Ep. 63: Rewriting the Rules - Mental Health Acceptance in Sports

🎧 Enjoying our show? Your support keeps us going! Become a valued subscriber and set your own monthly contribution. We believe in you, our incredible listeners, determining the value of our content. Your subscription empowers us to keep delivering top-notch episodes that inspire, inform, and entertain. Together, let's fuel this journey and shape the future of our podcast. Click the link below and let's create something amazing, hand in hand. Support the show

On this week's episode: mental health acceptance in sports.

Brace yourself for a powerful discussion inspired by Lee Dixon and Robbie Mustoe, who open the door to their personal experiences with mental health during their football careers in a recent NBC Premier League Mornings segment. As we navigate this labyrinth of mental health in professional sports, we reflect on the scarcity of support these players received during their active years, and the significant strides made in resources for present-day players.

This episode goes beyond the usual playbook, venturing into an important, often overlooked realm—awareness, and acceptance of mental health in sports. Together, we dissect the urgent necessity for coaches to be vigilant about potential mental health struggles their athletes may endure, and stand as a beacon guiding them towards the help they need.

We're not just here to talk; we're here to transform.

Join us as we challenge the conventional segregation of mental and physical health, and advocate for the priceless value of mindfulness for athletes. From exploring the spectrum of mental health needs among athletes, to the role of holistic wellness and the indispensable part coaches play in managing athlete's mental health needs, we touch on a lot of the issues, but really only scratch the surface.

Let's kick off the stigma, lace up our boots, and rewrite the rules of the game together. Tune in as we continue this crucial conversation.

Social Media Mentioned:

Twitter: @mindfulsportdoc

Instagram: @mindful_sport_podcast,  @mspe_institute, @mindfulsportdoc

YouTube: Mindful Sport Performance Podcast

Websites Mentioned:

www.mindfulsportperformance.org

www.enduromind.com

Books Mentioned

Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement

Remember to rate our podcast and subscribe to our YouTube Channel! 

Very much appreciated, 

Keith, Tim, and Taylor (our producer!) 

Transcript

Keith : 0:12

Hi and welcome back to the Mindfuls and Sport Performance Podcast. I'm Dr Keith Kaufman.

Tim: 0:16

I'm Dr C.

Keith : 0:18

And I'm Taylor.

Tim: 0:18

Brown.

Keith : 0:20

And thanks to everyone for coming back to join us for, hopefully, what is another interesting conversation. What we want to talk about today was actually a pretty interesting organic moment of live television and how it relates to some of the work that we all do. This was recently on weekend coverage of the Premier League. The English Premier League NBC for those who don't follow have the rights the television broadcast rights to the Premier League and they have a studio show, which is actually really great, and one of the things that came up this week was talking about the role of mental health in soccer or football, and what blossomed from a prompt that the studio host, rebecca Lowe, gave to the two analysts who were joining her, who are both former professional soccer players Lee Dixon and Robbie Musto was a pretty candid and awesome exploration of their experiences with mental health in pro sport in soccer, and how things have evolved in recent years and the different things that are available now to pro players that weren't available to them when they played, and so it was really really interesting and powerful.

Keith : 1:37

I was incredibly struck by it and thought it would be a fascinating thing for us to explore on the podcast.

Keith : 1:42

So essentially, the conversation suggested that there was very little available to Lee and Robbie when they were playing and they felt a lot of acute pressure to perform, so much so that they talked about toward the end of the clip that the actual 90 minutes of soccer were pretty miserable for them, pretty, pretty unfun.

Keith : 2:14

And they both expressed, I think, some appreciation for the increased resources that current players have and more attention to mental health, and that more players were speaking out and talking about their mental health and advocating more for what they need, but how that was really not possible, not available to them when they were players. So I guess what I hope to discuss with you guys today, with Tim and Taylor, is how do we feel about this, how do we feel about the state of mental health in sports, the sort of interface, the role with sport, psychology, and maybe how far we've come in a relatively short time and what are some areas that we still have to go? And maybe, most specifically, what role does mindfulness play in some of what's happening or some of what could happen next? So, guys, I know that I shared the clip with you. I was excited, I kind of geeked out on it and said, hey, check this out, this is amazing, this was this totally organic live TV moment. I'm curious what your reactions were when you saw this the discussion amongst those three people.

Tim: 3:22

I mean, I thought just the fact that they were having this conversation felt so important and I was really quite impressed, actually, with these two commentators, robin Lee, how much they were willing to share. And I realized it's going to retrospective, you know, in terms of like this was happening to me 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but the vulnerability that was there, right, and even though they did refer to this idea like, yeah, we kind of had to develop thick skin and you really just couldn't talk about that stuff, you couldn't share your fear, you couldn't share your anxiety, I mean it was pretty clear they weren't saying that it wasn't there, they were just saying they had to bottle it up, they had to push it down, they had to find a way to kind of get through without addressing it. And I thought it was really at one point and I can't remember which one, but they shared they just had this interaction with a young soccer player, a former pro. He'd been a pro.

Tim: 4:20

He dicks in, yeah, and he ran to this guy on an airplane, you know, and he'd been in the pros for about a year and he was saying, like I'm actually going to leave, like it's an honor to meet you, I just wanted to introduce myself but like I'm actually leaving the pros, I'm not going to play anymore. Like the pressure is too much, it's like my heart's not in it, I can't, you know, I can't keep doing this. And it's something that I thought a lot about as a coach. It's something I have thought a lot about just doing the work that we do.

