Não lute contra a natureza humana
Mark ensina que a natureza humana é uma espada de dois gumes. Ela pode matar o design ou avivá-lo. Depende da sua abordagem. Ele dá como exemplo a mecânica feita no set Odisseia que premiava os jogadores que descartavam mais cartas dando um bônus numa magia. A mecânica fracassou e não foi popular. Uma outra mecânica de outro set premiou os jogadores por fazerem algo que eles queriam fazer. Neste caso a mecânica foi um sucesso. A lição é sobre criar design que se aproveite do comportamento humano, ao invés de criar coisas que vão contra a natureza humana.
A lição de vida é que as pessoas são pessoas e lutar contra a natureza humana leva ao fracasso. Mark relembra dos seus primeiros dias namorando e como ele tinha expectativas irrealistas que o levaram a fracassar muitas vezes. Mark aconselha as pessoas a olharem para si mesmas quando percebem que estão constantemente fracassando com outras pessoas.
Tem um nível de monster hunt, um mod de unreal tournament 1999, que eu joguei muito. Nele os jogadores enfrentam monstros do unreal 1 para chegar ao fim do nível, o objetivo. Não é nada além de jogar unreal 1 cooperativamente. O nível que uso de exemplo aqui é chamado "Assault That Area 2 (MH-ATAA2)". Ele tem algumas salas com um cristal gigante. Em cada sala os jogadores precisam ficar parados em algumas plataformas por até um minuto. Enquanto os jogadores estão nas plataformas duas vigas de metal avançam lentamente. Quando as duas vigas de metal se tocam o cristal explode. Enquanto os jogadores estão nas plataformas uma enxurrada de monstros avança nos jogadores e eles tem que ficar atirando enquanto estão parados. Os jogadores querem se mexer, não serem forçados a ficarem parados e se defendendo dos monstros que atacam.
No Unreal Tournament o narrador recompensa o jogador por séries de mortes. Quando um jogador mata muitos jogadores seguidamente, o jogo anuncia para todos "morte dupla", "muitas mortes", por aí vai. É um tipo de premiação e os jogadores querem marcar pontos matando vários em sequência. Estou basicamente repetindo o mesmo argumento do Mark. O pior que um jogo pode fazer é punir os jogadores por eles fazerem o que querem fazer (desde que os jogadores não estejam violando alguma regra). O parágrafo anterior é desses exemplos. O nível foi concebido de uma forma que está, de fato, forçando os jogadores a irem contra própria natureza.
A lição de vida se relaciona com a aceitação radical, um conceito que ouvi pela primeira vez pesquisando sobre a personalidade limítrofe. Existe um modelo de terapia chamado "Terapia Comportamental Dialética" que foi criada por Marsha Linehan para tratar pacientes com instabilidade emocional severa, que é uma das características chave da personalidade limítrofe. Não sou treinado na psicologia, mas pelo que entendo, a aceitação radical empresta conceitos do Budismo para ensinar as pessoas que algumas coisas simplesmente são o que são. Para dar um exemplo: se chove, chove. A chuva por si só é um evento natural. A chuva pode significar diferentes coisas e o significado fica a cargo da pessoa. As pessoas podem associar a chuva com qualquer emoção, seja ela negativa ou positiva. As pessoas não controlam as estações e se a chuva é associada a emoções negativas como a tristeza. Elas não podem mudar a chuva, mas podem olhar para si mesmas e tentar mudar como elas se sentem em relação à chuva.
A aceitação radical pode ser facilmente confundida com passividade, mas não é sobre aceitar que mudanças são impossíveis. É mais sobre o nosso sofrimento ser ligado a desejos irrealistas ou a busca de coisas que simplesmente não podemos ter ou alcançar. Suponha que você seja bom de contar histórias e ruim de jogar futebol. Se num ponto da sua vida a sua habilidade de contar histórias se conectou profundamente com uma experiência ruim e você disse para si mesmo "Nunca mais vou contar histórias!". Enquanto por algum motivo, você decidiu seguir uma carreira de jogador de futebol sem ser bom nisto. É certo de que essa mudança forçada na vida irá trazer consequências negativas no futuro. Que fique claro que não estou me referindo a contar histórias para enganar ou mentiras. Outro exemplo seria se apaixonar por uma pessoa que depois se revela tóxica, ou então temos o sonho de trabalhar numa empresa que depois se mostra incompatível com as nossas expectativas. O que digo corresponde aos relatos de Mark sobre namoros fracassados e ao início da carreira dele como roteirista em Hollywood. Se não temos como transformar a outra pessoa ou a empresa, o que podemos fazer sobre nós mesmos então? Também é impossível se transformar em outra pessoa. Esta é a parte da aceitação da aceitação radical. Se eu não sou bom no futebol e treino duro para tentar me tornar tão bom quanto um jogador famoso. Pode muito bem acontecer de eu fracassar e ficar com uma ferida emocional profunda. Eu não preciso me sentir arrasado e triste para sempre. Eu posso ser um jogador bom num nível que me deixe feliz ou para jogar com amigos. A dor é inevitável, mas o sofrimento é opcional.
