This post is part one of a series on the struggles of recovering athletes.
An Olympic season is a difficult time for many former athletes who are coming to terms with the long-lasting effects of win-at-all-costs sports culture on their lives, even after retirement.
In the past few years, I’ve devoted a part of my philosophical counseling practice to recovering athletes needing a way to examine the beliefs, values, habits, and power dynamics that are so ingrained and normalized in the culture of competitive sports. As a former gymnast myself, who dealt with plenty of long-lasting scars from my time in the sport, I wanted to provide the support that was not available when I went through my own crises. In philosophical counseling sessions, we consider together the formative messages with which we grew up and their effects on us, the kind of treatment and training environments we faced every day at practice, the ethical frameworks (or ethical crises, as the case may be) at work in mainstream sports cultures, and the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all. In our conversations, we work to find the athlete’s own voice about past and present struggles, their own aspirations going forward, and we work to develop a richer understanding of health, integrity, and success — both in sports and in life.
The philosophical processes of the “examined life” are rarely integrated into an athlete’s life. It is a rare and precious thing to find a coach who intentionally nurtures and affirms the development of the whole child, including their own thinking, values, character, voice, creativity, decision making, choice, and general ability for self-determination. At a certain point, the athlete can wait no longer for a philosophical intervention, as they face existential and ethical struggles and an uncertain future. In philosophical counseling sessions, we try to make sense of those struggles together, engage in critical and creative thinking to find solutions, and work to develop a new sense of wisdom and empowerment.
The “Olympic Blues” Through a Philosophical Lens
You may have heard of the “Olympic Blues” before. It is usually talked about in terms of the depression Olympians feel when the Games are over. When everything they’ve worked for is done, Olympians are often not quite sure what to do with themselves. (The phenomenon is similar for any athlete who has committed their life to an intensive sports career, whether their final competition is the Olympics or not). The long-awaited achievement of making it to the ultimate competition combined with the loss of one’s biggest guiding light when it’s over is bittersweet. It can create a complicated state of mourning. But it can also be seriously disorienting. When the center of your universe, the thing that determined all your daily actions and sacrifices for so many years, falls away, what are you left with?
Enter Existential Crisis
The loss of one’s orienting center can be experienced as a loss of meaning and purpose, and it can cause the athlete to spiral head-first into an existential crisis. This is especially true if the Olympic dream (or NCAA dream, etc) did not quite turn out as one had hoped, and the athlete is wondering if it was a mistake to put their whole sense of value, all their goals, and their sense of self into that one basket.
But an existential crisis can even occur when the results go well. When competition is over, an athlete who achieved their performance goals may also be left facing the void. They may wonder what could take the place of their old guide for motivation, determination, and self-discipline. They may ask, “What could be worth devoting myself to again at this level of intensity?” “How will I ever reach the kind of excellence I have right now in anything else?” “Is my life over?” “What’s the point of anything if I’m not competing on a world stage?” “What’s the meaning of my life now?” There’s a danger of the athlete slipping into nihilism — the debilitating sense that nothing matters anymore and all meaning is lost.
It doesn’t help that many athletes were told by their coaches and parents that activities other than their sport are superficial, ordinary, not rigorous or serious enough, or even “a joke” – as if there are no other things they could do with their lives that would be worthwhile. (One of my clients said her gymnastics coach used to call cheerleading (which gymnasts sometimes turn to in high school) “sloppy gymnastics.”) I’ve heard parents say throughout my life that their daughter is “too good” for something as silly as dance team or track. And then there’s the devaluing of friendships or romantic relationships with people outside the sport. Coaches and parents commonly say of peers outside the sport, “They won’t understand how serious you are,” “You don’t have time for boys,” and “Girlfriends are a distraction.” Cultivating relationships or interests outside of the sport was frowned upon. And retirement itself was often branded as “quitting” and treated as something losers do. Quitting meant a kind of disloyalty. Anyone who quit was exiled, and the rest of the team was encouraged not to communicate with them.
There’s a strange message here: Your purpose in life is one thing only. You cannot have other interests or relationships, even if this one thing doesn’t fulfill you as a whole person, or even if participation has an expiration date on it (which is the case for many athletes at the end of college or upon the date of a devastating injury). In fact, you have to sacrifice everything else in your life for this one purpose: becoming a champion. You are a one-trick pony, and we (coaches and parents) don’t recognize your broader personhood. Frankly, the fans often fall into this way of thinking as well — just look at social media comments. The majority of fans want to know one thing: if an athlete is going to compete again next year, and they’re usually disappointed if the answer is no, at which point, they write them off as uninteresting and discard them (1). They often criticize athletes for getting “distracted” by non-sport-related activities (like going on a date or eating a burger), and most do not want to hear athletes’ views on anything not sport related, like social justice. Fans perpetually offer the advice (or threat) that athletes should just “stick to what they know,” as if athletes do not also have a stake in, and ability to think about, matters of justice.