Tim: 4:52

How many great athletes don't get the chance to show their greatness because they don't have, like the mental and emotional support that they need? Like, yeah, if you are someone who can kind of, you know, adapt to that environment and sustain for any period of time, we're pushing all those emotions down, which is an unsustainable strategy in the long, long term. But like someone could probably do it for a few years, you know. But like what if you're not someone who could do that for a few years? What if you're not someone who could do that even for a year? Right, and yet you could still contribute right To a league, to a team, to a sport, but just you know, because you're not allowed to talk about your fear and your anxiety, you know you don't get the underlying anxiety disorder, eating disorder, whatever it is. You know you don't get that treated and that's just you, just weakness right, and you just get pushed out Like oh it's so, I don't know. I was so glad that they were, they were opening this door.

Taylor: 5:56

Yeah, when I was watching the clip I had a few thoughts, one being and Tim, you had mentioned it just about these are kind of I guess I would call them middle-aged men who had maybe played 20 plus years ago, and the first thing I thought was I wonder how indicative their experience is of the players who are playing currently, or the athletes who are playing currently in professional soccer and other professional sports and in college athletics. You know, at the University of Pennsylvania we have a sports psychologist who, well, we have one sports psychologist on staff for I believe oh man, I don't know how many sports I want to say upwards of 20 sports, maybe a thousand student athletes I feel like I'm getting those numbers really wrong, but it's one person trying to service a very large group of student athletes. So there are these resources available and we do have that person address our coaches quite frequently and the athletes are made pretty aware that that person is there and that person is available for them, though I do think you know, it is an underutilized resource. Now, I know I spent time working on a professional rugby team and we didn't have a clinical sports psychologist on staff or a clinical psychologist on staff. We had me as a mental performance coach that didn't really address clinical mental health issues. I was mainly working with athletes on performance, specifically performance related things that they wanted to talk about.

Taylor: 7:44

But a lot of times I did hear about their anxiety, you know, if we had, you know, we did have one guy on the team who was struggling with substance abuse and we kind of had to direct him to outside resources for help with that. I guess my initial response was what are the resources that are available now? Are they different in different sports? And then are they different in different contexts? Or you know, what does it look like for high school athletes, what does it look like for college athletes, what does it look like for professional athletes? And are there just different places that have more or less, and is that consistent across those contexts? So that was my initial response.

Tim: 8:38

But I just like brought back a memory what you were sharing, you know, because I do think one of the things that they were trying to highlight was that and even though this example, right, this anecdote that Lee had shared, was recent, you know, like they were also saying like it does feel so different now there is more openness, now People are able to share about their own vulnerability, their fears and anxieties, right, and I think, in general, there does seem to be less stigma overall in terms of seeking help. I know that there is very much still stigma in society and I think, even more so when it comes to the world of athletics. I think that there's still this really kind of like intransigent kind of belief system around, right, like that stuff is weakness somehow, right, but I do think that that voice is quieting down. And so I know, in my experience, you know, early on in my career I worked in college counseling centers and while I was there, I was also working with athletic teams, you know, and so I got to see like live, you know, like both sides of this coin, because some of the people that would come into the counseling center were the athletes, right, you know, we tried to be very, very mindful and intentional about like dual relationships and the boundaries and stuff like that, letting know that the athletes, you know, if they didn't want to talk to me because I might be working with their team, they didn't have to talk to me, that kind of thing.

Tim: 10:07

But you know, just because of the limited staff and limited resources sometimes it just it kind of had to be that way, right when I was doing some clinical work, also with someone who was on a team and it just like really highlighted for me, like I mean, there's really holistic perspective that we talk about a lot.

Tim: 10:25

But you know you can't parse out someone's vulnerability, someone's trauma history, someone's potential clinical diagnosis from their sport performance. If that is what's going on and I remember actually giving a talk at this rowing conference whereas in part kind of making this point you know, like, if you're working with a team, you know if you're working with a college team, you know if you're working with a women's team, all you need is five people on that team and you can be highly confident that someone has a history of sexual assault. If you're working with a men's team, that number only has to be 15 or 16. Right, but you think like that's not going to play a role in their internal life which is going to somehow impact their performance.

Tim: 11:05

And even during that talk, I shared a story when I was coaching. This is before I was a licensed mental health professional, so I was not in a position to help this person. But yeah, when I was coaching, I had this experience where one of my athletes just had not in the vote during the practice. I mean, it's very obvious, very clear. You know, we get off the water and they come up to me afterwards and I'm like what happened today?

Tim: 11:31

And they tell me that they were assaulted the night before.

Tim: 11:36

As a coach, I feel like you have to be cognizant, like that.

Tim: 11:40

Your athletes have that stuff in their lives that you that like as a trusted caretaker, really, in these athletes lives, they might come to you with this stuff, all right, and so it's not your job, it wasn't my job in that moment to help her with that, you know, but to help her connect to the resources she needed. Absolutely right, to make sure that she was feeling safe, talking to me, to make sure that she knew that I would help her get connected to the sport, to the support that she needed. You know, and I was like lucky that I had some awareness of the mental health world and the counseling center and like where to go, but I could so easily imagine a coach who's just like just there to make them perform better, right, and to not really be thinking about. Oh my God, what am I going to do if an athlete comes to me with something like this? Or if I notice symptoms of an eating disorder in one of my athletes, like you know? Yeah, how am I going to respond to that?

