Listening to the Body’s Wisdom: Addressing REDs Through Sport Psychology and Somatics
Now we come back to the cost of not paying attention to our bodies as athletes. If we are not connected to our bodies, we are missing an incredible amount of information that could help us take care of ourselves and help us be better athletes. So now we come back to ignoring or disconnecting from our bodies’ signals to take care of ourselves. We can now begin to see how problematic this is in general and how it has a role in female-identifying athletes developing REDs.
REDs: We Must Talk About It
Dedication, discipline, and the ability to push oneself are essential parts of being an athlete. But, what happens when female-identifying athletes push themselves beyond to the point of overriding fatigue to win and the very drive that helps fuel their performance becomes a detriment to their system?
Rebuilding Safety After Outdoor Sports Trauma
Many athletes love and enjoy their time outside engaging in the sport of their choice, whether it be cycling, running, football/soccer, field hockey, swimming, basketball, etc. It can happen where an athlete becomes injured or has an outdoor sports accident that leaves a lasting impact. When we are talking about outdoor accidents this may include being hit by a car while cycling, having a near drowning experience, or getting injured while running on the trail and not having help nearby. The lasting impact may not just be physical. It could be mental or a combination of both physical and mental. In this case, we are talking about the mental impact after a doctor has cleared the athlete and the gear is ready to go, but as soon as the athlete sees the trail, the mountain, or the water, their body completely freezes up. In this case it isn’t a lack of grit, mental fortitude, devotion, determination, or lack of passion. Rather, it is a highly intelligent, automatic survival mechanism where the brain, particularly the amygdala, is doing its job by sending a signal of danger in effort to keep the athlete alive. So, then how do we work with experience to get back out there? Enter the bottom-up approach. And, as we dive in please remember that this blog post is not intended to be mental health advice, treatment, or a plan. Rather it is meant to bring hope and know that trauma is not the end of enjoying a sport.
The Difference Between Treating Trauma and Being Trauma-Informed in the World of Sports
For the past two weeks we have been talking about the importance of being trauma-informed when working with athletes. We now reach a point where we need to discuss the difference between treating trauma and being trauma-informed. While both aim to support athletes, they are two different scopes of practice, clinical boundaries, and ultimate objectives. So let’s dive into our discussion!
Trauma-Informed Approach to Sports and Working Athletes Part 2
This week we continue with our discussion about the importance of a trauma-informed approach in sport psychology. Our focus switches to 6 Guiding Principles of a Trauma-Informed Approach introduced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2018). As a gentle reminder, the 6 Guiding Principles are the daily behavioral values used to achieve the R’s discussed last week.
Trauma-Informed Approach to Sports and Working Athletes Part 1
Many of us have heard the old athletic mantra: Leave your problems at the locker room door or something similar. For decades, traditional sports culture has demanded that performers push through pain, bury their emotions, and rely on sheer "mind over matter" to win. This approach has cost many athletes when it comes to their mental health and from a neurobiological perspective. The leave your problems in the locker room approach ignores a fundamental truth: the body keeps score, and athletes cannot simply uncouple their lived histories from their physical performance.
Athlete Identity: The Impact of Social Media
We live in the day and age of social media. We have Instagram, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Reddit, and Pinterest to name a few. Approximately 63.9% to 68.7% of the world's population uses social media. This number differs slightly depending on where one pulls the information and from what year. The idea here is that many, many people use social media, and athletes are no exception. Social media is allowing athletes to build personal brands, control their narratives, and engage with their fan base, which all impact their athlete identity. While the above are generally considered to be positives, there is another side that we need to consider - the negatives. Athletes are more exposed to intense public scrutiny, social comparison, and mental health challenges. In this post we look at the good, the bad, and everything in between.
Brief Introduction to the Psychology of Athlete Retirement
Last week, we revisited the topic of athlete identity in preparation for this week. Why? For the following reason. As important as athlete identity is for driving high performance and motivation in sports, athlete identity is a key predictor of athlete adjustment trajectories, though the mechanisms are not as clearly established (Haslam et al., 2021b; Haslam et al., 2024). Whether athlete, coach, sport and performance professional, or mental health counselor, understanding athlete identity is crucial. It also means that, given we don’t know the mechanisms, we must pay attention and remember to work with an athlete as a whole person.
Athlete Identity: What Is It?
As a working definition, identity is the amalgamation of memories, experiences, relationships, and values that a person uses to help define a sense of self. New experiences and facets can be incorporated through time. Remember, no definition is perfect and researchers are always learning more. For now, this definition will serve our purpose. Let’s begin by highlighting a couple key points from this definition.
