3 Tips For Overcoming Ladder Anxiety

Ladder anxiety. We’ve all been there. Whether you’re close to ranking up, one loss away from ranking down, or simply stressing about solo-queueing, we’ve all experienced ladder anxiety at some point as Counter-Strike players, and it sucks. If it goes unchecked, ladder anxiety can build up to the point of destroying your will to play the game or impacting your mental health. Today, we’re going to stop that from happening by looking at a handful of actionable tips you can use to overcome ladder anxiety.

Recenter Your Goals

This is a big one. Oftentimes, ladder anxiety is directly correlated to Elo. Perhaps you’re only a few wins off FACEIT Level 10, or maybe you’re one loss away from the lowest Elo you’ve ever been. Perhaps you’ve lost eight games in a row, or you’re one victory off your longest win streak. Whatever the specific reason, Elo tends to be a significant driving factor in why most people experience ladder anxiety in some form.

The Elo-forward mental approach to Counter-Strike is one of the most psychologically damaging ways to approach the game. Our first tip in this article is arguably also the most important: find a way to recenter your goals away from Elo.

Instead of focusing on your rank, try focusing on something else. Something a little more tangible, short-term, and personal. It doesn’t matter what it is – it could be your communication, your gunfight habits, or your tilt. Here are a couple of examples that you can start focusing on in your own game:

1. “Today, it doesn’t matter if I win or lose – I just need to communicate well.”
2. “I’m going to focus on not tilting today. If I die, whiff, or make a mistake, I’m simply going to relax, and go next.”
3. “I’ve been crouching too much. Today, I’m just going to focus on staying mobile in my fights.”

Now you have given yourself a finite, achievable, actionable goal for your session. This means that, win or lose, your metric for understanding whether or not the session has been inherently positive has changed. If you achieve what you set out to achieve, you’ve done well. Much like in all walks of life, if you can compartmentalize and give yourself a series of smaller, more achievable goals, your anxiety will be significantly lessened.

Stabilize Your In-Game Routine

A major cause of ladder anxiety is inconsistency. If you know, deep down, that you are not consistent in the game, you know by extension that there is always a significant chance of playing badly, losing Elo, getting tilted, and generally having a bad time. This, naturally, stands a high chance of resulting in some pretty intense ladder anxiety.

One of the best ways to target this is to stabilize your in-game training routine. Different routines and methods work for different people. Whatever balance works for you, it’s important to have a set routine. It allows you to get comfortable, resets your mental readiness for the day’s grind, and lends itself towards guaranteeing consistency in your gameplay. Refrag has a variety of training modes which can be compiled into set routines, so you can build yourself a training routine that won’t ever change.

Furthermore, Refrag’s Coach function automatically builds routines for you based on your actual in-game weaknesses, so if you’re the kind of player who wants to be sure they’re targeting what needs to be improved, Coach could be the way forward for you.

Whatever your chosen warmup style, making sure to routinize it and keep it structured, consistent, and effective is a great way to raise both your confidence and your consistency in game.

Stabilize Your Out-Of-Game Routine

We’ve looked at stabilizing your in-game routine. Let’s look at your out-of-game routine as well. Whilst it might seem odd to talk about, the way you approach grinding CS2 in your own life can be a huge factor in combating ladder anxiety. As we all know, it is important to have a healthy balance in terms of gaming and life. If you’re waking up in the morning, downing an energy drink, and sitting at the PC in a dark room for ten hours straight, you’re setting yourself up for failure in the server, and total burnout outside of it.

Having a positive routine outside of the game goes a long way to ensuring the health and stability of your headspace, which, in turn, defends against the majority of ladder anxiety-related issues. Make sure you get some fresh air and exercise every day. Eat well. Hydrate often. Stretch and focus on your posture every now and again. Play for an hour or two, then step away from the computer for a while. All of these things might seem trivial, but they are major contributing factors to whether or not you’re performing (and feeling) your best.

So, now that you’ve enacted all the advice in this article, and ladder anxiety is merely a thing of the past, you’re ready to grind, right? Great! Refrag is here to make sure your grinding time isn’t wasted. Whether you want to improve your utility, perfect your role, or analyze your games, Refrag has it all. So jump in, get on the grind and, most importantly, look after yourself.