Keith : 12:36

So I think a really interesting way to frame this, because I love what both of you are saying. It's almost like if we take a 30,000 foot view on what's happening, what's happening in the field of sports psychology, less clinical sports psychology, what's happening in the realm of sport, or even we could probably broaden it out to sort of elite performance right, because I don't think sport is the only place where this happens, it just so happens. So I meditate each morning and one of my favorite apps to use there's free advertising, I suppose, for this app, but I use Insight Timer a lot just for its versatility, and one of the things that Insight Timer has started doing in recent years I guess it's been going on for a while is they always have a quote every morning and I kind of look forward to the quote, like what's the quote going to be today? Because sometimes I really love them and, interestingly, I think the quote from today is a really fascinating way to frame what we're getting at here. So it's from Nathaniel Brandon and the quote is the first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance, and it feels to me like what we're talking about, like what, lee, what Robby, we're getting at is that we are very much in the stage of awareness, that there is more awareness now, there is more of a platform to address these things. And, tim, I think you were just speaking to that. As a coach, you need to be aware that these things are happening.

Keith : 14:07

And, taylor, what you were saying about Penn, I think that's probably pretty typical in a way. There's this weird tension, there's this weird irony, right. It's like well, we have a sports psychologist for hundreds, if not thousands, of athletes, and yet this is someone who's underutilized. There's this weird like the ratio is so low and yet the usage numbers may not be exactly what we would expect, and I think some of that is kind of what they were discussing in the clip. In fact, one of the things they referenced is I wonder if this is part of what Spurred? I find that I used the word Spurred for I'm about to say Spurred on this particular discussion on the studio show because the current Tottenham Hotspur manager and Pasta Coglu was talking last week about how sometimes the lives of football players are idealized and in fact, they have issues just like anyone else, and just because we may look at them and think, wow, they played this game for a living, they lived a high life, they make all this money, they've got plenty of mental health issues, right. I'm paraphrasing him here, but I think that's part of what kind of spurred on this studio discussion and it's like yeah, I think we have increasing awareness that there is a need that athletes are not invincible, that mental health is a big thing and that if we care about performance, right, if we care about results, we have to kind of think about this in a more holistic way, right? So I think there's been a lot of progress made in terms of that awareness piece. I think what we haven't really broken into yet to refer back to this quote, I don't think we've really gotten to a place of acceptance where it's like okay, now that we're aware of it, here's how we really integrate these kinds of services in a way that is embraced, that is accepted, that is accessible.

Keith : 16:08

I think even within the field of sport and performance psychology, there's been this really interesting movement now where I mean, certainly when I broke into this field, it was hard to even be a performance specialist Like Taylor you were talking about your role with the rugby team those kinds of roles didn't necessarily even exist, or if they did. They were few and far between. I think there's been a proliferation of those kinds of roles now, but we're almost now jumping right to wanting someone clinical like, not just a performance specialist but someone who's also a clinician, who can handle both right. So like a clinical sports psychologist is now, I think, a desirable skill set or a desirable credential set to have for a lot of these jobs, certainly in professional or higher level college sport. And what are the implications of that?

Keith : 16:55

Like, tim, you and I were talking earlier this morning about this that do you want somebody who is ostensibly the performance specialist also doing the mental health work, right? So if you have one person who's hired I don't know what the credentials are of the Penn person, taylor but you have one person who's in an athletics department or in a counseling center, who's the sports psych person, who's both a clinician and a performance person, what are the implications of that? Right? So this is like a Pandora's box in a lot of ways. Like it's great that there's so much more awareness that we can watch the Premier League on a Saturday or Sunday morning and that we could be privileged to a conversation like this. But I think it also highlights really the challenges that we still have around acceptance of kind of what do we do with this?

Tim: 17:46

Yes, and I've got a few thoughts Because, like I was sharing you know, like I was in that position where I was a staff person at the counseling center and doing this mental performance work with some of the teams you know, and it forced the issue in some ways of creating these dual relationships. I was in that position for about three years and I mean you know I don't nothing bad ever happened. You know, there was never a significant issue with any of the athletes who I ended up having to work with clinically and then also do the mental performance work. I mean I would love to be able to say that was like all the skillfulness on my part and the intentionality that my you know fellow colleagues and I and the coaches too, that we all like we got on the same page about what we would tell the athletes about who I was on my role, was like yes, absolutely. But I have to admit I also it was also luck, because when you're in that position, when you're in a multiple relationship like that, it is risky.

Tim: 18:49

I mean that's partly part of why it is emphasized in our ethics code, you know, to as a psychologist or as a mental performance consultant, to really be thoughtful and at all costs try to avoid those kinds of situations, right?

Tim: 19:03

Because even with all the intentionality and all the thoughtfulness, it could still create issues for the team, for the athletes that you're working with. You know, and so I think you know, there's enough resistance to the idea of, like, fully integrating a mental performance person or even a clinical sports psychologist, really embedding them into a team. I mean, really the direction we need to go in is a treatment team, right, there needs to be the clinical person who can deal with the clinical stuff, and there also needs to be the mental performance person who can do that without muddying the waters with the clinical stuff. And there needs to be, like the physio, the kinesiologist, who can do the body mechanic stuff. And it's like we're talking about this next level of embracing holistic wellness for these athletes, because I do think that is what is required for people to really perform optimally in a sustained way. But that's going to be a lot for people to to accept.