With all the messages on board from coaches, parents, and fans that “other” activities are beneath the athlete, a distraction, or not appropriate, and that the athlete needs to have a one-track-mind for winning in their sport, it can seem impossible in the moment that competition ends to develop new goals and find a new direction. It can seem impossible for an athlete to believe that they might fall in love again with something new. It can seem impossible to worship something else in the way they had once worshipped the Olympic dream — which now feels heartbreakingly extinguished along with the flame at the closing ceremonies. It can seem impossible to understand success in any other way than winning. And if the experience of reaching the end of one’s time in the sport, akin to simultaneously going through a breakup and losing your religion, weren’t hard enough… many athletes also find themselves in the throes of an identity crisis.
Enter Identity Crisis
Athletes feeling lost in the world when their center of meaning and purpose falls away also often feel a loss of their sense of self. They feel stuck wondering who they are if not a competitor and loyal practitioner of their sport. Even worse is the experience of finishing their career in a way that was not on their own terms, for instance, due to a fall or injury they could not come back from. In that case, the athlete is faced with the pain of losing their sense of self against their own will. It can be very difficult to come to terms with the notion that there is some other possible future or that who you are as a person is so much more, and will be so much more, than what you do as an athlete.
Another issue that pops up for some athletes is the question of whether they have ever really defined their own identity for themselves, on their own terms, or whether they have simply taken on the labels and expectations of others. They may wonder if they’ve ever really known themselves, if they’ve ever really expressed their own sense of who they are to others, of if they’ve ever had a chance to become someone of their own choosing, according to their own values, passions, and aspirations. Philosophers might call this a crisis surrounding authenticity, when one wonders if their life is really their own, or whether they have spent their life fulfilling other people’s beliefs and fantasies about who they should be.
More Struggles on the Horizon
Whew. Let’s take a pause. This is heavy stuff. These philosophical issues concerning meaning and purpose, beliefs and values, identity and authenticity come up, as mentioned, not just for Olympians, but any athletes retiring from a long and intense career in club or college competitive sports.
Throughout my conversations with former athletes about sports culture and its effects, a number of additional themes have emerged as areas of struggle. For instance, there are struggles surrounding the belief that one’s personal value is based on their athletic achievements alone, that they must be perfect and productive at all times, that the coach has absolute authority and the athlete is not allowed their own thoughts, feelings, values, or voice, that living in fear (in environments of intimidation, insults, threats, and punishments) is necessary for competitive success, and that success means one thing only: winning. Interestingly, judging from the phone calls and emails I’ve gotten this summer, former athletes seem to realize their urgent need to attend to these struggles (and their long-lasting affects) during the Olympic season. Olympic fever in the media is very good at hiding the dark side of sports. When former athletes see images of the Trials and then the Games, old memories of the dark side get stirred up, I believe, precisely because it is hidden from view. Glossing over the dark side of sports in the media is a lot like the gaslighting that occurs in the gym and the pretending that occurs in our families that none of this dark stuff is happening. It causes athletes to feel haunted by past experiences that were taboo to talk about and that they’ve never really dealt with. Sorry to pull back the veil, sports fans. But it seems that there’s much more to the “Olympic Blues” than we realized.
In coming posts, I will discuss additional patterns of struggle that emerge for athletes while entrenched in competitive sports and that follow them into their retirement. I will also devote future posts to suggestions for how recovering athletes can start thinking in new ways to build a meaningful, empowered, and authentic future, and how coaches and parents might create culture change in sports to support athletes as whole people and ward off crises before they start.
Resources:
(1) The documentary called The Weight of Gold, narrated by Michael Phelps, does a good job of exposing how Olympians are discarded and forgotten by their sports federations and the public when they‘ve been “used up” and no longer “serve their purpose.” The documentary reveals the intense pressures of a life committed to elite sports, the “one-track-mind” and lack of balance associated with that life, and the experience of emptiness and lack of support that occurs when shifting into retirement. The documentary also uncovers the suicide crisis among Olympic athletes that is hidden from the public’s view.
