Gamalyze and Responsible Gambling
The content below is provided by Mindway AI.
Your gambling behaviour (Reflection exercise)
Regularly taking some time to reflect on your gambling behaviour can be an effective way of making sure that gambling remains a fun activity, which does not lead to gambling related harms such as financial difficulties or neglect of other important activities.
While various self-assessment tools exist, it can also be insightful to reflect on your gambling behaviour and the feelings that you experience in relation to gambling. Try to be aware of your emotions and thoughts while you perform this exercise. If you feel uncomfortable during this exercise, find that you try to explain away actions, or even lie to yourself, this will often be a sign that you could benefit from reducing your gambling or seeking professional help.
Here are some suggestions for questions that can help guide your reflections. You may choose to go through all the 8 questions or pick the ones that you find most relevant.
• What is your motivation to gamble?
• How does it feel like when you gamble? How does it feel like after you gamble?
• Do you experience that you lose track of time and money spent while gambling?
• Do you know how much time and money you spend gambling on a monthly basis? If not, try to get an overview. How do you feel about these numbers?
• How often do you spend time on thinking about gambling when you are not gambling?
• Does gambling get in the way of carrying out other aspects of your life?
• How would you feel about sharing how much you gamble to a person close to you?
• Have you ever experienced that gambling has left you short of money?
You may choose to supplement this reflection exercise with the self-test Gamalyze to assess how risky your gambling style is. Access that here!
Hopefully, this exercise has left you with a clearer view on how you feel about your gambling behaviour. Please reach out to your local gambling hotline if you feel like you might benefit from discussing your gambling with a professional or need advice on how to reduce your gambling. A good strategy for cutting down is to substitute gambling with other activities that you enjoy. Go for a walk outside, meet up with a friend, start a creative project or engage in another activity that you find enjoyable.
How do I limit my risk?
How do I limit my risk of experiencing negative consequences due to gambling?
In many cases it is a lot easier to tackle problems before they turn into big monsters. This is especially true if we consider problems experienced due to gambling. Once gambling problems start to escalate, they can be very difficult to tackle and create a paradoxical situation where it appears to the person that the only way to reduce problems is to keep gambling. As an example, a person experiencing financial difficulties due to gambling may think that the only way to overcome these difficulties is to attempt to win back their losses through more gambling. Unfortunately, this strategy will most often lead to further losses and escalation of problems. The best advice is therefore to be proactive and take actions to limit your risk even if you feel like you are in perfect control. In a way taking preventive actions such as setting reasonable limits for yourself is bit like putting on the seatbelt before driving. You know that you will probably not need it on your trip, but that it can save your life if you should
get into an unexpected accident.
Most gambling providers offer various limits tools, which you can use to decide how much you want to gamble. Often you will have the opportunity to set a deposit limit on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Sometimes you will also be given the opportunity to set limits on other aspects of gambling behaviour such as maximum time consumption, wager size or total loss within a period of time. Setting limits is for everyone and is a bit like making a budget for yourself. They make it easy to keep the overview and help you stick to your decisions about your gambling behaviour, even if you occasional get caught in the heat of the moment. If you gamble with multiple gambling providers you have to take on a little more work yourself, as the limits don’t transfer across providers. In this case you might want to want to keep track of your deposits in a spreadsheet or set a lower limit for each provider. The exact amount of money a person can gamble without experiencing any risk differs from person to person. A good strategy is to create an entertainment budget that includes gambling and then set a limit that reflects how much money you are willing to lose on gambling after setting aside money for all your regular expenses. Often people will also benefit from setting limits on their time consumption. Think about how much time you have for leisure activities and then decide how much of that time you want to spend on gambling while leaving time for other activities that you enjoy. Remember to occasionally evaluate your limits as changes to your financial situation or other important aspects of your life might change how much time or money you want to spend on gambling.
If you find it difficult to stick to your limits, you might benefit from taking a break from gambling for a while to focus on other activities. Remember that gambling should never be causing you any harms and that you can reach out to your local gambling hotline if you need to talk to someone about your gambling behaviour and what actions you can take to limit your risk.
Making the decision to put on the gambling seatbelt may help you avoid having to deal with some very difficult problems later down the road