Taylor: 20:02

Another thought that I have here is I've experienced a lot of different I guess you can call them archetypes of athletes on teams with regard to mental health, mental performance, their openness to talk about that stuff and their level, the level with which they're equipped to handle that stuff. So one thing that's that's coming up in my mind and actually that came up when I was watching the clip originally is just the spectrum, the spectrum of how athletes of, I guess, the coping mechanisms, the, the adaptive coping mechanisms that they have for dealing with things like anxiety or depression, for instance. You know, on the rugby team, for instance, there were there were athletes who would even refuse to talk to me about performance related things. I had an athlete you know I was. I had kind of open hours for athletes to come talk to me and I wanted to kind of get through everybody and just have at least one conversation with everybody. And there was one guy I just I saw him in the training room and I said hey, you know when are you going to come talk to me? He said you're not getting in my head and that was, that was the only time we ever really talked and he was just very, very resistant to talking to me. But on the flip side, he, he was one of our best players and he was very solid, and he, he didn't really seem. You know, I know that there was probably nervousness, I know that there was probably some things going on there, but he never really seemed to be to be bothered too much by it. And then there were other athletes who were incredibly open as soon as I got there, they were in talking to me, they talked to me every week at the same time and so it was like, and those guys, they really wanted strategies to deal with the performance anxiety. They really they were really buying into the whole process.

Taylor: 22:16

And and I guess the question I have for you guys in the roles, in your roles, I guess the assumption we make is that everybody has some clinical mental health issue that they they need somebody to help them with. But you know, is that really? Is that really true? You know, are there people that that they do have some very well, maybe that experience these things less than other people? Are there people who are pretty just, well adjusted adults, who who don't really have any kind of significant mental health issue that they're going through? And then I know, I've certainly experienced people who just naturally are, they seem to be less anxious, they seem to just let things roll off their back a little bit more freely.

Taylor: 23:06

And now you know, I know I'm a person who experiences a significant level of anxiety in my life. I know there are people on the team that I coach right now that that just seem to be pretty easy going. They're not. They're not high stress individuals. So I guess you know what's the, what's the spectrum of of need that you see on teams and and with with athletes, I guess is what I'm asking. I guess does I think it's probably dangerous to go in either direction of oh, everybody needs this, or nobody needs this, you know. So what do you guys think about that?

Keith : 23:45

Yeah, I mean I think I have a lot of reactions to what you're asking. It's a great question and I think my experience is that you see things on teams, just like you see in the general population, that there are some people who have what you would say like a clinical level of need and then there's the majority of people who don't. And you know, I guess I do what I do for a living, so maybe I'm biased and believing that some degree of self awareness, some degree of self monitoring, some degree of self expression can be beneficial to everybody. That doesn't mean that you quote unquote need it or else you can't be successful.

Keith : 24:23

I think I guess part of what came up for me in listening to what you're saying, taylor, is another part of that clip toward the end, when they're talking about pressure and just talking about the significant amount of pressure, what it is like they were speaking about being a professional football player, a special soccer player. You're in this microscope and everything you do is analyzed. And now, in the time of social media and I was just talking to a journalist about this actually like just just how much scrutiny, like when you're a public figure, if you're in a semi public figure what, what kind of scrutiny, what it is like to operate in that system, in that world, and and how much you can take on and how difficult it can be to just do the things that we know lead to peak performance. If we're just going to talk about performance for a second right like like to be able to let go, to be able to trust yourself, to be able to just be in it, right, we talk about things in our, in our research, like flow quite a bit, to be in the flow of things. Well, the reality is you're in a pressure cooker. The reality is that's hard and and Lee and Robbie were talking about, frankly, the 90 minutes right of soccer were not particularly fun moments for them. In fact I think it was. Robbie said he could only let go a little bit when they were at three nil and there were 10 minutes left in the game, so a victory was assured. That's when he could take a deep breath and say, ah, okay, right.

Keith : 25:53

So I mean I think there's a lot here and and you know, we one of the things I love about the mindfulness and sport world is is how collegial we all are and collaborative and I think, like Garner and more and some of their work with Mac, that they've kind of looked at this a little bit in terms of what is subclinical versus clinical, level of of need and and how mindfulness can address it. It's hard for me and again maybe this is my bias, but it's hard for me to make a convincing argument that that people who play in this pressure cooker of sport or or certainly rise to a level words their lives can't benefit from subclinical care of some kind. You know, I think, like when I think about what what that rugby player said to you, taylor, if you're not getting in my head, I mean with all due respect to him, because I'm sure he's a wonderful player and a wonderful person that's just ignorance of what you were offering, right, I mean, I mean to me it's like some of this is a lack of understanding of of what are we really talking about here. But I absolutely agree that there's got to be a degree of nuance.

Keith : 26:57

I don't think it's helpful to now come at this and say everybody's got a mental health issue. Everybody needs to be treated, everyone needs to be in psychotherapy and you know clinical psychologists need to be working with every single athlete. Is that? I agree that that is not what this is about, and I think that's one of the challenges that our field has now. It's always been complicated being a sports psychologist because you're sandwiched together to entirely different professions kinesiology and psychology and now even on the psychology side, there's some divide between, like, what are we really talking about here? Are we talking about clinical levels of care? Are we talking about subclinical levels of care? It is a very, very nuanced discussion, which is why I love that clip so much.

