I don't handle failure well, I expect my self to always perform, if I don't perform, whether it be in academia, sports or my hobbies I go through thoughts in my head that I'm not exactly fond of. In other words I suffer from depression, it's been diagnosed, but I don't take medication. I don't know why I hate the idea of taking medication, maybe it's my delusions of having to handle everything on my own and outside help is unacceptable.

I guess it all roots from the extreme self criticism, I was always expected to perform, ie. get over 90% marks in school, anything less and I would get the "why not more?" comment, and no, I'm not Asian. It evolved to a point where I would pressure my self at all times, whether it was Maths, Chemistry, Basketball, Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft, or recently CS:GO, I always would find a way to punish my self if I failed to deliver.

In one way it's great, there is no way I would improve as fast if I didn't constantly beat my self up over some things, but on other days I beat my self up over not being perfect. The latter is the problem, with stress piling up before deadlines I start to feel as if I cannot handle anything, I can't hit a shot in CS, I can't write a single line of code for work, I fall in to a bottomless pit of self hatred and cannot do the simplest things properly because I convince my self that I can't, that I'm not capable of it, or I even go down the "I don't even want to exist!" line of thought...

In CS:GO I end up circumventing some of the pressure by smurfing. Before you tell me how evil smurfing is, my main is LEM, 3 other smurfs are LEM and 2 smurfs are as of 2 hours ago SMFC. I don't feel the need to perform fully when I play on my smurfs, and I end up playing better, you can call it what you want, it might be a placebo or it might be luck, but it helps me play the game as a video game rather than something I need to excel or perform in.