If you are thinking about the return of Regional Championships and your excitement is mixed with worry or some other unpleasant feeling, then you are not alone. You are also not alone if your mind is in overdrive about Salt Lake City (SLC) or any of the other events that are scheduled for March. Steffen Eriksen and I are still slogging through our analysis of the large community survey we administered last Fall, but I can reflect on a couple of results today.
After some data cleansing, our final dataset has about 750 respondents who identify as active Pokémon TCG players. I want to focus on their responses to two survey questions that likely provide some insight into how our community is feeling right now.
Of the fifteen survey questions we asked about rumination, these two questions really seemed to resonate with the community. With respect to the first question ("can't stop thinking about the event"), the mean response was 5.079 (standard deviation = 1.661). This was the highest mean response of any of the fifteen rumination questions. With respect to the second question ("thoughts of the event interfere with what I am working on"), the mean response was 4.539 (standard deviation = 1.785). It seems that the majority of players experience recurring, intrusive thoughts about upcoming events and that a large subset of them tend to dwell on those thoughts.
I suspect that many of our fellow trainers are experiencing a myriad of intrusive thoughts right now. Those thoughts, moreover, may be leading to some unpleasant emotions. Our social activities have been constrained for the past two years and we have lost the habitual and familiar feeling of large events. For some, it never felt habitual or familiar. Remembering how to “do” a Regional Championship will be like remembering how to ride a bike for some, but it will not be as easy for others. The PTCGO ladder does nothing to prepare players for a room full of people. Homegrown, in-person tournaments have started in some places, but not everywhere. SLC will be the first in-person event in over two years for many in attendance. If you are attending, please be gentle with others at the event. More importantly, please be gentle with yourself.
Personally, I am not ready to return to Regionals next month. I was hoping to return to smaller events before the larger ones, so that I could have a gradual reimmersion into the social aspect of the game. I am concerned that jumping right into Regionals will be socially and emotionally overwhelming. I do hope that my thoughts about and feelings toward Regionals will improve by May, so that I can look forward to the Indianapolis Regional Championship without an excessive amount of worry. Hopefully, experiencing the fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) from SLC pictures / results and beginning to playtest Brilliant Stars with good friends will soften my view.
I am delighted that public health advancements have made this moment possible, but there is still a long road to complete recovery. It is not quite as long as the road to Viridian City, though, and I am so glad to have friends with me on both roads.
Colin
Additional Resources
Here is a descriptive analysis of the survey results that Steffen and I presented on his YouTube channel in October.
Talkspace's "The Dirty Lowdown on Anticipatory Anxiety" is a short read on anticipatory anxiety, which is the more common term for event anxiety.