Tim: 27:41

And yeah, and I just I want to add my two cents. I think this is such an important question you're asking Taylor and like um, and even I was saying before in that example of like oh yeah, a coach, if you're working with a large enough you're so small college team, like you can be pretty confident that some of your athletes have a trauma history, you know, and like that is something I think we need to be cognizant of. And I'm also aware that, like now, like everybody uses the word trauma to describe pretty much every hardship they've ever had. So, from that perspective, like yeah, everyone has a trauma history.

Tim: 28:21

But, like you know, there is a difference between what are, you know, capital T trauma and little T trauma, and there's also an individual difference. You know, not everyone who experiences capital T trauma gets PTSD right, like, and so kind of the point I was making before about how there are probably so many potentially great athletes out there who get quote unquote weeded out of the system because they don't have the support they need Well, what that leaves behind is the athletes who didn't need it, you know, who didn't need that support because they don't have a clinical mental health issue, right, or because they just naturally right the way they respond to the world. Maybe they have really high trait mindfulness, without ever even meditating, right, they just they can be more present, they can think, let things roll off their back. So it's like I think it is important to stay pretty emphatically no, not everyone like needs this, capital N needs this. But, just like Keith was saying, I personally think everyone could benefit from like doing some intentional reflecting on their coping mechanisms, because everyone experiences stress, right, and everyone responds to stress in some maladaptive ways and some adaptive ways, you know, and that balance is different for everybody and I think anyone could benefit from taking a close look at that with someone whose job it is to help them take a close look at that. However, I also know, in my private practice and my informed consent, I make sure to highlight the literature. Right, there's about 10% of people who pursue therapy who have negative outcomes. Right, it's not the kind of thing that, like, will help everyone, no matter what. Now, some of those outcomes are just it brought up feelings that I don't wanna have to feel, you know, which is a whole other thing. But, yeah, I think there are plenty of athletes out there who kind of can adapt and develop good coping methods.

Tim: 30:01

I mean, I even look back at myself and my own rowing career and, like, when I was a rower, I didn't know much about mindfulness. But when I look back at some of the things that I did internally, you know, like when we push off the dock, you know, I would kind of actively say to myself like all right, I can't write that paper, I can't study for this exam. Like I'm pure, I'm like out on the water, I'm in a boat, I'm like I'm not even touching dry land. I just might as well be here and focus on what I'm doing. Like I think that was pretty helpful to me, without any training whatsoever, you know, and I do think there's this kind of funny phenomenon this would be my hypothesis I don't know if there's research to back this up but that like in these youth sports, right, the people who do need more support, who might have clinical mental health stuff, like they kind of get weeded out because that support isn't as readily available.

Tim: 30:52

And so the athletes you have left over are the ones that can kind of manage more on their own and as they rise up into like the collegiate or the elite ranks I mean and of course when you look at epidemiological stuff, there's sometimes clinical mental health stuff doesn't manifest until you're in college or post college, right. So like you're still gonna see people who, in new ways, develop that kind of stuff, and then they kind of get weeded out, right. So then you get all the way up into the elite ranks and so what you have is like leftover, these people who maybe just temperamentally or naturally, right I figured out ways to cope or adapt. They've got heartiness, resilience, whatever you want to call it, and then the pressure from the environment creates problems, right. So it wasn't necessarily stuff like I was predisposed to having an anxiety disorder.

Tim: 31:39

But, oh my God, the pressure of having to win and perform can be at my best at every single moment.

Tim: 31:44

And if there's no space for me to be vulnerable, there's no space for me to let down, like I think that can start to create this much higher level of stress than perhaps they're used to.

Tim: 31:54

And every human being has a limit. Even if you have the most phenomenal coping mechanisms ever, right, like, there is still an amount of stress you might experience in your life where your coping mechanisms can't match that level of stress. That's not weakness, that's not a fault or a flaw, it's just human beings having limits, right. And so it's like, yeah, when you put these people, even really healthy, adaptive, resilient people, in a pressure cooker, sometimes bad stuff is gonna happen. And those people, I think it's why having sports psychologist, clinical medical professionals, whoever embedded in a team, like, if not even in a proactive way, although that would be my preference, but just as a safety net when the inevitable happens, right, like that, like, yeah, I'm stressed out because this is a stressful situation and it'll be helpful to talk about it, right, but that, to me, is different than your point, taylor, of like, not everyone necessarily needs it to perform well.

Taylor: 32:49

Yeah, I think that's a really important point that you just made for athletes to hear, for teams, for coaches to hear, Because I think there's we always wanna conceptualize things in black and white, in, you know, like binary basically, and we wanna say like, oh, it's either you just gotta tough it out, right, or it's, you know, we all wanna be in therapy and we wanna have these touchy-feely discussions and it's like I think that there's a fear, I think among coaches and athletes, of getting soft, there's a fear of talking about emotions, and I think there's that's why these important, that's why these discussions are so important, because you start to have more nuanced understanding of what is actually going on for athletes, what is actually being offered by folks like us, and you start to get in the nooks and crannies of these discussions in a much more productive way, because what you just described, any coach would be able to logically follow that and it's like, yeah, that makes sense, that's not scary, right. Like that's like you just kind of described like the life cycle, I guess, of an athlete and how that has you kind of get higher, like the pressure, you know, might get more. It might bring other things to bear. The other thing that I was thinking about is it's like to your points of acceptance. You know, Keith, you're talking about awareness, and now acceptance is that the folks, the athletes who might not necessarily need the clinical treatment I think those are the people who are gonna really be the difference makers here in terms of finding this acceptance, because, although they might not feel that this is something that they need, I think there needs to be an empathy on their part to recognize that their experience isn't everybody's experience.

