available online how they play and you
kind of want to see some of it in action before having to take the plunge yourself it seems like a timely show to watch and then at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday
we have fireside with Peter Atkinson this season he's interviewing people who have there when Wizards of the coast
bought TSR and kind of gave birth to a third edition so if you want to hear some of those stories from the people
who were deeply involved in that process you should check that out and then at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesdays we have the West
Gator regulars who are a group of local authors playing through a DD campaign together and it's a very literary
campaign I would say so you should check that out too and finally on Fridays at 2
p.m. Pacific we have table takes which is our news and discussion information show and then after that hopefully we
will keep continuing with these Jim conversations that we've been having and hopefully we can entice all of you to
come back to finish the rest of the agenda that we put together and I also mentioned some other topics we want to
cover so hopefully we'll have some fairly regular guests coming back remember to follow the channel subscribe
if you would like to if you've missed any episodes the majority of them are on YouTube if they're not you can always
catch the video on demand on Twitch itself and thank you again everybody
thank you so much
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