Às vezes temos sonhos, desejos, aspirações e que não estão erradas por si só. Depende de como encaramos ou como lidamos com elas. No caso de relacionamentos tóxicos um elemento que eu li sobre é quando temos um casal. Uma pessoa pode pensar erroneamente que precisa se doar em prol do outro, como se quisesse salvá-la ou resgatá-la. Não estou querendo criticar a religião ou Jesus, mas pensando naquela imagem de Jesus curando as pessoas com o poder da fé. Se a pessoa é um psicopata por exemplo, esperar que algum poder mágico irá "conserá-la" ou que o poder do amor irá trazer sanidade a um psicopata. Não é assim que funciona.
Sometimes we have dreams, desires, aspirations and they aren't wrong by themselves. It's how we look at them or how we treat them. In the case of toxic relationships one element that I've read about is that we have a couple. One person may be thinking that they have to give up themselves for the other's benefit, which is misinterpreted as saving or rescuing the other person. I'm not criticizing religion or Jesus, but think about the image of Jesus healing people with pure faith. If there is a psychopath for example, expecting that some magical power is going to "fix" them or that the power of love is going to bring some sanity to them. That's not how it works. If we can't "save" (to save someone can mean very different things for different people) that person, then what do we do? Give up? I think there is an important lesson in radical acceptance which is to learn to see things without judging them as neither good nor bad. A person is a person, what we judge is their actions. If I'm good at something I just am. Whether I do good things or bad things with that ability is something entirely different.
Sometimes we criticize too much the actions of others and we don't notice that we are more concerned about them than we are about ourselves. Another thing that I've learned about personality disorders is that they are often associated with extreme projection. What is projection? We all sympathize more with certain things and less with others and often those things are persons and/or their beliefs and/or behaviors. To give a very brief explanation, projection is about our minds recognizing in others something that is coming from us. Most of the time this process is unconscious and we can't control it. One example comes from narcissistic personality. One trait of narcissists is to blame everyone around for what they are doing, because their minds is projecting what they perceive as bad onto others. They fail to see it on themselves and may even call everyone else a narcissist. You don't have to be a narcissist to do that, but when it happens all the time there must be something wrong in the person's mind. The question is what motivates this behavior? One possible answer is that the person is envious of others and not aware of their own enviousness. Taking this to an extreme level and we may have a person obsessed with another to the point of either desiring to become that other person or, somehow, having the crazy idea of replacing them. I have a strong belief that people often suffer because they aspire something or have dreams which lack some sense of reality and a degree of self-awareness.
Going back to my example of being a story teller. Suppose I write a story for a magic set and that story is ill received by the players. I say to myself "I'm not going to tell another story ever again. This is over!". Now Mark has a lesson about mistakes being valuable. In this example I just gave. I have the choice to either accept that my story wasn't well received and was heavily criticized or deny the reality and run away from ever writing another story. There is perhaps a third response which isn't exactly a choice: to deny reality and become delusional. Then we have mental disorders related to being delusional or completely detached from reality itself in extreme cases. I just gave an example of delusion in the previous paragraph. Mark tells us that with a job such as his, which is all about design, there are more mistakes than successes and this is reality. Can we accept it? I didn't read a lot about the borderline personality, but it seems that over time, the knowledge that clinicians gained from studying the borderline personality began to expand onto other areas as well. There is a lot of knowledge about the borderline personality that can be applied to depression, anxiety and many other conditions. Even healthy people can benefit from it.
I think that one misconception about therapy is that the person offering mental health services is there to change people. What I read about personality disorders in general is that the change is not at the hands of the therapist, but at the hands of the person who sought them. To treat depression or anxiety is not to offer a magic bullet or potion that is going to transform the person and end the suffering. It's about the therapist offering paths and tools and the person having the choice to follow a different path and to take advantage of the new tools at their disposal to make the change happen on themselves. Another misconception is that some people think that the therapist is going to fill the role of a babysitter / nanny or even a parent. A therapist isn't there to treat clients as their own children. A good therapist understands how the mind works in different scenarios, how people behave and why they behave like they do. There is a lot of science behind that. They aren't there to take decisions for you either. They can give opinions, but therapy isn't all about "What should I do? Where should I go? What do you think?".
