Match-3 games are playable spam, but they soothe my anxious brain

Welcome to No Shame November! This week we're diving into the pop culture we love that society tells us we shouldn't.

In NBC’s fantastic afterlife comedy The Good Place, chronic worrier Chidi Anagonye describes his anxious interior monologue as “the sound a fork makes in a garbage disposal.” That noise – grating, inescapable, wrong — is what my brain sounds like too. I have the superpowered combo of anxiety and ADHD, both of which work together to spin my racing thoughts into an intrusive tornado that almost never blows away. 

One of the other symptoms of my ADHD is hyperfocus, an involuntary state of mind that kicks in when I’m totally engrossed in something. When I’m hyperfocused on a jigsaw puzzle, a book, a Wikipedia black hole, or anything else that grabs my attention, the rest of the world may as well not exist. I’ll miss notifications, forget to eat, and generally stay rooted in my spot of interest until I’m jolted away from it by something big enough to move my brain along.  Read more...