It seems like the word anxiety has become a common part of everyday conversations. This physiological and psychological diagnosis can be found everywhere, and we attach it to just about everything. I feel like anxiety was very rarely mentioned when I was growing up, and I feel like people were a lot less stressed 20 or more years ago. Of course, people experienced stress and struggle, but it wasn’t like it is today. Don’t get me wrong, anxiety is very real. I’ve dealt with it myself. Has the rate of anxiety increased over the years? Or have we grouped too many thoughts and feelings into the category of anxiety? Are we too hyper focused on anxiety?
In the world of mental health, it’s always better to over express how you are feeling rather than keeping everything bottled up inside. These days it’s way more common for both children and adults to express how they are feeling, along with finding coping mechanisms to help them process their feelings. Please don’t misunderstand, I am not trying to ignore or downplay the situations where people truly need help. I do have to wonder if we have reached a point where our thoughts and feelings surrounding anxiety might be worse than the situation around which we have stress and anxiety. People as a whole have become more aware of our thoughts and feelings, which can help us identify, categorize and process them, but has this practice caused us to be overly sensitive to the point where it does more harm than good?
There are those who have become so obsessed with the idea of anxiety that they continually obsess about things that could trigger their anxiety, which then creates more anxiety and here we go on a hamster wheel of stress and anxiety. A lot of what we call anxiety today used to just be called life. The French use the phrase “C’est la Vie” (this is life), which describes life as an experience rather than something that can always be controlled. These days the majority of people are far more secure about our future than ever before. Chances are pretty good that you’re not concerned about a roof over your head, or where your next meal will be coming from. Somehow, we still find ourselves unsatisfied. We are more physically secure, but that’s not enough for us. We all want to know our futures. We seem to have forgotten that insecurity is part of life. There is never going to be a time where you are completely secure, and if you think you are, just think about it a little more. There’s always some sort of unknown. No matter how well things are going in the moment, we can always feel anxiousness of the unknown or ponder our mortality.
Here’s the thing, you are not required to have it all figured out all the time. You are not required to anticipate every possible scenario and have a plan to get through them all. Our minds are incredible tools, but just like any powerful tool, you must be in control when you’re operating it. Just because you have a thought doesn’t mean you’re required to entertain it or analyze it or fixate on it. We can look at the thought, and let it move on.
Anxiety in Sports
As anxiety grows in society, we see it grow in athletes as well. The struggle here is athletic performance is already packed with stress and anxiety. Athletics are already chock full of anxiety; the pressure to perform at peak levels all the time, coupled with the continual scrutiny of coaches, teammates, spectators and the media depending on what level you are playing at.
The increased focus on anxiety these days can lead athletes to overanalyze their thoughts and feelings, potentially labeling normal fluctuations in emotions as anxiety-inducing. Athletes can end up down a rabbit hole trying to identify and then cope with anxiety triggers. This can consume athletes and distract them from their training and preparation. This cycle of self-analyzation, monitoring and anxiety can eventually create a negative feedback loop where the fear of anxiety can become a significant source of stress.
Reframing Anxiety for Athletes
Strike a Balance
It’s so important for athletes to find a balance between recognizing their emotions and not letting every thought control their mood and mindset. Self-awareness is extremely important. Being in tune with your mental state can increase your performance and your self-awareness. However, athletes also need to develop a mindset that doesn’t give power to every random thought that comes into their mind.
Negative thoughts are kind of like that nose itch that you really want to scratch, at a time when you are not able to. Someone tells you “just don’t think about it”. But guess what, that doesn’t work. Instead, you have to learn to process the unwanted thoughts and feelings so you can accept them and then let them go. The sooner an athlete can learn to process their feelings the sooner they can shift their focus and get their head back in the game.
Practical Advice to Avoid Unnecessary Anxiety
Who do you spend time with?
Athletes spend a significant amount of time with their teammates, coaches, trainers, support staff, and even their fans. They also spend a significant amount of time with their parents, which can cause a whole other level of anxiety at times, but we’ll save that for another blog post. The behaviors and attitudes of the people you spend your time with can influence how you observe and manage your emotions. Athletes are especially susceptible to the social influences of the people around them. If a close friend or teammate regularly vocalizes their anxiety it can cause everyone in the group to focus on their own anxieties, as well as internalizing their peer’s anxiety. There’s a balance here, because it’s important to support your friends and your team through their struggles, but you don’t want to create an environment where stress and anxiety are the primary focus.
