Exposure Therapy
The way we get comfortable in uncomfortable situations to do be uncomfortable more often
If you were forwarded this email and want to get Fortnite Fundamentals in your inbox 3x per week, subscribe here for free:
I’d love to hear from you – email me at zack@fortnitefundamentals.co. Feel free to send requests, things to cover, feedback, questions, or just a nice note.
The Inner Game of Fortnite – Exposure Therapy
Let’s start with a simple premise: that we get better at anything as we spend more time with it.
We aren’t born knowing how to play tennis or guitar or do math but with time, practice, and good teachers, we get better and more comfortable and able to problem solve on the fly.
Let’s also talk about performance anxiety. The higher we perceive the stakes of the “game” to be, the more anxious that could make us. Performance anxiety occurs everywhere from negotiating a contract for work to sex. From sports and video games to talking with your partner or friend about difficult things.
That anxiety can manifest as locking up and missing a shot during crunch-time. It can show up as forgetting our words on stage or going blank when staring at a test that we’ve studied hard for.
Going back to our original point though, the more time we spend with something, the more comfortable we get.
It’s the reason that astronauts train for thousands of high pressure situations and things going wrong long before they ever leave ground. No matter what happens, they’ve basically been there before.
Fortnite is basically programmed to psychologically mess with us. It’s evolution; we have to survive past everyone else in our group. Every game is a tournament of life and death. It taps into the most basic part of our brain whose only job is to survive. That’s why we tense up.
Then add in a social element to it – being as good as our friends, being able to hang with our Discord server or the competitive scene – and suddenly we may think there’s a lot more riding on each elim than maybe we realized. It’s up to each one of us to decide if any of that is true individually for ourselves.
I don’t write this to make you a headcase but to make you think harder about what else may be going on our brains when we tense up in high pressure situations.
Lucky for us, the science of performance anxiety is well-studied and we have some options for how to handle it when it comes up:
Breathe
Be in these situations more
Breathing
First, breathe and shake it out.
We’ve talked about breathing a number of times before in FF. It’s a great way to check in with our bodies, see where we are, take a break, and be present in the moment.
Anxiety is worrying about the future. If we’re firmly rooted in the present, the chance that we get anxious about the future goes down.
When in doubt, box up, remind yourself that there’s no actual threat to your life, that it’s just a game, and take some deep breaths. Then get back out there.
Being in these situations more
The hard part about practicing for end games – where performance anxiety tends to rear its head – is that they take 10+ minutes to get there and you only get one rep. We’ve covered the benefits of Zone Wars pretty extensively since it essentially gives you five reps in 15 minutes.
Zone Wars is perfect for exposure therapy as it puts us in this state quickly and more frequently. The more time we spend getting comfortable with high pressure situations, the more equipped we’ll be when they’re real.
Make sure to take longer breaks between games to regain your composure as you train your brain that endgames aren’t so bad. There isn’t that much riding on this. That it’s just a game. And that you’re doing alright.
Sub-Skill Drills - Window Elims
For today’s drill, we’re going to work on Window Elims. There’s a simple drill that you can do to until your this is burned into your muscle memory. It’s perfect to practice in Creative and get great at in Team Rumble:
Build a wall.
Edit window (preferably in the middle or on the right so you have a good right-hand peek).
Switch to your shotgun.
Shoot, aim high.
Close edit or move to the left to avoid return fire.
Do this slowly in Creative and build up your speed. Place the wall, edit your window, shoot, close the edit or move left into safety. Then after about 10-15 minutes of doing this drill, hop into Team Rumble and get a few elims.
You should quickly be ready to deploy this in your regular games. This is good to practice as part of your warmup so even if you’re not editing corners or the top row out, you’re still fast at popping a window and getting that elim!
—
See you Wednesday!
Telling your friends about Fortnite Fundamentals will make you more likely to win 100% of your games, guaranteed**
** not really, but tell your friends, squadmates, duos, and enemies.