Doubt and vengeful thoughts.

Seeing ghosts.

Overthinking.

Being terrified of falling into a horrible position right out of the opening.

Feeling trauma from a particularly nasty past loss.

Not knowing when to start again.

Much like often in life, I don't know what's true in chess anymore.

I can't come up with a method to play solidly. Moves don't make enough sense if the centre is without pawn clashes.

Tired of analysing losses every time, tired of losing energy. It would be nice to be able to play good moves... just good, simple moves, without thinking too much. There is no time for pondering everything. I can enjoy thinking if my position is at least okay and logical to me.

Always the same thing with my emotions. I don't even know if I'm getting better. I just want REVENGE.

I recommend playing chess variations then (live 960, 3+, King of the Hill etc.). Personally, I take these variants way less seriously than a standard chess game (maybe in part due to the fast time controls? Not sure?). Even if you choose not to play variants, I recommend having at least one category that you don't care about almost at all. For me that category is live 960. It is a fun thing to play when I don't have to worry about my rating. A lot of players treat bullet this way too; something to play when drunk, or careless, or while having a good time listening to loud music. Of course, many players take bullet extremely seriously (as much as "normal" chess often times), but they probably take "rapid" unseriously, or some other category. 

If you have at least one category that you don't care about, then you can play that and focus on having more fun/not worried about deep theory, or revenge. Live 960 has the additional benefit of no real opening theory. Try out some variants and don't care about your rating! These are not really "chess" games in the same sense, but you will find enough similarities to navigate your way. I've even had fun with 4 players chess before (which in itself has several variants). The point is that when your chess pace (or lack thereof) of improvement isn't as you hope: it is almost cathartic to cleanse yourself of the excess energy and just play a game - you'll then be refreshed and likely find "normal" games more fun again

If still set on improvement, check out this forum that helped me out a while back. 

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/why-is-my-rating-dropping 

...Wow.

I don't know how you knew, but that's the EXACT THING I CANNOT DO! That's the point.

KeSetoKaiba, it's not about playing a category you aren't serious about (which is especially tough if you care about all of them equally, which I do, because I always want to win), it's about learning stuff then forgetting it, even though you don't want to. There is no opening I can fully and reliably play based on quick and simple understanding alone, as there is always a way to go wrong. Not even endgames are within my firm grasp, although they might be a bit easier, but I lose them even more than I lose middlegames.

There's an idea I've been obsessed with for some time now: if White has a firm grasp on e5, he can directly attack Black's King more often than not, and since Black is always half a tempo down, although it's commendable for him to control e4 in the same vein, since White is just a tad faster by default, Black should try to contest the control of the dark-squared long diagonal first. Now, today I played a Reti vs. KID setup as White, and as soon as Black played e5, I felt defeated, because I couldn't stop him... and this is AFTER I played d4 as well.

The only thing I fear more than not controlling e5 is a Knight on e4 supported by the f5-pawn.

Then perhaps you've just been pointed in the correct direction to see where the trouble lies. If you don't feel confident in any endgame ("firm grasp"), then study those theoretical endgames well. As Capablanca believed, once you have mastered the endgames, then the middlegames you play will seem to steer in those directions you want. 

Try tackling chess through reverse-engineering. Begin learning the endgame really well. Then learn how to play the middlegame in such a way that leads you to a favorable endgame for you. Finally, learn an opening that gets you into a middlegame you are comfortable with. That is all there is to it; of course, no one said that each step wasn't tough; chess takes time to learn well and so you just need to be patient with it. Start with really basic endgames like K+p vs K and work your way up from there. Even if you think you know the endgames, still go over them as a "refresher." Even GMs are constantly going back to the basics. Why? Simply because there is sometimes complexity under the simpliest of themes. Pawn endgames are perhaps the easiest for a beginner to start with, but paradoxically GMs study them because they can get difficult really quickly and easy to get into long forcing calculations. All endgames are like this to various degrees. The underlining "theme" of the endgame may be easy, but the other variables in a real game (other pieces, low time, well-studied opponent etc.) may complicate them, so it really helps to have a really firm grasp on these things. Take things one step at a time, but endgames is a great place to begin.

your frustration is helping me   to take my frustration with more grace

i dont think this will help (because the feeling of enjoyment is something coming from within independent of circumstances or the reasoning presented) but imho its needed for us  that we lose chess games... what would be the purpose of playing if we cant lose or always be winning or if we were able to memorize all the good moves

I'm not usually the one to address someone in third-person, but: everybody else, is this person legit with their claims? First of all, chess not being about emotion applies only if you're a literal human-made computer, and even if it's applicable to humans, it's... it's just not. You don't usually have a hobby or a beloved profession if you're indifferent towards it! "Chess is mental torture", and if that doesn't pertain to emotions, then I don't know what does.