Try to surround yourself with people who are positive and optimistic instead of people who deep dive into their negativity all the time. Sometimes all it takes is one person to be that catalyst for change. When someone is in the middle of stress, anxiety and bad feelings it can sometimes be really hard to get out of it on their own. Sometimes all it takes is someone to sit with them and talk things through. Point out the good things, talk through the negative things and help them to move toward the future with good thoughts on their mind. This is the atmosphere you want to create in the locker room. Yeah, bad things happen. People make mistakes, people get hurt, but none of it is the end of the world. What you dwell on grows. Watch game film, go through the plays, look at the mistakes, but instead of dwelling on what someone did wrong, talk about alternative options that could be used next time. You need to be decisive in practice and games. You have to be, you’ll just get run over if you stand there thinking about things and weighing all the options. Nobody is perfect, we all make mistakes. My son and I had many conversations about this when he first started playing defense in hockey. When you have two players coming at you trying to score on your goalie you have to make a choice. You can’t just stand there on the ice and watch them shoot on your goalie. You can, but you probably will sit the bench after that. You have a split second to read the play, fall back on the information you know, and make a choice. Sometimes you’re going to be wrong. Sometimes you’re going to be right and get beat anyway. Sometimes you’re going to prevent the shot. Then you have to keep going. The key is to emphasize this in the locker rooms and during team talk. Everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes even when you don’t make a mistake you’re still going to lose. Use it as a learning opportunity and grow.
Reduce Your Social Media Time
Social media is a double edge sword. Sometimes it can be a fantastic platform to spread information, support a cause, or share goodness with other people. Sometimes you can be so inundated with information that it can severely increase stress and anxiety. Everyone has something to say. You get those keyboard warriors and armchair quarterbacks who think they know everything and could do it so much better than you. Guess what. They don’t, and they can’t. If you go down that rabbit hole of what everyone else thinks about you then your anxiety will likely be through the roof! Additionally, there is so much content related to anxiety and stress that you can start to focus on stress and anxiety until you feel like you’re buried in it. This can make it really hard to break free from anxious thinking. Everyone should set boundaries around the use of social media platforms. One of my favorite sayings is “don’t bash what you hate, promote what you love.” Set boundaries around social media. Why are you going to allow a bunch of strangers to make you feel like crap when you look at your phone or your computer?! Follow people who provide healthy and uplifting content, not drama and stress. There is a ton of goodness out there in the world, and the internet and social media makes it really easy to find, you just have to sift through some garbage sometimes in order to get to it. You have control over your social media!
Deciphering Anxiety Symptoms vs Anxiety Diagnosis
Nobody can completely avoid anxious thoughts and feelings, that is just a part of the human experience. I know it’s tempting to get on the internet and search up your symptoms to try to self-diagnose. Do yourself a favor. Don’t do that. Once you put a label on or put yourself in a box it can create a negative feedback loop. You can start seeing symptoms and signs that aren’t even there. Anxiety and stress are natural emotional responses to uncertainty or perceived threats in our daily lives. When you’re faced with an important challenge or event the uncertainty can cause you to feel anxious. This can be beneficial though; it doesn’t have to be detrimental. This anxiety can be used as motivation to help you prepare for challenges and perform effectively. The choice is yours. Do you let your anxiety cripple you, or do you use it as fuel? Next time you find yourself feeling anxious try to recognize that these feelings can help you. Let your anxiety motivate you to prepare for challenges, or help you make changes in your life to help you get to be the version of yourself that you want to be. When you reframe your anxiety as a natural response to a stressor rather than a debilitating diagnosis you empower yourself to manage these feelings more effectively.
Like I said previously, this isn’t meant to be medical advice by any means. I’m not a doctor. There are certainly instances where anxiety needs to be managed with therapy or medication. If you are in that situation then please get the help you need. There is a balance in all things. Understanding and managing daily anxiety is important to our health and welfare, but we need to learn to manage anxiety in a way that will not increase our struggles and challenges. By learning to have a healthy approach to our thoughts and feelings we can create a healthier and more balanced existence. Anxiety is part of all our lives. Let’s be sure we’re processing it in a healthy manner and doing what we can to mitigate anxiety around certain situations.