Taylor: 35:04

You know, and I've definitely felt that just in life in general not just being an athlete, but in life like I require a little bit more care around dealing with things like anxiety and depression, and I think for people to understand that it just it doesn't just come so easy to me to let things just roll off my back. I need a little bit more tools in my toolbox. And so I think sometimes athletes can say well, it's easy for me to just not to deal with the pressure, it's easy for me to not be anxious or not worry, it's easy for me to do these things. Why isn't it easy for you to do these things? And that's where I think the acceptance really needs to come, because it's not the same for everybody and it's not because the athlete is weak or soft or that they don't want it as much.

Taylor: 35:54

What did they deal with in their experience of life? I mean, personally, I had some really terrible coaches growing up. I mean, in T-ball I had coaches who would smack kids in the back of the head and scream at kids. In high school football I had a coach who was demeaning and would kick balls at guys' heads and all kinds of different profanities on the field. So yeah, where the heck do you think my anxiety comes from? Stuff like that? So it's, I think it's just such an individual experience and there has to be some empathy there on the part of other athletes to really, I think, build this acceptance that we're looking for.

Keith : 36:33

Something that is occurring to me as you're saying this too, because I again, I mean, I think you're making a ton of good points here, but if you kind of take a step back and think about it, like how silly it is that we treat emotions as different than other things.

Tim: 36:52

Yeah, I was just thinking this.

Keith : 36:53

yes, yeah, you know, like the parallels here that we could so easily make to physical skills and how silly it would sound if we substituted running for feeling Right, like I don't need to run, like that makes me soft, what the heck I don't need to train. Come on, look at me, I'm in a doness, like you know, like that's the attitude we're gonna have, like, I mean it's, we are human, we are all human beings and I think, again, that was such a big part of what they were talking about in this clip. It's like, yes, I'm a professional athlete, but I'm a human being and part of being human means I have emotions. If I'm in an environment that is high stakes, that is stressful, that is highly scrutinized, of course I'm gonna have emotions. That doesn't make me weak, that makes me human.

Keith : 37:42

And to your point, taylor, I mean, maybe for some folks they're more adept at particular skill sets, like letting go of anxiety. Well, just like somebody's body might respond differently to a dose of physical training and some people might have to work harder to achieve a certain result, we just have this like separate reaction, the separate way of conceptualizing the mental stuff. That makes no freaking sense to me, none, and it's like we sit here and you know, obviously, having a podcast like this, we're trying to raise awareness, we're trying to normalize this, we're trying to mainstream this. And it just blows my mind because, again, Taylor, I'm not saying this to you, I realize I can get animated, I'm not like yelling at you, Taylor, but it's like it's so mind blowing to me how we just don't connect these dots.

Keith : 38:37

It seems so obvious. How do we not do that? And you know, I mean, tim, I can see you nodding. I want to hear what you have to say and you know, at some point. Taylor, I would let me. You have such an interesting role here too, because you're talking about the role that you had on your rugby team, where you were the performance consultant and now you are on the coaching side. Now you are a coach in an elite rowing program. It's like how do those two things marry each other? Like what is it like now to be a coach, having come from the mental side? I don't know. I mean it just. Do you feel like it gets harder to thread this needle now that you're a coach? Or do you feel like you're able to carry forward what you know or what you've learned from all the consulting work that you've done, and now that you're a coach, you're able to implement? I mean it just blows my mind how we make this divide. That's so arbitrary.

Taylor: 39:34

Yeah, that's a good question, Keith. I do think about that and I think, as a coach, I one, I think, have a lot more emotional attachment to the performance of the athletes and I would say, like, as a mental performance consultant, I always felt that there was this I don't know healthy distance. I guess Carl Rogers described it as a distance from a client in that you can, you could witness their reality and not be attached to it.

Taylor: 40:16

And that's kind of the way I felt as a mental performance consultant, in that I felt like I could, I wasn't wrapped up in their story, and as a coach, I feel like I am more, I'm closer, I'm closer to the performance, and so I do have I don't know, I guess you could call it more skin in the game. And so sometimes I would say, I do get a little clouded by the performance element of what they're doing.

Keith : 40:53

And so, if, but, at the same time, I also feel like when you say that like the performance element of what they're doing, you're saying like whether they win or whether they're successful in some way you know.

Taylor: 41:02

no, that's a good question. You know we do, we do workouts on the rolling machines and you know how did you know we did? For example, we did a, did a 5K last night. It's 5K evaluation just of their fitness and and you know some guys, you know they performed really well and some guys didn't perform really well, and it's easier sometimes as a coach to be, I guess, just a little bit more demanding of you know, making performance gains. You know, from from test to test I mean, and maybe a little bit harder to access some of that empathy that I was talking about as a coach. So I don't know if I answered your question directly.

Keith : 41:42

I put you on the spot. I know this is a hard one to answer and it's not. I'm sure if you had hours to think about it you could really get to the bottom of it. But, no, it doesn't answer my question.

Taylor: 41:53

No, but but you're right. You're right, there is. There is a difference for me as a coach, and and here's a.

Taylor: 42:01

Here's a good example actually, when I was interviewing for this position, I actually had a few different interviews, one of which was with a few seniors on the team, and one of the seniors asked me how would you have a conversation with an athlete who was frustrated about where they, what seat or what boat they were in? Basically, in rowing it's like every rower on a team gets to compete. It depends on what boat they're in, so like we have the, the first, varsity eight, the second, varsity eight, the third, varsity eight, the fourth, varsity eight, and so the whole team is boated. So every competition we have, they get to go out and race Other teams, like a football team, for instance.