Second of all, I play rapid games on Lichess (and I used to play on Chesscube as well), amassing over 1500 games in the last 10 years (and I first joined Chess.com around 2008, I think, but then I got angry and deleted my original account). Aside from that, I've been attending psychotherapy almost once a week for the last 4,5 years, and while chess has been an often talked-about subject there, the pain upon losing never seems to diminish, or if it does, every once in a while it forces me to take a break from chess... and that's no true way to improve, as I always have to forget both the trauma and the lessons.

So now, addressing you directly, Aizen89, if you're done being more than awfully presumptious, would you please point me to a free tactics training site that doesn't treat me like UTTER CRAP when I don't play the utmost optimal solution in every position (not to mention the asinine computer lines it gives in the "explanations" to the move choices, as if the wrong moves are all SO OBVIOUSLY wrong), I'd very much appreciate that.

Before I start ranting about how I hate people like Capablanca, because they hardly had to do serious work to attain their understandings ("Only upon losing many games can one become a strong chess player"? No way, Jose, that only applies to people who cannot just say "2. Ne2 is the best against the Sicilian because no importa, it's the best move", you conceited prick), I can only say that while you are right about endgames, I still JUST SUCK. I'm still going to make stupid small oversights, then kinda make them less often, then forget and make them more frequently again. I cannot be efficient. I take too much time to learn, and when I inevitably forget what I learned, it's going to take me too much time again. I'm also becoming distrustful of what I'm being taught at any point, and not in an inquisitively good way, either. Computers have thoroughly destroyed my beloved "it's only valuable if you figure it out without an engine" metagame, and now I'm just spouting wangst like a guy who got too burned by a past relationship to ever start a new one.

Chess, like life, is horrible if others are better than you so much that you can't catch up to them, whoever you are. I'd understand if I had a lobotomy or some kind of a neural disease, but I'm not a fish climbing a tree, I'm just a mid-sized cat too slow for the small and nimble ones and too weak to fight the tigers that are jumping to bring me down from the sequoia of chess... and I'm struggling to accept that I'll never be the best ever. My ego is beast whose belly becomes more and more spacious upon being fed, and it's going to sabotage me until it becomes so massive that I stop wishing for anything other than death and possible rebirth which would cut it off from me.

Not so, there are clearly cases in which it says to look for a better solution (as in "this move definitely brings you advantage, but you can get the same advantage a bit faster"), but then you might actually miss that better solution, and what then? Would the slightly inferior solution be inadequate when it comes to winning an actual game? If it's not blitz, I doubt it. The irony is, I play rapid games, but I train tactics under unlimited time, and even if I switched to blitz tactics, the trainer would still force me to find the absolute shortest solutions. Is that practical? Hell no.

Also, while I am admittedly very emotionally sensitive, I know what I am saying. If you ever saw a solved tactic (whether guessed correctly or not) on Chesstempo, you'd see a that there's a suggested computer line of how the rest of the position optimally plays out up to some point, provided the tactic you solved wasn't a checkmate. Furthermore, aside from the trainer assuming I know how to win EVERY SINGLE POSITION where I'm a minor piece up (as if my opponent couldn't even set me any tricks!), even when I fail a tactic, it only gives the line of how it's done correctly! It never shows me why exactly my continuation is wrong, it just says that it's wrong and then ignores it like a pompous teacher from the Middle Ages who operates on his students' fears alone.

Just lost another game due to a misclick... It hurts when at the very least you know there's a better move, you see it, and you intend to play it... but then you don't, and it's dumber than life. Even if I wouldn't have won (and the position was around equal at that point, that's my own estimation), knowing that you played an inferior move and that it was your fault (even if that fault is only due to you being a flawed human being) SUCKS.

Could we change the topic and try make this thread enjoyable or even worth reading?

like did you know hippos can’t swim? They drown if the water is too deep

Hey Duck,  I have doubts you've read the title.

I did, can we change that too?

Maybe something like ‘ Interesting facts you did not know’

just a suggestion

I'd like to suggest you open a new thread with that as the title

That would require a lot of effort, I though we could do something different with this existing thread and kill two birds with one stone. 

If in doubt, play F3

This was too mind-blowing, I had to look it up. 

Cool - I learned something. I didn't know this was true! Kind of funny how they just walk along the bottom, but don't really swim.  

Not sure how this impacts the Hippo defense for chess, but cool

what the heck is this??