In the world of psychotherapy, there is a practice known as Exposure Therapy. This is a common exercise for treating many anxiety disorders and phobias that people are plagued with. These can be simple things like the fear of shaking someone’s hand or, more commonly seen, the fear of public speaking.
As a means of treating these phobias, exposure therapy can be applied and within a relatively short period of time, most people can learn to deal with their fear more effectively. What makes this practice different, however, from your older brother’s version of therapy – where he throws a ball at your face until you don’t blink – is that this requires incremental adaptations.
The key then is to start with something that is only slightly anxiety provoking. Meaning that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning no anxiety and 10 being something close to sheer terror, you want to find something that might bring them to a level 3 (If someone is afraid of spiders, this might mean asking them to look at photos or a video of a spider).
From there, keep moving up with new anxiety-provoking experiences until the patient becomes less and less affected. That’s the general practice. And for the most part, it works very well when done right.
But here’s the catch, fear never goes away. In fact, you don’t get less afraid – only braver.
And I think this is a challenge that many athletes face when it comes to dealing with the pressures and anxieties of competition. As we move up and get better, we convince ourselves that fear will just disappear. That if we just mature eventually it will go away entirely.
But if you’ve spent any amount of time in sport and faced situations that require you to perform well or lose, then you know fear doesn’t just go away.
My Greatest Fear
No, it was not that I was powerful beyond measure – for me, I always feared serving. I would think about it all the time and I would worry about the possibility of having to serve in a pressure moment where my teammates would rely on me to keep them from losing.
But that was just my problem. I was focused on “not losing”. I was so afraid of failure, that I let it consume me. And as a result, I was so distracted that I didn’t perform well when it mattered.
And to make things worse, I never properly addressed this problem. Instead, I ran from it. I would never do anything to get better at performing under pressure, I just hoped that over time it might go away. And from what I now understand, that was the worst thing I could have done.
What should I have done instead?
Step 1) Break down fear
Well, for starters, I should have acknowledged what I was afraid of. I should have broken down exactly what scared me and why. When you know what your fear is and you give it a name, it begins to loosen its grip on you. If I had done this, perhaps I would have discovered that the thing I feared was not actually missing my serve, but I feared letting down my teammates.
Step 2) Embrace fears as challenges, rather than run from them
Secondly, I could have done a lot more in terms of embracing my fear. Your brain’s nervous system responds in an entirely different manner when you face fears voluntarily, as opposed to having them enforced on you (this has a lot to do with your flight or fight response). Instead of having them as fears that are impressed upon you, they can become challenges that you get to overcome. That’s exciting, and excitement is good.
Step 3) Expose yourself
Once my fear was established and the decision had been made to embrace the challenge, it would have been time to expose myself. In the same way that a psychotherapist would expose their patient to a picture of a spider, I should have found ways to create the fear in a low stakes moment.
For example: During our serving reps I could have made a rule that if I missed 1 out of every 10 serves, then I had to run a set of lines. As I got more comfortable with this pressure, perhaps I could have involved a teammate. If I missed my serve they run, and if they miss theirs I run. I would never be able to actually “practice” the feeling of serving in a pressure moment during a game, but I would allow myself to be more comfortable in similar situations by building things up over time.
Step 4) Choose courage over comfort
And lastly, I could have done a far better job of avoiding comfort and instead aiming to be courageous. I spent way too much of my athletic career being comfortable. And part of being comfortable is avoiding things that might scare you. It means not challenging yourself to be better. And it most certainly means living a half-lived life.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
Start Your Own Exposure
The idea of exposure therapy is clearly beneficial in terms of helping people overcome irrational fears, anxieties, and phobias that stop them from fully living their lives. And as I’ve just illustrated it can be an incredibly useful way for an athlete looking to gradually overcome the fears that are stopping them from performing at their peak potential.
Looking back now, I know this modified practice could have been very valuable for me as an athlete. I can say this confidently because I have been able to apply it in other areas of my life where I was once scared but now courageous (I used to hate making small talk with strangers, but after a year spent in a sales role I hardly even think about it).
So, if you are struggling with a particular fear that you know is holding you back, use this article as permission for you to freely seek it out. It’s time to stop running from it. It’s time to name your fear, embrace it, expose yourself to it, and above all, choose to be courageous.
Step 1: Name your fear. GO!
-Derek
