I am curious whether other runners have ever had a game which sort of haunted them for a while. I'm running Castle of Illusion SMS, and I have the skill and practice to finish runs without deaths since I've practiced each stage and its tripping points very much. Despite this, somehow in pretty much every run, something ridiculous creeps in out of absolutely nowhere. Ridiculous as in something I haven't consciously changed, but which goes slightly wrong and is utterly basic - accidentally jumping too soft and landing in a pit, mis timing something inexplicably. Often, one death seems to chain other deaths in with it too, and to my knowledge I'm not flooding emotionally, I'm not overwhelmed with what needs to be done on a game level, and I'm not second guessing the techniques I have worked on. I am not sure where the problem begins so I don't yet know how to work on it, it doesn't seem to be purely technical and reminds me of when I used to play horribly at blitz chess. Any advice or perspectives would be welcome.
Welcome to speedrunning. Whether people think they get on edge or not, you would be hard pressed to find anybody who doesn’t get jolts of adrenaline or something when they’re on a good run. The trick is composing yourself and still remembering everything you have to do. How you do that is up to you as different things work for everybody. Also, don’t let every small mistake matter unless your time in the game is super optimal. Something small, even though it may be something dumb and a stupid mistake on your part, won’t ruin a run unless you let it. Obviously sometimes a death can be a run killer, but if you’ve got a minute to save later on and you lose 30 seconds to something silly - don’t stop and don’t obsess over it. Still continue and shoot for the time save later on. A lot of times it’s the dwelling on the small stuff and the “I shouldn’t have made such a dumb mistake” thoughts that makes runners spiral down and end the runs. The small stuff will never matter unless the game and the time are hyper optimized.
I find it helpful to do some magical thinking and blame the game. Usually takes the edge off. Yes I made the mistake, yes it's not really the games fault, but damnit, it feels like it should be, so it is!
Usually helps calm me down enough to remember how I'm supposed to be doing the next thing.
Honestly... don't overthink it. It's really easy to get lost inside your own head trying to solve a problem that might not even exist when you really just need to keep focusing on improving through practice and more attempts.
I was in a similar situation a while back when I was running No Major Skips for Batman: Arkham Asylum. Shortly after I got my current PB I had a lot of runs die at the same really easy part of the game, and it was something that I was doing just fine in practice. I couldn't figure out why I was messing it up to the point where I started to lose confidence in my skill, because of that my mentality degraded, which made the runs even worse... etc. I was stuck in that downward spiral for months without getting a new PB (or even any new gold splits) until I eventually just quit the game entirely. At that point I wasn't really enjoying the category anymore (along with my mentality being stuck in the gutter, there were a couple of new things in the run that were a drag, such as a new like 40 second RNG timesave an hour and a half into the run) so it was probably for the best that I did quit, but if I wanted to keep going on that category I really needed to just get over myself and focus on continuing to improve.
So yeah, uh... you're gonna make stupid, basic mistakes (even if you're awesome at the game), and those mistakes are gonna mess with your rhythm and possibly lead to other stupid, basic mistakes. The important thing is to get back on the horse and try again without letting it get to you, even if you've been having a bad day (or week, or month) of runs.