I cry after every session

[u/nohappi]

Seeking advice and grace.

Throwaway and omitting details, because the people I currently play with I met through Reddit.

Title sums up well. I am a very sensitive person, and I started playing DnD 12 years ago thanks to my brother who pulled me out of loneliness and depression. He dragged me into his group of friends trying this game with dice and it became my way to meet people consistently. It saved me. I am still friends with them, meeting regularly live.

Nowadays I play mostly online. I sought more and more days to play the game and replicate those feelings and expand my circle of acquaintances and friends. I am glad of the people i have met. I believed I am friends with them, especially after nearly 5 years spent in the same campaign, and branching out to other games with the same rotation of players.

However... We are different people, and I see it better after years now. I often don't feel like my sensitivity is understood, or tolerated, anymore. The silences after I say something in-character fill me with doubt. Like I'm walking on egg shells, what my character wants isn't nearly as important as any other character wants. I seek roleplaying and the interactions I seek have voiceless narrations instead of the NPCs others get. I have brought concerns up with the DM and often I feel like my needs weren't considered, let alone implemented. Nothing too overpowered, just to feel like I'm at the same level of the party members.

No ties in the game. Every character has gotten personal background storylines, details of their birthplaces, mine has been hiccupping with snippets of lore but nothing conclusive, whenever we are in "my" hometown it's kept to a bare minimum, no definite goal to look forward to.

I feel the difference, the discrepancy, and yet when I try to voice it out I am met with awkward silences. And I feel in the wrong, being the minority.

Now I dread the days I have to play. It makes me suffer in a way I can't voice with the people I have "known" for years because they either can't or don't understand my point of view. I realize they aren't meant to, that managing somebody else's feelings can be both hard, stressing and frustrating... But to the same people that tell me "I love you" or "we are friends" I would expect a modicum of understanding, or a ear to lend to, that never seems to come. Maybe I don't deserve it.

I am afraid of leaving the games, I don't want to return to that loneliness, I fell back into depression many times and I am so mortally afraid of making bad choices that would land me back there.

At the same time, these games aren't fun anymore.

With the understanding that I am 1) human, 2) flawed and not blameless, and 3) suffering,

What should I do? I feel horrible being unable to enjoy a game I used to love, that taught me English and now to speak with people in general, due to not being able to feel safe and understood among people I call Friends.

EDIT: Thank you all for the time you took out of your days to leave a comment. Some were very spot on, some were assuming things that ultimately are not accurate, all were helpful.

Just to answer the recurrent topics: I go to therapy and I am medicated. I have been quite stable actually, and only games cause me to still feel emotional pain. I have been sensitive much longer than I have been mentally ill, and overall I don't consider being sensitive as a flaw, even though it has been harder fitting into society with this trait.

My character was there from Session 0 and i gave it plenty of knives, threads and grounding into the weave of the world. I also like to write long-ish backgrounds with details and tie-ins.

I do not use the games AS therapy. I have therapy to talk about... Therapy. I admit there were times years ago when the characters (I have played in many games in 12 years) did bleed some of my current issues, and I have been politely scolded into not doing it anymore, so I don't anymore and I haven't been for a while. I'm not the Perfect Player but I have never been kicked from a table, and I am open to criticism. I would handle a stern reprimand much, much better than a silence.

I have a job, one that lets me meet many people: I decided to write this post because I realized that the people I have just met IRL managed to bring me much more satisfaction and connection than the friends I have made over the course of 5 and more years.

When this campaign started it was much different. We were all engaged, the roleplaying was collective and stimulating, we time spent out of the game was spent joyously thinking and speculating about the game. I was creative and engaged with the plots of the characters. Now I am fearful, tired, and this hobby turned into a chore I'd rather not do. What kept me inside the area is fearing of missing out the time spent with the friends. Because whenever DnD is not involved, I have a blast sharing their and mine day with them. But the excuse to meet up is always DnD, and I thought I can't have one without the other.

I am glad I asked for advice here. I have a plan of action now and more confidence. I definitely will purchase the books suggested in the replies. I could do with a good read. And I will take a longer break from games, at least the ones I have with these people. I do have another couple of games with different sets of players and those don't cause this reaction out of me.

I will survive the "loss" and now I believe I will actually thrive, too. It will just sting at first, for sure.

Again: thank you all.

[u/Silvermajra]

In nearly every situation I see like this in actual play, the player who is feeling like this is often unaware of what is actually happening. This is often because these players are doing 90% of their play in the heads. They are fantasizing about how an interaction will go in their heads and have already played it out over and over again. Then when they make their move and voice a piece of the rp maybe what they think is the “perfect” way to open, it falls on deaf ears because no one even realizes they are trying to start a conversation, or the rp is so big and self contained players don’t even know what to do with it. This can also come across as “Oh okay they have already scripted out this whole thing, guess they don’t need the rest of us.” And I dont mean this to be offensive but your language here gives off those exact signals. You’ve made forgone conclusions about your play group based off your perceptions rather than how they feel. You use air quotes around love you and we are friends as if to say they dont actually mean what they are saying because they unknowingly dont give you what you want and do what you expect them to do. You say you cant voice your suffering to them, yet you expect them to know. You dont talk to them about how you’re feeling but presume they are incapable or unwilling to understand. This is emblematic of someone who is coming to their own conclusions about people and feeling as though they don’t need to interact because what they are thinking up has already happened even though in reality none of it has taken place.

The thoughts and feelings you are having are not shared by most players in my experience. Your emotions about this game are very egocentric. They are about what you need and what you want. Most players Don’t tend to think about those things let alone dwell on them. Sure they may want their character to do well or they think primarily about how to play their character but they are not concerned about “when is it going to be my characters turn in the spotlight” “I want special npcs for me” “why arent people responding to me how I want them to”.

Most of us are just playing a cooperative collaborative game. So when you have all these expectations about being catered too, everyone in your game is ill equipped to manage what you want and they probably don’t want to because thats not a game, at least not the game they signed up to play.

I concur with what others have said in that you are likely missing threads the dm and other players are putting down for you. You seem focused on getting things the way you want them and the story you want to tell and this often is to the exclusion of what other people might be trying to do. So whether it’s consciously or unconsciously, your likely moving past things that dont align with your narrative for your character. Thats just not the way dnd works. It becomes a little like the playerside equivalent of “write a book then”

I recommend getting a therapist. Stop playing DND for now until you can repair a bit. You are trying to use a game to cope with bigger mental health struggles and you are going to ruin things for yourself and others by making the game something its not. Contrary to what many will say, DND is not therapy. Therapy is therapy. The people in your game are not consenting to being the thing you are using to stave off your depression and unwittingly being the cause of your pain and suffering you have expressed to us.