Taylor: 42:47

Maybe you know a freshman, for example, a football team, they might, they might ride the bench all season, they might not get any playing time, and so they might be disgruntled about that. But where you sit on a rowing team is kind of like playing time is for other athletes, so yeah. So the senior asked me how would you deal with, you know, an athlete who was frustrated about where they were sitting or what boat they were in on the team? And there's, I think there's two different answers, based on if you are a mental performance coach or, you know, maybe a sports psychologist or a clinical psychologist and a coach. I think the on the mental performance or psychology side.

Taylor: 43:30

I think it would be more so having a discussion about what are the underlying beliefs. That are great, you know, creating this attachment to where you're sitting, and how is that impacting your self-worth or your identity or your confidence and stuff like that. And it might be a deeper discussion, trying to get to the core of, like, what's causing this. And I feel like, as a coach, the discussion is a little bit more.

Taylor: 43:58

Being on a team is not about your personal goals. It's about supporting the team. So if you're going to support the team the best in this boat, then that's where, like that's where you're going to sit. And you know we talk about just being able to be, not to worry so much about where you're sitting or how much playing time you're getting. It's just about, like, how can you support the people around you the best and how can you continue to move up? So, like, as you can hear, like on the coaching side, it's a little bit more like hey, get with the program, like this is how we do things here and you need to help support the other people in your boat because you're on a team. And then on the like, mental performance side or, you know, sports psychology side, it's a little bit more like let's get to the bottom of, like how you're feeling here, and so that's how I think I would like approach things a little bit differently in those two different roles, if that makes sense.

Tim: 44:56

That's so interesting. Yeah, I'm just like loving hearing you talk about this has really bringing me back to, like, my rolling days and my coaching days, and I I don't know and maybe part of my brain will maybe continue to reflect on this specific question of like huh, what do these two roles, how would these two different roles respond? But I mean to take like a hard right turn into the mindfulness space. You know, like the vulnerability that you were sharing in terms of what comes up for you as a coach around, like I'm so much more invested in the performance pieces, the results you know like, and it in some ways, it really gets at the acceptance thing that we were talking about before. And this paradigm shift that we are inviting athletes and coaches to consider. Right, that, not that winning doesn't matter, not that you shouldn't care about it, but like maybe there's more to it than that and, in fact, maybe if you allow yourself to have this like just wider circle of priorities, it actually makes the winning piece more possible. Right, In the sense that you know and this is, I think it's a, in some ways, an unfair pressure that gets put on coaches right, that, like, your success as a coach is based on whether your team wins or loses, you know. But you could be a phenomenal coach and just be happen to be coaching a team that is out. I mean, if you're coaching a team and you've got a bunch of guys who are five, eight, you know, 165 pounds, you know, and you're going up against, like the Harvard heavyweights, like you're just not gonna, you're not gonna win. However, you could create a phenomenal team, you know. You could help these athletes become like excellent collaborators and teammates. They would absolutely be progressing in their physical performance, right, but you're also attending to their mental and emotional resilience. How do you value the experience you just had, even when you don't cross the line first, right? And how does that resilience translate to life after sport, because both athletes don't become professionals, right? So, like, how do you, how do you help create these like well-rounded, adaptable, flexible human beings?

Tim: 47:12

That is such, I think, like an amazing outcome of being a good coach, which may have nothing to do with your win-loss record, right? And I happen to believe that, if you're keeping this whole list to kind of wellness in mind, even if there are some ups and downs and someone's you know two K trajectory, right, Over time they are gonna get faster, they are gonna get stronger. And I think by focusing on that and saying like you have to be faster and stronger every single time we test, actually like we were talking about before kind of creates that pressured environment that probably makes it less likely that they will be successful, or at least for some portion of them, right, it makes it less likely they'll be successful as the stress starts to creep up to and surpass their natural coping mechanisms. You know, and so you know we're asking athletes, look at your, look at how you approach performance and achievement a little bit differently. You know, Like, center your wellbeing here and recognize that sometimes, like the best way to take a step forward is in this moment, to take a step back.

Tim: 48:13

You know you might need rest and recovery in order to show up tomorrow to the best of your ability. It's not about giving 110% every day, because that's not possible, you know, and for what it's worth. I actually think that's part of the fear we're talking about the clinical mental health stuff. You know, Like part of the fear in unearthing, some of that is like, oh my God, maybe these athletes are gonna have to take time off because that might be part of the treatment. I mean, in the same way that if you've got an athlete who's experiencing overtraining syndrome, you know this thing that we make space for in the sport world, you know, and the like, the best research we have, which is not that great in terms of how do you treat overtraining syndrome. It's forced rest, that's it. It's like you need to take time off.

Tim: 48:53

It's same thing if you look at, you know the mental, emotional parallels burnout, right, same deal. Like you need to take a step back. You need to be able to, like, recalibrate and take time off. Well, yeah, it is entirely possible that if you've got an athlete who has an eating disorder, right, for them to get effective treatment, they might need to stop competing for a little while. You know, and you need to accept as the coach. Right, that actually to your point, taylor, like we're part of a team here, right, like that might be the best for the team for that one athlete to leave and get healthy and come back next season, even if they can't contribute this season. Right, but having been a coach and even I mean experienced it too, even as a mental performance consultant, like I am attached to the results. I wanna see them get better, but I care about the wins and the losses.

