This may come as a surprise to some of you. I love sport. I love almost everything there is about it. The reason I love it so much is because of the physical and mental intersection. You have to have the physical skill and capacity to perform, but if your head isn’t there, your physical doesn’t mean a thing.
I’ve spent a lot of time through my life thinking about the psychology of the athlete; both as the athlete and as the armchair observer - decades in fact, and yet I haven’t really done anything beyond thinking and conceptualizing the idea from my preferred therapeutic lens. That’s changing as I have a proposition for the world of sport, if they’re courageous enough to listen. There’s a tons of sport psychology books and resources out there, so my fantasizing about it isn’t some new-fangled thing unique to me. What is perhaps a bit unique is the notion of bringing IFS to sport. How the parts of us impact our capacity to show up, perform, suffer, relate to victory and recover from loss. Bringing IFS into sports would be a literal game changer, both on the field and off.
The two mental methods in which athletes are worked with most often is either from a positive psychology model that includes visualization, affirmations or cognitive behavioral therapy to challenge negative thinking. I guess we could throw in another method, the Dave Goggins, get the fuck off the couch…suck it up buttercup methodology. These current, dominant paradigms in the field of sport psychology are outdated, in most cases not evidence-based and don’t actually help the athlete in any sustainable, transformative way. Doing positive affirmations to combat the negative thinking someone is experiencing before a big fight or game doesn’t change the neural pathways in the brain. It’s a Band-Aid. Telling someone to suck it up, doesn’t do anything other than reinforce the parts of us carrying shame, worthlessness and guilt ultimately giving our parts all the permission to be judgmental assholes to ourselves. This may make us feel bad enough to have some form of temporary motivation, but nothing sustainable. Visualizing can be of some help, so I won’t speak too ill of that here and there are ways to make it way more effective.
To be clear, none of these actually work, for the long term.
The modality, that needs to make its way into the athletic realm is IFS, aka Internal Family Systems. No, it has nothing to do with your family. It has to do with your internal world that functions like a family, often a messed-up one. I’m not going to go too deeply into the model here, but I have boatloads of resources, including my podcast, Turning In, to lay the foundation should you crave more. IFS believes that we’re made of parts and these parts have very specific, often extreme roles that work towards protecting our more sensitive, wounded ones. When these parts are doing their jobs, they block our capacity to show up in the world from our highest Self. When we’re leading with more Self, we’re more congruent, effective, calm, clear, confident.
IFS spends time connecting with the parts of us and how they’re impacting our internal world and our external life. Once we connect with them, they turn down their intensity and soften back, letting Self do what it does best, which is lead from a centered position. In other words, we kick ass from a genuine place.
We’ve all heard of mindfulness. IFS is mindfulness on steroids. It’s about creating more awareness around our internal experience in any given moment, to then be present for the parts of us driving the bus. This helps the parts change how strongly they’re showing up. Granted, this is a very simplified explanation. It’s much more nuanced and, in the beginning needs a knowledgeable guide who knows how to work with parts.
The best thing is that IFS is evidence-based and there’s research to show that it changes our neurobiology for long-term, sustainable transformation. All the more reason to bring this into the current model of athletics. There’s space for trainers, physical therapists and an extensive team focused on the physical. This team often excludes a critical component, the mental side; or if it does, it’s including some bogus mental coach or sports psychologist simply saying, “let’s change that thought,” or “visualize yourself walking out to the cage.” I’ll say it again, these strategies aren’t going to work to maximize performance or quickly recover.
A quick and dirty example is this: imagine an athlete having just gone through a devastating loss. This loss crawled into their head in such a way that they were shaken. They started doubting themselves, feeling insecure and even perhaps feeling scared to get back in the game or wondering if they should retire. This would be a phenomenal trailhead to begin working with the parts of them popping hot as a result of this loss. There are several parts present just in this short example. There’s a part that’s insecure. There’s a part that’s scared. There’s a part contemplating retirement. Any of those would be of immense value to begin connecting with. Then what, you may be wondering? “Amy, what then would you do with these parts?” Well, you’ll need to tune back in for that.
These are just my beginning thoughts as I lay some groundwork for where I’m going with this idea of IFS and sport. My intention is to write a series on this topic that will deeply dive into what this would really look like, how I’d work with athletes pending their internal system, some athlete case studies, and more. I’m super pumped about this project. Keep an eye out for a weekly dose of integrating IFS into sport.
