This post is part one in 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. A surge of former athletes came out of the woodwork during the 2024 Summer Olympics to talk with me in philosophical counseling sessions about the malaise of retirement and the ongoing struggles they face due to an (oftentimes brutal) upbringing in club and college sports.
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 one’s highest 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, causing 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?” 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. Cultivating relationships or interests outside of the sport was frowned upon and considered a distraction. And retirement itself was often branded as “quitting” and treated as something losers do. Quitting meant a kind of disloyalty. Anyone who quit the sport was exiled, and the rest of the team was encouraged not to communicate with them.
There’s a strange message here for athletes: 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 (which is the case for many athletes at the end of college). 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. The majority of fans want to know one thing: if an athlete is going to compete again next year. And if the answer is no, they write them off as uninteresting and discard them (1).
With all the messages on board from coaches, parents, and fans that “other” activities are beneath the athlete, and they need to have a one-track mind for winning, it can seem impossible in the moment that competition ends to find a new direction. 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. 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.
Sport and Competition Essential Reads
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
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 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. 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.
Source link : https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/philosophy-for-curious-souls/202410/the-olympic-blues-run-deeper-than-you-think
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Publish date : 2024-10-15 15:47:01
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