Mental Health Performance - Baseball Yips: Why Traditional Sport Psychology Won’t Help & Why Brainspotting Will
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: What Are The Yips & Yips Psychology
I have talked extensively about mental blocks, and topics related to the yips. However in my work with athletes I have found that this is still a very misunderstood issue, especially in the sport of baseball. Many people (even many sport psychologists) are still under the impression that you can ‘manage’ the symptoms of the yips, or train through these issues. The fact of the matter is that the yips are a much more complicated issue that requires a solid understanding of basic neuroscience principles.
For today’s Training Report I want to explain what the Yips are. In part I. I will explore a sport psychology analysis of the yips. In part II. I will review the neuroscience behind a technique that can help clear the Yips called Brainspotting. Finally in part III. I will explore a strategy that baseball players (and all athletes) can use which helps reduce the symptoms of the Yips. For now, lets review what the yips are and how the neuroscience of athletes makes this a unique issue to work through.
Part I. Sport Psychology Analysis Of The Yips
When people ask ‘what are the yips’ they are referring to a phenomenon when an athlete can no longer perform an athletic movement despite no current presence of an injury. When athletes address this with sport psychologists, they are usually given the impression that the yips are a type of mental block that must be treated as the primary diagnosis. Specific sport psychology techniques are then used to directly manage the mental block. But the truth is that the yips are NOT the actual diagnosis, which unfortunately renders traditional sport psychology interventions as highly ineffective. This is because the yips are almost ALWAYS a symptom of deep, unprocessed trauma which requires a completely different approach. Why is this the case?
When an athlete sustains trauma either during or outside of sport that exceeds their individual stress-threshold tolerance, their brain creates a special type of memory that is ‘tagged’ with a body sensation (examples of trauma include severe car accidents or sports humiliations). This special type of memory file, which acts as a type of alarm system keeps the athlete in a state of hypervigilance. This ‘alarm system’ mental state produces symptoms such as freeze responses, muscle tension, increased heart rate, and difficulty with focus (e.g. the pitcher who can no longer locate the ball to the catcher, or the player who can no longer hit a ball) when the individual athlete is experiencing stressful events. How does the brain do this?
The area of the brain that is responsible for creating these symptoms is referred to as the subcortical brain structures. It has a built in ‘fight, flight, freeze, fear’ response to heighten our survival capabilities. For instance, if you recognize you are being chased by a tiger, your brain will flood your body with stress-related hormones which usually results in acting quickly rather than spending excessive amounts of time deciding what to do (even a freeze response accomplishes this, but in the form of ‘play dead’). Traditional sport psychology approaches operate under the impression that athletes experiencing this just need more insight. But structures within the subcortical brain such as the limbic system don’t communicate through language nor possess a linear sense of time, which are requirements for traditional sport psychology interventions to work (e.g. you can’t provide more insight to the limbic system if that area of the brain doesn’t use traditional language models or perceive linear time). Again, THE YIPS ARE SYMPTOMS that are a representation of the true underlying issue. Until the unprocessed trauma is cleared and the alarm system is turned off, the mental block will remain in place as a form of protection for the athlete. One highly effective intervention that can be used to help with this issue and access the areas of the brain that do not effectively respond to traditional sport psychology is Brainspotting.
Part II. The Neuroscience Of Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a brain-based psychotherapy technique that utilizes the baseball player’s field of vision to identify unresolved psychological issues. In Brainspotting we say ‘where you look affects how you feel’ and through this process, athletes have the ability to access the parts of their brain that traditional sport psychology approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy are unable to do. Because the goal of all sport psychology interventions are to help individuals move from dysregulation to regulation, Brainspotting focuses on engaging the regions of the brain that are responsible for regulation and bypass the regions that are not!
This results in athletes being able to directly address the true ‘underlying’ issue (AKA unprocessed trauma) that has created conflict, allowing athletes to reduce the need to ‘cope’. This physiological approach can help baseball players (and all athlete populations) achieve their desired psychological outcomes. One Brainspotting technique that baseball players can use to begin their journey towards reducing and clearing the symptoms of the yips is called vergence.
Part III. How Sport Psychologists Use Vergence To Help Athletes
There are many effective approaches within Brainspotting used to help athletes deal with mental blocks. One approach, termed Vergence, can help calm athletes when they are experiencing mental blocks by triggering what is known as the Oculocardiac Reflex. One reason Vergence is so effective is because when the Oculocardiac Reflex is stimulated, the vagus nerve triggers a relaxation response, which can slow the heart rate by up to 20% (Bowan, 2008).
In order to effectively use Vergence, athletes need to direct their eyes to a visual point in front of them (e.g., the tip of a water bottle) for approximately 3-5 seconds. Then, they should shift their visual focus to the area directly behind the point they were looking at for 3-5 seconds. Once they are finished looking at the area behind the original point, they have completed one cycle. Athletes should complete several minutes of Vergence cycles until they feel the desired effect of relaxation and focus (Bowan, 2008). If you would like to learn more on vergence, check out this previous Training Report issue I wrote on Vergence.
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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