Hello Athlete!
Because sport culture naturally rewards competitiveness, resilience, & perfection, your emotional and physical well-being is at risk. Embracing your athletic identity while still allowing time for rest, relationships, fun, recovery & other interests allows you to have a long, prosperous athletic career.
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Since stress is how the mind & body respond to any demand, it is critical that you develop skills to healthfully manage sport & non-sport related stress. By no means is all stress a bad thing, as it helps you prepare, concentrate, and perform at your optimal level, but too much stress can be detrimental to your health and negatively impact athletic performance.
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Begin your mental fitness journey by enhancing your cognitive & emotional athleticism!
Innovative Mental Health for Athletes
Athletes train their bodies at the highest level using the most innovative & effective modalities, why treat your mind any differently? Below are some of my favorite evidence-based, effective mental health therapies.
Effective Tools to Enhance Cognitive & Emotional Athleticism
An injury is just one example of a traumatic life event that causes severe physical and psychological consequences for athletes. Even after you heal, the experience can wreck havoc on your confidence, mood, sleep, & performance. It is critical that specific psychotherapies designed to treat trauma stress-related disorders are available to you to allow a successful, healthy return to sport.
The most common treatment used for trauma-stress disorders in athletic medicine is lagging behind science. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT therapy), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy are indeed useful but symptom resolution is a lengthy & agonizing process. As an athlete, you don't have time for this & why I encourage you to consider Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), Recent-Traumatic Episode Protocol (R-TEP) & Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) have been indicated as the most effective and efficient psychotherapy for trauma-stress disorders, can enhance athletic performance & created a mental outlook that allows athletes to always feel & do their best. Sometimes supplements & medications are great adjuncts for treating mental wellness but I believe in empowered medical care & the patient-physician decision making model.
