Sports Performance and Trauma Psychology Information

Mental health and performance issues in sport show up in many forms, and at the core

they involve distressing emotion associated with a difficult event. If inadequately

processed, the incident can be experienced by an athlete as traumatic.

What happens then, is that when an athlete finds him or herself in a similar situation in

the future, those unpleasant emotions come rushing back and the past has become

present.

So, it’s important for you as an athlete (and those closest to you) to learn how to

manage your response to this trauma. To do so, we first need to look at what causes

trauma in the first place.

Sport trauma happens when distressing emotions and sensations from an experience

are insufficiently processed and held in the body. It’s very similar to trauma in any other

area of your life. Something troubling happens, it imprints a difficult emotion, and now

trauma symptoms and responses are present.

In sports, we often don’t think of situations and experiences as being traumatic.

Here are a few examples of disruptive and anxiety inducing

experiences in sport

• Making a mistake to lose the game.
• Getting injured (e.g. concussions are a traumatic brain injury) and being away from your team
• Getting yelled at in front of the team.
• Playing against an intimidating opponent.
• Getting pulled out of the game after a mistake.

On the surface these may seem like incidental things that happen to all athletes. So why

would we label them as traumatic?

Well, the situations themselves aren’t necessarily traumatic, but they have the potential

to be traumatic, whether subtle or severe. It’s all based on how the athlete and their

support system respond to the situation or incident and how intense the direct felt

experience and emotions are for the athlete.

Let’s use playing against an intimidating opponent as an example.

When we face an intimidating opponent and become insecure, feeling intimidated, and

performing poorly, it’s not uncommon to get frustrated with ourselves.

Then what happens is we might beat ourselves up over not being able to handle facing

them, and subconsciously we could grow to fear facing them again.

Then when we play against them, or a similar opponent in the future, we might

automatically feel those difficult emotions and could have trouble performing.

This then reinforces the trauma, and it becomes a cycle.

Another example is when a player is yelled at in front of their teammates. Yeah, this

happens to pretty much every athlete. But sometimes it can have a lasting impact.

Especially if the athlete is younger.

The player could feel embarrassed or humiliated and upset about not only the yelling

but playing badly. Then what can happen is the development of a fear of failure or of

making mistakes and an imbalanced need for social approval.

Both of these mindsets could delay a players growth process.

Looking over the examples from above, it’s safe to say that these won’t always be

traumatic experiences for all athletes. That’s because everyone responds to things

differently.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad that a situation became traumatic for you, it’s just your direct

felt experience. And the important thing is recognizing that it was traumatic to some

degree, so we can then work on handling it.

But before we move on to the strategy you can use to handle trauma as an athlete,

there’s one key piece of information we need to discuss.

And that’s the fact that developmental trauma is subjective and personal.

This doesn’t mean you want to tiptoe around in fear. Instead, recognize that any

situation you’ve faced that resulted in extreme distressing emotions may have been

traumatic.

And when something is traumatic, it will impact your actions in the future. The reason it’s

important to recognize trauma (whether subtle or severe) and work through it is that it

will help you overcome blocks that are likely holding you back within your game.

No athlete wants to underperform, yet, when we’re dealing with sports trauma, whether

aware of it or not, we will likely perform below our potential in a similar situation in the

future.

Sports trauma results in a specific pattern forming in your subconscious. So, for our

reprocessing to be effective we can work on changing the subconscious beliefs in

relation to the trauma.

This takes two things: consistency and repetition. So, if you’re ready to manage your

trauma as an athlete, here are the tools you can use to do so…

• Tool #1: Cognitive Restructuring

Cognitive restructuring is a part of cognitive behavioral therapy. It works to alter your

natural thought patterns by identifying the negative thoughts you have and replacing

them with more positive and productive ones.

While that may sound complicated, the way you can use cognitive restructuring as an

athlete is quite simple.

Here’s what you want to do:

• Make a list of all the thoughts you have about a traumatic situation.
• Create a new list of positive or neutral statements that would increase acceptance and commitment to your growth and healing process.
• Repeat that new list to yourself at least once a day.

The first part of the tool involves you brainstorming how you think during a traumatic

moment and in relation to it. For example, you may think, I never play well in pressure-

filled moments. Or you may say, I wonder what coach is thinking.

Once you have those outlined, you want to create a new list. Take each statement and

come up with a positive or neutral and preferable alternative that works to ease into

healthy confidence or calm you down.

The last part is where the change occurs, and that’s repeating the statements to

yourself often, revising and updating whenever needed.

The more you repeat the statements, the more you retrain your brain to think in a new

way. By observing your thoughts and altering your perspective, you can begin to adapt

how you feel in relation to traumatic events.

• Tool #2: Visualization

Another way you can work on managing trauma as an athlete is by practicing

visualization.

Visualization allows you to see yourself perform in the safety of your mind. But what’s

even more helpful, is that you can bring emotion into the scene. This helps to

reassociate how you feel in relation to the traumatic situation.

For example, if you begin to feel intimidated as soon as you see a certain opponent, you

can work to change how you feel in that moment through visualization.

Another example is if you made a mistake at the end of the game. What you can do is

use visualization to increase your confidence in that moment.

Here’s how the visualization will work for managing trauma:

• Get into a quiet location, close your eyes, and take about ten deep breaths.
• Begin to visualize the situation where you experience trauma (feel the normal negative emotions).
• Now switch that feeling for a feeling of ease, relaxation, peaceful, or however else you would like to feel.
• Then see yourself perform well and feel successful afterwards.

You want to repeat this visualization a few times a day to begin building more confidence and altering your subconscious beliefs in relation to the trauma.

Cognitive restructuring and visualization are powerful tools you can use to manage

sports trauma. But remember, they must be used consistently!

Now, if you’re looking for a more personal approach, then you could benefit from one-

on-one trauma-informed and performance counselling.

With mental performance counselling, we will work with you to identify your trauma

points and figure out what triggers it and how it is adversely impacting your

performance.

Then, we will work together to decide on the best course of action and tools to use to

help you overcome your trauma so you can perform freely and with full confidence.