I discussed therapy because one thing that is at the core of mental health is the question: "What causes the disorder? What are the reasons?". When you look at all personality disorders there is a series of behaviors and beliefs that the person is not aware of. Some people are aware of their own behaviors and/or beliefs, others are not. Sometimes they do recognize that there is something in them that needs to change, but even then they may be attempting to change what doesn't need to be changed. For example: if they are more emotional ou colder, that can be adjusted but not transformed from one to another. Each personality disorder has some features, beliefs and behaviors that aren't exclusive to them, but in the case of a personality disorder they are taken to extreme levels. Can we separate the person from the disorder? That's the hard thing about personality disorders. Is it natural for them to behave that way? Some cases are deemed untreatable, such as extreme narcissists or psychopaths. From what I know, the therapist's first concern isn't to fight the person's nature, but to try to see what is the main driving force behind the person's behaviors and what beliefs are associated with those behaviors. The ultimate goal isn't to change what the persons feels, but understand why they feel what they feel. Armed with that knowledge both the therapist and the client can better understand why the person responds the way they do.
One of the features associated to personality disorders is a communication problem related to what the person means and what the person does. It can happen to anyone, but if it happens too often and at levels which can't be right, then we have something. Suppose I'm a parent and tell my children that they are forbidden to use bad words and they can't ever insult anybody. In spite of this, I use bad words multiple times and insult them or others in front of them. They are going to perceive that there is something wrong, because my behavior doesn't match what I say. Another example is to punish good behavior. Suppose I instruct my children to brush their teeth after eating. If every time they brush their teeth I criticize them and tell them that they are wrong without explaining why. They are going to perceive that something is off, because it doesn't make any sense to do what they were supposed to do and be punished for doing it. Those are examples of "cognitive dissonance". Mark has a lesson about not confusing interesting with fun and I believe that this relates to cognitive dissonance because we may be trying to convey an idea in the game that doesn't feel right to the players. To give an example with a magic card, imagine I make a spell that destroys a creature. I name it "Peaceful Sleep" and the art shows a creature in pain. We have conflicting messages within the same card.
Let us think make an exercise of creativity and empathy here. Let us think on Mark as a therapist and players as clients. Magic has five colors and each color is associated with some strengths and weaknesses. To maintain balance they try to make the colors interesting and fun to play with, while keeping each color's identity. They try to not make one color too powerful and another too weak. The players can choose to build their decks with as many colors as they want, from an all colorless deck to all five colors. Green has creatures with high power and toughness, but it also lacks creatures with flying and spells to destroy creatures, except for destroying creatures with flying. Think about a player who loves to play with an all green deck. He or she wants to win but their opponent have creatures which he or she cannot destroy with a spell. What can Mark do about it? He cannot make the player not feel what they feel or change their behavior, much less force them to play another color. But Mark can look at what he can offer to that green player to fight off opponent's creatures. He can think about what kind of spell or ability he can add to green spells to make the green player gain access to some tool to fulfil their wishes.
That's how I see Mark's lesson about not fighting human nature. In the previous example Mark can't change what the player is or what the player does, but he can at least give a tool to make the player happier. Mark can offer paths for the players to follow, if they choose to. Every person has strengths and weaknesses and when they have access to tools to manage or deal with something, it's their choice to use or not that tool. There are things that won't change, but we can change how we look, think or feel about them. A weakness doesn't have to be always associated with negative feelings. We may change how we look at some strength and think differently about it. If I were to design a level I'm sure I'd have to think similarly to Mark. The level would have to match the player's behavior and not fight against what the player wants to do. The same for therapists, they aren't there to fight the person. They are there to offer wisdom, choices, tools and different paths to choose from.
References
- https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/resolutions-2009-01-05
- Dr. Frank Yeomans and the channel Borderlinernotes
- Dr. Ramani Durvasula and her knowledge on narcissism
- Professor Alan Delazeri Mocellim and his knowledge on toxic relationships (portuguese only)
- Dr. Tracey Marks and her knowledge in psychiatry
- Professor Pedro Calabrez and his knowledge on life and neurosciences (portuguese only)
- Dr. Daniel Martins de Barros and his knowledge on psychiatry and philosophy (portuguese only)
