Tilt, at its core, is just a strong state of negative emotion that grips a person, usually in high pressure situations. People in a state of tilt experience symptoms like tunnel vision, loss of rational thinking, shifting of blame (victim mentality) and losing touch with intuition. I’ve played and coached a lot of sports in my life and experienced all sorts of tilt. Over the years of competition I have come up with a number of steps that I can take to reduce tilt and so I figured I would share them. It should be pretty clear from usual symptoms of tilt that understanding and getting this issue under control can do a world of good for your game.
First I will describe each stage of tilt and then list a few processes you can go through to cope better.
Step 1: Inception
You make a bad play, miss a last hit or fail a gank and get a flash of anger at yourself or another player. Maybe you type something in chat, banging the keys a bit harder than they need to be hit. You curse or clench your jaw tightly to express your frustration.
Solutions:
At this point in the tilt cycle you are still functioning relatively normally. You should still be able to consciously choose what you put your attention on. For most people this means focusing on the negatives in an attempt to prevent them from happening again. This usually leads to distraction from the actual task at hand and further mistakes.
Instead, pick some general concept and put your attention on doing that to the best of your ability. The trick here is not to be too specific, it was specifics that got you to this state in the first place. For example: If I am dying more often than usual, a commonly frustrating experience, I will try to focus on my general positioning or map movement. Asking yourself what your movement is accomplishing is a good way to take your mind off that failed gank mid. When you get angry, your rational brain literally turns off and catching the anger at oncoming tilt at this stage make it easier to turn it back on.
Step 2: The Rising Tide
A second negative event happens. Suddenly you feel that familiar tightness in your stomach or chest. You lean closer to your screen and grip your mouse tighter, determined not to let it happen again. You feel tension and extra pressure to make up for your previous mistakes. You begin to ask yourself why this always happens to you. You wonder if anything you do will make a difference. Maybe you try to distract yourself from the game by doing something else during down time. You are “triggered.”
Solutions:
This as step 3 are fairly similar in that both involve significant physical feelings of the anger or tilt. Becoming aware of these feelings in your body is critical to being able to redirect what is about to happen to you. Once you are feeling the anger in your body it means you are on the edge of the downward spiral. The cool thing is that because you feel it in your body it is now easier to monitor. The most common thing people do at this stage is to take a deep breath. This is almost instinctual since during a fit of anger the adrenal response causes you to take shallower and shorter breaths.
A deep long breath can help ease some tension in the body. More importantly though, is what is going on in your brain. A long deep breath is great but if you are still thinking about the mistake or triggering moment you aren’t making much progress. A simple concept to introduce is something that yoga uses a lot. During your breath, visualize and feel the air being drawn through your nose and down to the lower part of your lungs (your stomach area should be expanding with this breath). Keep your attention on the air as you breath out and visualize sending the tension with it.
Step 3: The Cresting Wave
You experience a third negative and now there is actual pressure inside you. You are angry. You begin looking for a target to take it out on, a keyboard, a mouse, your desk or another player in game. You feel a wave of energy in your body and angrily try to refocus with thoughts like “I’m not fucking losing” or “come on, I’m better than this.” You decide that the next enemy you see in game you are going to “fucking destroy.” You begin to feel that all your teammates are idiots that you must carry to victory. It’s me against the world. Any sense of being in control is gone of the game’s outcome is gone.
Solutions:
Much like step 2 you are literally feeling this building explosion of violent energy in your body. Don’t lose hope yet! Because of how physical the sensation is we are still going to focus on the body. At this point your mind is very fixated on this negative emotion so starting with breathing we need to refocus. Another side effective of intensity, pressure or anger is the defense response we get in our body. For humans this usually looks like shrugged or hunched shoulders and a forward head posture like this
Here is where the body can have a very powerful effect. What works for me is to try and expand my posture as much as possible. If you can stand up for a second after a death then do it. You can also expand your upper body by reaching high and wide with your arms and spreading your fingers fully for example:.
Do this while breathing deeply and you are sure to feel a tightness in your chest. After a few of these “blooming breaths” the pressure should be a bit less. If you cannot get up from your game for even a second you can still try expand your posture by drawing your shoulder blades down and back.
It is also important to find a way alter your perspective on the game that is creating this tilted state. This sometimes means turning the game into a game. If your cores are constantly dying maybe you decide to create the perfect counter gank and only sit behind them to save or turn a fight. If the source of tilt is a toxic team I find muting them but continuing to communicate to be extremely effective. This way you still get to tell them what you are doing but because they cannot respond, it feels like they are listening to you even if they aren’t. If things start to go well often they will come around.
Step 4: The Flood
You snap. Whether it be from another negative circumstance or just simply reaching a boiling point. You begin angrily using voice communication or chat to berate other players. You begin to take pleasure in making other players feel stupid or wrong. You feed on purpose. Your main thought is, “these guys don’t deserve to win” or “we fucking lost,” and you mean it. Your body is tense with rage and in extreme cases you throw something or pound your hand on the desk. Maybe you even realize that you are being ridiculous but it’s too late to stop and it feels good to be releasing your anger. You decide to “beat” your opinion into your teammates.
Step 5: Aftermath
You feel like you just woke up. You notice you are breathing heavily. You feel expended or tired. You feel shame for your outburst and lack of control. The good feelings you had while expressing your rage are gone. Maybe you don’t want to play anymore or maybe you feel like you have to get into the next game to win back the loss you just experienced.
Solutions:
I am grouping steps 4 and 5 together because the number one thing to do here is taking a break. It doesn’t need to be long but completely removing yourself from the situation is the easiest way for your mind and body to settle from their heightened state. Go get some water or food, step outside for a moment or do some stretches. (my favorite set of stretches only takes 3 minutes to go through) Stretching your abdominals, hip flexors thoracic spine and pectorals are the big ones here. As we are seated these muscles naturally get contracted and especially during a bout of tilt will become clenched tightly.
TL:DR
Remember, anger or tilt is both a mental and physical experience and unfortunately has a positive feedback loop built in. When you explode in anger it feels good to release the buildup of pressure which makes it easier to repeat this cycle. Dealing with tilt is not a one day solution. You will need to build new habits and hopefully some of the step by step solutions I wrote about will help.
Thank you for reading and please let me know if you have any questions or what I can do better. I’m also curious if anyone would like to see this type of material in video form or through a live stream Q&A?