Prevention is always better than cure where poker tilt is concerned. You save yourself a lot of unnecessary grief that comes from wasted time and squandered money. Learn the warning signs early, to achieve this. However, in order to do this you must recognize your triggers which are those things in the game that for some reason upset, offend you and have the power to put you on tilt.
Consider some key triggers. Any number of outside influences can be external triggers. Some of these influences could be stress at home, lack of adequate sleep, financial worries, drugs, alcohol, etc. These influences can make you susceptible to tilt. These external factors won't ultimately kick off your negative occurrences however they do play a huge role in this negative effect. So if you decide to react to these outside influences by having a few drinks or coming to the table out of sorts, you're already setting yourself up for failure.
These pre-triggers create the perfect storm for the negative reaction. Stress combined with alcohol in a poker game is like having a cold high-pressure system moving in from the north and colliding with tropical low-pressure systems from the South. So it takes is a powerful wind have to give you a full-blown disaster on your hands. Without any of these key triggers, the bad wind could honestly blow over.
One scenario is that you are playing the game well and having to work a bit at it, but are managing your emotions and keeping it together. As soon as something goes wrong, the common denominator is that the triggers actually trigger the ideas of how the game is supposed to be paid. The end result is that the working part of your brain goes to dust and your bad emotions take over your decision-making.
Bad beats are one of the biggest culprits in this negative occurrence. It is almost inescapable and precisely why such a common tilt trigger must be avoided at all costs. After a series of lousy starting hands, draws and missed flops the most patient of players become tempted to snap. The frustration eventually is too much to bear.
The good news is that there are ways to overcome this negative occurrence and one of the tools you can use to overcome this is self-knowledge. It can be difficult and slippery and this is why it's crucial to know your triggers. Knowing the game and the probabilities is another way to overcome this negative occurrence. The more you get into the habit of reviewing your hand and considering all possible angles, the more it will like second nature to start thinking this way. Even under stress, you will maintain this habit