Our Town: Sports medicine for mind, body

The Island Now

Everyone in Nassau County has witnessed the steady growth of sports programs. 
Garden City has all those soccer and lacrosse fields. 
Great Neck has Parkwood Sports Complex with its wonderful swimming pool. 
We have Iceland Skating Rink in New Hyde Park. 
There is Eisenhower and Bethpage Parks if you like golf or tennis. 
Every time you turn around you see another mega gym sprouting up including Healthtrax, Lifetime Fitness, Planet Fitness, LA Fitness and Equinox to name just a few. 
And take a peek at the last few pages of this newspaper and you’ll see that its sports section has been expanding over the years. 
Nassau County along with the rest of America has undergone a sports explosion which in part has been a reaction to the electronic and information explosion. 
The more we spend time in our heads, the more we need sports to get back to our bodies. 
I am involved in one of the fields designed to support the ever growing number of athletes in Nassau County.  
I’m a sport psychologist or more accurately a sport psychoanalyst.  
You see the field of sport psychology has expanded into subspecialties. 
My specialty is depth sport psychology.  
And if you are thinking ‘athletes on the couch’ you’re in the ballpark.  
Let me explain — competitive sports are pressure packed and highly emotionally charged.  
Standard sport psychology interventions such as relaxation techniques, positive self-talk visualization or hypnosis are often not strong enough to contain the tidal wave of emotions that are felt in athletic competition and so the field of depth sport psychology has gained more traction.
Psychoanalytic approaches to the athlete’s problems means that their issues are taken more seriously with actual diagnosis and treatment for the athlete who is often suffering greatly.  
Careful more professional treatment means more lasting and effective results.  
Here are the areas of depth sport psychology: 
1. Choking, anxiety and freezing up on the field — disruptive anxiety is sports is very common and has ended athlete’s careers. 
Chuck Knoblauch of the Yankees is a good example of a professional athlete who had so much anxiety he lost the ability to make a simple throw.   
Anxiety is felt as tension, panic, sweating, dry mouth, jitteriness, nausea, and lightheadedness. 
It can be so strong that I have treated Ultimate Fighting Championshp fighters who have passed out before big matches.  
Standard sport psychology like hypnosis or deep breathing will only take care of about 15 percent of this kind of anxiety. 
Depth sport psychology will spend time to build up ego strength through mirroring, ventilation, insight, solace and supportive psychotherapy. 
And when this occurs over time the athlete is able to make use of standard sport psychology techniques. 
Without strong enough ego strength the standard suppressive techniques usually collapse under intense competitive pressure. 
2.  Self-punishment — The sports fan demands perfection but perfection is hard to come by.  
These kinds of demands are eventually internalized by the athlete. 
This inevitably leads to internalized anger, shame, despair, loss of energy and giving up.  
We call this a harsh super ego and it must be addressed if the athlete is to return to confident play.  
Sport requires the use of aggression but when aggression is turned inward the player will almost certainly lose.  
Pep talks or positive self-talk will rarely be enough. 
In order to develop a sense of forgiveness, the player must be given a chance to ventilate, be given solace and then problem solve the mistakes that may have occurred.  
This is the domain of depth sport psychology. 
3.  Team Dynamics — the treatment of team dynamics is the most undeveloped area in sport psychology thanks to its complexity.  
Emotions are extreme in sports with an ever changing roster of players, endless injuries and the unconscious dynamics within every team.   
Wilfred Boon, the father of group therapy, taught us that when one enters any group a person will tend to regress to childhood dynamics which include sibling rivalry, jealousy, infighting and dependency on the leader.  
This explains why so many coaches drink.  
Inevitably they become overwhelmed and depleted by the childish demands most players put upon them. 
Some players get scapegoated and others will sabotage the coach’s efforts by losing intentionally to get back at the coach. 
4.  Family dynamics — the last area the depth sport psychologist works in is family dynamics.  
Sports are very exciting to watch and if you are related to the athlete on the field it can become very hard to contain ones emotions.  
The feeling of helplessness in the parent can sometimes lead to screaming or those depressing conversations on the car ride home.  
It is often necessary to provide counseling to the parents in these cases by teaching them how to listen, establish better boundaries, learn patience and how to provide solace to the athlete rather than reprimands or advice. 
Athletes here in Nassau County are like everyone else.
They are subject to anxiety, depression, drug use and numerous forms of self-defeat. 
The field of depth sport psychology takes all this seriously and provides each athlete a chance to ventilate, problem solve, receive solace, insight and ego building so their sports career can prosper and be a joy to themselves, their team and their fans.  
It is not a band aid approach but rather a serious and deep treatment that is often career saving to the anxious and overwhelmed athlete, their parents and their coach.


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