Crisis management/Dealing with stress
I easily dip into 'panic' mode. I see a drop for which I have no defence in my base for, I get into battle which I think I can't win, I know my opponent's ahead and that I need to expand... could go on with examples. I need to learn how to relax, to give myself an opportunity to calm down and think clearly about the situation at hand. A lot of mistakes stem from the fact that I get 'tunnel-vision' and make wrong decisions, which in the end cost me the game. ~BabyToss
Just so you know where I am coming from with this, I have a deep background in Chess and Martial Arts.
Martial Arts, and other Self Defense skills, have far more overlap with Strategy Games than most people realize.
Both TBS (Turn Based Strategy) games like Chess and RTS (Real Time Strategy) games like SC2, require Situational Awareness, Fear/Stress Control, Tactics, and Strategy just like Martial Arts do.
The two main techniques IME for controlling Fear and/or Stress are Breath Control and Habituation/Desensitizing.
Breath Control is simply making sure you breath deeply, smoothly, and not to fast. Panic breathing is short and shallow. They teach Cops, firefighters, Pilots, and solders to control their breathing as a way to manage stress under life and death situations. It will work for playing Starcraft 2 as well as for flying a F-16.
Habituation just means that you get bored with something because it happens so often, it just isn't exciting in either good or bad way anymore. If you have ever listened to a favorite song so much you didn't like it much anymore, then you were experiencing habituation.
Desensitizing means learning something your afraid of can't actually hurt you. Kindergartners on their first day of school are often terrified. But two weeks after school starts they don't even think about it.
To learn Breath Control, just start asking your self when you feel stress if your breathing fast and shallow? If the answer is yes then breath in slowly and deeply hold for a 2 or 3 count and breath out slowly and fully and hold the exhale (ie don't start breathing in) for another 1 or 2 count.
Don't worry about messing it up, learning new skills takes time and effort.
After a while it will become a habit and you won't have to think about it, just like hitting 1A!
To habituate or desensitize you simply need exposure, a measured bit at a time so that the fear doesn't overwhelm you, but you need to gradually increase the amount or intensity of what causes you fear over time as you improve.
Say you were afraid of spiders, you could work on being in the same room as a small spider in a jar.
Week by week, or day by day, work on getting closer to the jar. Till you can actually hold the jar with the spider in it.
Then you could start over with a Tarantula in a jar or cage, and work your way over time closer and closer till you could actually touch the Tarantula's cage.
Then if you want to take it to the next level, you could start with feed the little spider. You would probably just drop it's food in to start, but if you worked at it you would eventually be able to hand feed it (for those who have spiders I know feeding them can be more complicated than that).
Then you could try that same progression with a Tarantula.
So for SC2 you could start by practiceing something with a friend, there is a Handicap setting on the menu bar were you select race and color that lowers HP of buildings and units that you can also use.
Simple technique for balancing skill in practice is winner has to handicap themselves by 10% per win.
Or loser can ban one unit for their enemy in the next game (ie no DT). Just realize these things benefit the Winner more than the loser, since they will have to learn another way to beat you. When you still haven't learned how to defend their "A" game.
Another, I think better choice, is the winner has to use same winning build in the next game.
After your comfortable playing practice games with friends, and real games with friends, you can start playing real games vs strangers.
You could start with 2v2 or 3v3, that way you have some social and in game support.
Another approach, tell yourself you have to play one ladder game a week the first week.
Second week you have to play two ladder games, and so on.
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