What Do Rugby and Artistic Swimming Have in Common? Part 2
Welcome to part 2 in this series about artistic swimming and rugby. Hopefully, last week encouraged everyone to learn more about both of these sports and any associated biases. Now it is time to look at these two sports through the lens of stigma. While these two sports may seem vastly different, how they are impacted by stigma brings them closer together as they are often misunderstood by the general public. These misconceptions include the nature of their athleticism, the intense physical impacts, and the gender-based stereotypes. Let’s begin our exploration on the impacts of stigma on these two sports.
What Do Rugby and Artistic Swimming Have in Common? Part 1
How often do we even think about comparing rugby and artistic swimming? Probably not too often, however, there is an important reason to explore these two sports and next week we will dive more deeply into this topic.
Building Creativity for Athletes
How often do people hear creativity, sports, and athletes in the same sentence? Chances are rare, if at all Yet, creativity can be one of the most essential topics in sports (Fardilha & Allen, 2020; Rasmussen et al., 2019). When we think about athletic creativity from a sport psychology perspective, many minds go to encouraging exploration, varied training, and open-ended problem solving, thus encouraging athletes to expand their flexibility and ability to identify novel solutions. The result is increased confidence and performance from the exposure to the above ideas, in addition to other topics such as the introduction of novel ideas, the use of visualization, and adapting creative mental exercises, like role-playing and including creative non-sport activities. Mouth full! Yep! So let’s break this down a little bit and make it fun.
Sport Psychology and Training Indoors
Chances are that many people dread the thought of training indoors because the experience is not the same. There are not the same cues that people experience when they are outdoors training such as the wind, sights, and a chance to practice cornering. That can make the experience not as enjoyable. We all lack the opportunity to practice certain skills, like cornering, but at the same time gain the opportunity to practice others, like cadence.
The Beauty of Winter
Winter mental health themes often focus around Seasonal Affective Disorder, winter blues, Depressive symptoms, isolation, anxiety, etc. All of these themes are important to discuss, as they are very real. And there is also room to spend some time inviting the beauty of nature and the winter season into the discussion remembering that winter is one of the seasons of the Earth and has its lessons for us.
Mind-Body Connection
The mind-body connection is the intricate, bi-directional relationship that exists between our thoughts, emotions, and physical health and the body. What is important to note here is that we are talking about a connection. The mind and the body are not two separate entities, rather they are interconnected and influence each other. There is growing research that is now demonstrating how both the mind and the body have the potential to impact cardiovascular health negatively and positively (Levine, 2019).
The Masks We Wear: Through the Lens of Persona, Masking, and Code-Switching
This is the time of year when people who celebrate Halloween begin to think about their costumes or maybe they already have their costume picked out by this point. Some of these costumes may include a mask to create the desired effect. Masks, however, serve other purposes besides dressing up for Halloween, and some of these purposes and variants will be discussed in this post.
Changing the Stigma Surrounding Mental Health
Mental health and stigma are words that are often used together, though there is hope for a future where that is not the case. The stigma surrounding mental health is insidious, embedded on many levels and can have harmful consequences. This post hopes to explore the topic of mental health stigma in hopes of inspiring everyone to do their part to help break this stigma, which can only be done if we all work together.
Why Mental Health?: Through the Lens of Emotional Regulation, Social Connection, and Systemic Environmental Systems
Yes, mental health. I said it, and it is a topic that must keep coming up because of how essential it is to our overall well-being and quality of life. Mental health, like physical health, exists on a continuum (Menefee et al., 2022). Think about this as shades of gray between white and black. Mental health is not all or nothing nor is it an isolated aspect of being human. Mental health is linked to our physical health, emotional well being, and social relationships.
The Power of Narrative and Reframing
We often craft narratives or stories in our head about events, experiences, people, places, etc., which, given what the brain is programmed to do, makes sense. In the process, we may adjust, add, or omit facts or aspects to make the story fit. When we craft narratives or stories our brain accesses the parts that are involved in emotional, processing, memory, and social cognition (Martinez-Conde et al., 2019). While there is plenty of neuroscience research that talks about the specifics, we will not dive into that here and now. If you would like to, the research is interesting and Google Scholar is a great tool for investigating this topic. Our focus takes us down a different path.
Welcome Autumn!
The green of summer fades into fiery reds, dazzling yellows, and soft oranges. The flowers of summer bear fruit and we begin to enjoy winter squash, apples, cranberries, and sweet potatoes. Along with the unique astronomical phenomena and the beautiful change in color palette, this time of year often elicits different themes that invite reflection.
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