How do you deal with ladder anxiety?

When I feel like playing Age of Empires or C&C, I start up the game, go to Multiplayer and then just sit there in front of the matchmaking screen. I think to myself: "Nah, I don't really want to play after all". Now, I know to attribute this to ladder anxiety, but it's just really weird because this never happened to me in any genre, except RTS.

Now I know the only real fix is to keep playing, but with ladder anxiety just doing that is really hard. So my question to you guys is how do you overcome this? Playing with friends seems to be a viable alternative, but if you're the only one in your group that enjoys RTS, that doesn't work out either.

Also why is ladder anxiety so prevalent in RTS games? I thought that it might have to do with the nature of 1v1 matches. You can't attribute your loss to something other than yourself. However, I then thought about fighting games, and at least for me, I did not get any ladder anxiety in those (when I was still playing), despite being even worse in them than RTS.

Another example would be racing games. They are, essentially, big 1v1s as well, in the sense that you have no teammates to pick up the game for you, but alas I have never heard of people not going into racing games due to ladder anxiety.

The 1v1 argument may not even hold up in RTS games, since I get the same anxiety for team games, but not in team games like CS:GO or other shooters.

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To sum up my post, I ask the following questions:
1. How do you deal with ladder anxiety if "just playing" isn't so easy as it sounds?

1. Why is ladder anxiety so prevalent in RTS games, if you disagree, what games do you get ladder anxiety?

2. Do you think a server browser makes a difference to competitive matchmaking?