Mental Health Performance - Psychological Sports Trauma & Athletes
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: Psychological Sports Trauma & Mental Blocks
Many people may know someone close to them that had severely injured themselves in a type of collision, which resulted in that person experiencing secondary psychological issues stemming from the pain such as anxiety or depression. There is a good chance that many people would be willing to label the accident that occurred as a traumatic event. But if I were to tell those same people that this ‘collision’ occurred during a sport competition event, it is possible that many people would be less willing to label that as a ‘psychologically traumatic’ event. In fact, there is no diagnostic criteria for Psychological Sports Trauma, yet millions of people participate in sports every year and are potentially susceptible to these issues. I believe a more serious discussion needs to be had on widespread psychological trauma experienced during sport performance. For this Training Report, I want to discuss what Psychological Sports Trauma is & why the overwhelming majority of effective sport psychology work needs to be rooted trauma work. Let’s begin by discussing what Psychological Sports Trauma is.
Part I. Sport Psychology, Neuroscience & Psychological Sports Trauma (The Yips)
First, trauma can simply be defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. When we think of ‘traumatic’ events, we usually only consider circumstances such as car accidents, the death of a loved one, or having experienced severe abuse. But trauma is also pervasive in sports performance. Athletes can have Psychological Sports Trauma that extends from poor performance outcomes, sports injuries, to negative relationships with coaches and mentors. An example of this would be how athletes experiencing sport injuries are traumatized both psychologically and physically (these events are processed through the central nervous system). Even after physical rehabilitation, this trauma can lead to behaviors such as ‘muscle guarding’ or ‘paralysis by analysis’ which adversely affects automatic sports performance movements (e.g. the Yips in baseball). Regardless of where someone fits on the spectrum of traumatic experiences, I’ve found that athletes experiencing mental blocks or difficulty with mental performance during sport competition typically have unresolved trauma that needs to be processed whether it be from sport or outside of it. But what does this unresolved trauma look like inside the body and brain?
In a medical hypothesis research article, titled Brainspotting: Sustained attention, spinothalamic tracts, thalamocortical processing, and the healing of adaptive orientation truncated by traumatic experience, the authors propose an interesting theory regarding unprocessed stress in the body ‘distress which swamps the individual’s emotion regulation capacities also disrupts the smooth functioning of the brain’s information processing streams. While these have evolved to confer on the human brain an astonishing capacity for information analysis and response generation their very complexity can result in different strands remaining separate. This disaggregation sends error messages into consciousness through unwelcome thoughts, images, affects, moods and body sensations. Experiences which have not been assimilated are tagged by a body feeling which feels disruptive or distressing’ (Corrigan, Grand & Raju 2015). So with that being said, let’s examine what this looks like in sports and performance situations.
Part II. Psychological Demands Of Athletes
Sport and performance environments are both physically and psychologically demanding. Performers need to be synchronized and automatic in everything they do during competition day. So when high performance individuals feel physically prepared but are unable to mentally perform psychologically at the level they want, this can be a very unsettling experience. For instance, both environments usually activate the sympathetic nervous system more so than the parasympathetic nervous system. Because both events induce high stress, our Limbic system is first in line to process the information that our brains are receiving. This is important because when high quantities of stressful information are being received, they can activate psychological defense systems that people use to help cope with stress and trauma (e.g. fight or flight). These defense systems are not helpful towards enhancing performance and will continue to erode the confidence and psychological fortitude of the athlete.
Usually once athletes have been unable to resolve the situation on their own, they will seek guidance from sport psychologists or mental performance experts. Unfortunately during these consultations clinicians and mental performance coaches will usually only employ cognitive behavioral techniques or ‘distraction’ strategies in an effort to help ‘reduce’ the intensity of these symptoms. These are only management techniques and do not directly confront the underlying issue, which means that the performer will ultimately be doomed to ‘managing’ the issue rather than directly processing and moving through the psychological obstacle. Obviously, there are individuals who have had tremendous success with these types of management interventions, but the vast majority of clients I have worked with have reported unsatisfying results from a cognitive behavioral management approach. So with that being said, let’s look at why sport psychology and mental performance work should come from a trauma therapy perspective.
Part III. Athletes, Brainspotting, The Yips & Psychological Sports Trauma
I believe that anxiety that occurs during sport performance is most likely not exclusive to sporting events. I find more often than not that athletes with anxiety typically will find these symptoms occurring in other areas of their life. Therefore, athletes interested in addressing these issues would significantly benefit from pursuing different forms of trauma therapy such as Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Brainspotting, & EMDR. As previously mentioned trauma can be stored in the form of body sensations and deep within the unconscious. The previously mentioned clinical interventions allow the patient to both process what is happening from a somatic and psychological standpoint. Again, trauma does not have to only stem from ‘severe’ incidences such as abuse or the death of a loved one. Invasive surgeries, repetitive sport injuries, negative social interactions and other incidences that might be classified as ‘minor events’ can have a profound impact on an individuals psyche and are frequently downplayed as insignificant by athletes.
But there is one more point to make about the importance for the field sport psychology to make a shift to more of a trauma-focused approach. While therapy is meant to help patients get grounded, sport psychology can positively influence the field of mental health by helping patients get to the point where they are ‘flying’. The reason for this is because I believe sport psychology has the perception of ‘enhancing’ performance whereas mental health treatment has too much negative stigma associated with it. Even though the vast majority of people think that the only reason you go to see a clinician is because one’s psychological disposition is seriously dis-regulated, the fact of the matter is that having positive mental health will ultimately lead to high performance outcomes for both athletes and non-athlete populations.
Part IV. Brainspotting As A Sport Performance Intervention
Trauma is far more prevalent than we care to admit as a society. When it comes to athletes throughout the different sport populations, I would argue that the vast majority of individuals that ultimately decide to consult with sport psychologists, mental performance consultants and licensed therapists are most likely dealing with unresolved trauma that will probably not be effectively addressed by cognitive behavioral interventions, but rather through deep processing of the unconscious and somatic memory through psychodynamic psychotherapy and Brainspotting. I believe that experts within the field of sport psychology need to be on the forefront of helping promote the fact that mental health is in fact mental performance and that these topics are not unrelated but in fact directly tethered to one another. If we can successfully do this, athletes looking to work through their mental blocks will be better situated to move through their trauma towards their ideal ‘mental state’ rather than feeling stuck because of their unresolved trauma. That’s a win for everyone!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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