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My Japanese Game Difficulty Setting is on Hard — 9 Comments

    • Hi Casandra ^_^/

      Thanks for sharing your story. Never give up is indeed the number one advice. Believe in yourself and you will be able to face any challenge Japanese (and life) can throw at you. It is brave of you to be open and honest about your mental health issues. Having had and still having people with mental health issues close to me have made me believe that this is a topic that cannot be said enough about, especially from each and every one of you brave people who suffer yourself. I like your view about playing this game on difficulty setting hard. The monsters in your game are harder and more frequent, but you can do it! ^_^

      頑張ってください!

      • Thanks so much for you comment. ^^

        It’s pretty scary for me to step up and speak about this kind of thing, but at the same time I wanted to reach out to anyone else who might be going through similar struggles. Plus writing about it helps me sort out my thoughts.

  1. I’ve never commented on here before but I wanted to say, “Thank you” to Casandra for writing her post and Adam for posting it. I too have depression along with ocd and anxiety and I appreciate you sharing your struggles with us. I find myself beating myself up because I think I should be further along in my Japanese knowledge than I am after a year and a half of learning. I forget sometimes that I make it harder on myself and to stop comparing those that either have been doing it longer than me or have the ability to take a class/devote most of their time to it.

    • You’re welcome! And I know exactly what you mean. There are so many awesome Japanese learners out there, it’s easy to look at yourself and get discouraged. But the truth is, we’re doing fine the way we are. After all, we’re both still here. ^^

  2. Thank you for your inspirational story. I can relate to many of your experiences, from wanting to be able to enjoy media in the native language to starting and stopping due to psychological issues similar to yours. Also read your blog and was happy to read that you are also doing wanikani now, which I have also recently discovered in an attempt to spark up my kanji learning again (already fully completed RTK, but that does not seem to cut it for me). Looks like you are on the right track. Good luck and greetings from the Netherlands as well ^^

    • Oh another Dutchy! I’ve found that RTK is mainly great at teaching you how to write the kanji. I’m still more confident in writing the kanji I learned from that, than the new ones I’m learning on WaniKani. BUT, with WaniKani I can actually read things and I’m learning vocabulary. So it wins for me. ;)

  3. “If you don’t enjoy a method drop it, before it poisons your study motivation.”

    ^THIS^

    Thanks so much for your post. Your comments go right to the heart of the matter, and I think that you’ve touched many people on this site with similar experiences. As a serial re-starter as well, I salute you!

    がんばって!

    • ありがとう、一緒に頑張りましょう!

      I think part of the problem is what’s know as the “sunk cost fallacy”, the idea that because you’ve invested time into a method already giving it up would somehow be throwing away that time. What I try to tell myself these days is that if I find a method doesn’t work for me, that doesn’t mean I wasted my time on it. It taught me what doesn’t work for me and allowed me to further refine and optimize my methods. Plus if anything from the lessons stuck, that’s a nice bonus. ;)

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