Tim: 49:42

Absolutely. It is hard to let go of this stuff, you know. But I think what you were sharing speaks to exactly the challenge but also the direction we need to go in. It's like, yup, I need to look at this, my attachment and like say, can I embrace more trust in this process and like that group of guys who didn't do so well on their 5K, right, like, can I not get too bad out of shape about that?

Tim: 50:08

You know, and like recognize, you know this was an earlier podcast this season, but kind of where we all one of the things we talked about was like how you, how you're orienting to these athletes and or to any person in your life who's experiencing some problem, and you ask, well, what's wrong? What's wrong with that person? Did they do well on the 5K? What's wrong? Or like, what do they need? You know, like what is this person? Yeah, these guys didn't do that great. What do they need? What's going on with them? How can I help? How can I create this holistic support that's gonna allow them to do better next time, rather than punish them for, like, not doing well this time because they need to do better? I think like that pressure that can really end up creating a lot of the distress, the issues that then create the need right for the clinical mental health stuff.

Keith : 50:56

Well, maybe I can take the last word here for a sec, because I know we're up against the clock here a little bit. We need to wrap up our conversation. But no, I mean, I think what both of you are saying is fantastic and, you know, I think it's important to clarify that. You know, we are not suggesting that coaches are supposed to be psychologists and psychologists are supposed to be coaches. There is absolutely a shift in responsibility. Like Taylor, you are a unicorn, my friend, right. Like you are unique in that you've kind of done both sides.

Keith : 51:37

I guess I wonder, though, if there could be value, like in how you just did that little role play in trying to figure out, maybe, like, what is the common lexicon, what is the common language, how can the two dialogues come a little bit closer together? And maybe that's part of what you were talking about, tim with like a team approach, right, like an intimate, like a treatment team, and the coaches being a part of that is, you know, because I don't know that every sports psychologist is gonna need to go deep with that example you were giving, just like I don't know that every coach is gonna need to say in somewhere in there, and what you're saying to her like, well, don't worry about it, right? Like you literally used the words don't worry right, which I'm sure you know that probably gets hundreds of thousands of times a day by coaches across the world. I mean, that's a thing. It's like how do we kind of bring these two ideas a little bit more toward the middle so that coaches can be a little bit more nuanced and maybe psychologists can be a little bit more? I guess the word that I sometimes use is like practical or tangible, and how they approach it and how they integrate this stuff. And maybe that's where we'll find more acceptance is if we're able to somehow bridge these dialogues in such a way that they don't feel so separate.

Keith : 52:52

But I really appreciate, taylor, your candor in what you were saying, because you are in a unique position to speak to this and I think it is hard to kind of hold on to both, depending on the world that you're in. I think we're all attached to outcomes in different ways and, like Tim, I agree it's hard to let that stuff go. But I imagine it is really hard to hold on to some of the like. The words you use, taylor, was empathy, some of that perspective, maybe that broader human perspective when you're in the coach's role, whereas when you're in the psychology role, I think maybe it's not always about understanding the deeper reasons, and maybe that gets to what you were saying before about your rugby player too.

Keith : 53:36

Like you're not getting in my head. That's not what we have to do, necessarily, but giving the space for reflection or giving the space for curiosity, right? I mean, that's so much of what we do in our work is just trying to help people be curious, inspire that curiosity of the why, right? So you don't have to have a whole conversation with your 5K athletes why didn't you do well or why did you do well? But to invite them to be curious about themselves, right?

Keith : 54:08

Like hey, like huh, what happened today or what went, what went wrong or how can I learn from this? Right, I feel like that's what gets lost in so much of this is just what can I learn from this? There's so, because of the pressure, it can be so stifling. I think there's a lot of resistance or limited space for just seeing these as data points that we can learn from and grow, as opposed to having a very strong reaction to whatever the last data point was right as an indicator. But anyway, this is great. Thank you guys for engaging in this discussion. I really, as soon as I saw this clip, I was like we need to talk about it on here.

Tim: 54:49

I just think it's such a-. Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, that was cool.

Keith : 54:53

Yeah. So, as we wrap up just very quickly to invite anyone who is interested in connecting with us with our podcast, we do have lots of ways that you can do that. We have a wonderful Instagram page at mindful underscore sport underscore podcast. We also have our YouTube channel where we have a great collection of free resources that people can use. When we have guests on our podcast, they lead exercises, meditations. We didn't do that today we had our roundtable today but if you're interested in having a bunch of free and wonderful exercises, check out our podcast YouTube channel. You can also connect with our MSB Institute online at wwwmindfulsportperformanceorg, and we also have Facebook and Instagram pages for our Institute. You can connect with me, dr Keith Kaufman, on Instagram or on Twitter, and my handle at both is at mindful sport doc.

Keith : 55:49

And if you're interested in mindfulness and sport and curious about our MSB E-work, our book is still out there Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement Mental Training for Athletes and Coaches. So we strongly encourage you to check that out. And if you are so inclined to give reviews, ratings for our book and for our podcast, that is really important, if you like what we do. Great way to help us get some more traction is to give us ratings and reviews, and we appreciate that. And also this year we have a new feature where, if you'd like to support our podcast, help offset some of the costs that we incur in running it, you are able to do that through our Buzzsprout page and there will be links to that in our show notes. So thank you guys, thank you for everyone who listened, and thank you to our wonderful colleague, carol Glass for her support behind the scenes, and we will see you all next time. Thanks, music.