Episode Details
A study in 2022 from the National Council of Youth Sports reported that 60 million youths between the ages of six and 18 are playing organized sports. Yet, seven out of those 10 youths dropped out by age 13. Can past traumas impact an athlete’s performance? Yes, says EMDR-certified therapist and consultant Jennie Abito Carlestav, LMFT. Learn more about how EMDR therapy can help heal those traumas and improve performance in sports, the workplace, performing, and the creative arts.
Episode Resources
- This Is Your Brain on Sports by L. Jon Wertheim & Sam Sommers
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
- TICES (Target = image + cognition + emotions + sensations)
- Support for Sport – Mental Performance Warm-up Script
- The Progressive Muscle Relaxation Script from the National Center for PTSD (VA)
- I Love to Watch You Play
- Heartmath.com
- National Council of Youth Sports
- EMDRIA Client Brochures
- Focal Point Blog
- EMDRIA EMDR and Diversity, Community and Culture Special Interest Group (SIG)
- EMDRIA Practice Resources
- EMDRIA’s Find an EMDR Therapist Directory lists more than 15,000 EMDR therapists.
- Follow @EMDRIA on Twitter. Connect with EMDRIA on Facebook or subscribe to our YouTube Channel.
- EMDRIA Online Membership Communities for EMDR Therapists
Episode Transcript
Kim Howard 00:05
Welcome to the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast brought to you by the EMDR International Association or EMDRIA. I’m your host Kim Howard. In this episode we are talking with EMDR certified therapist and consultant, Jenny Carla’s stuff about EMDR therapy and improving sports performance. Let’s get started. Today we are speaking with EMDR, certified therapist and consultant Jenny Carlestav to talk about EMDR therapy and improving sports performance. Thank you, Jennie for being here today. We are so happy that you said yes.
Jennie Carlestav 00:33
Thank you Kim, it was so amazing to get invited in this opportunity to talk about what I love to do.
Kim Howard 00:40
Jennie, can you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming an EMDR therapist?
Jennie Carlestav 00:44
Well, I can tell you about my path as becoming an EMDR therapist working with athletes. And this started off as a very personal journey, and then ended up being a professional one. You see, as a parent of two athletes myself, I experienced watching the both of them face really significant emotional challenges that comes along with elite competition, not to mention all the injuries. And when you see your kids having injuries, that’s also traumatic in itself, right. But as fellow EMDR therapists can attest, when something happens in the present time, that can trigger a past experience. So for me, watching my kids go through their own challenges in sports, brought me back to my own painful sports experiences. One came up, very activated, it was a particularly intense sport, humiliation and failure of losing a track meet for my team. And that was enough for me to leave the sport for good Kim and I really didn’t want that for my kids. I wanted better. I wanted to give them a chance. You know? Yes,
Kim Howard 01:55
I parented two athletes through high school and one was on a travel team. Both of them swam, and my daughter played basketball in addition to swimming. And she said to me later, I mean, she we really thought maybe she she’d get, you know, recruited to go play basketball somewhere, probably not D1 but maybe D2 or D3 we didn’t. And she said to me later, after she got into college, she said, Thank God, I never got recruited to play basketball. I don’t know how these athletes handle the schedule, I’m having a hard enough time managing my classwork and work. I can’t imagine having to manage practice and travel games and home games on top of that. And so sort it was sort of a blessing in disguise, I guess that she didn’t go that route. I have seen that struggle with kids. And that as a parent, you know, you you want them to succeed, and you want them to enjoy what they do. And there’s a certain stress level that comes with being an athlete anyway. And you can have the right kind of coach, or you can have the wrong kind of coach. Absolutely. So I think that makes all the difference.
Jennie Carlestav 01:56
Yeah.
Kim Howard 01:58
So I really appreciate your your story about that.
Jennie Carlestav 03:03
And, we were talking about being parents to athletes, it’s we feel powerless, right? Because it’s their own journey. And you want to help them as much as you can. And so what I did is, I probably do what every parent does, and I researched anything I could find on athlete trauma. Lucky for me, Dr. Sarah Gilman, and she’s one of our past EMDRIA Board Presidents, she did an On Demand course called EMDR and Performance, and it couldn’t have been more perfect because it was strategies for athletes and creatives. So I took the course. And I reached out to her. Turns out a few others reached out as well. And after some persuasive, convincing, and she’ll laugh at this right. She took the four of us and began a consultation group. It was initially supposed to be three months, two years into it now we’re still meeting up laughing and talking. But you know, a year into it, she said, Hey, what do you think about having a part two? To that initial training? There was some buzz and interest on that topic. So last year, Kim, Dr. Gilman along with the four of us, we created and presented a full-day in-person training in San Diego on EMDR and Performance Advanced Skills for Athletes. You know, and our goal for this course, was really to share what we do on an individual basis day to day with our athletes, clients. And for me it was it was a wonderful day, sharing case examples, demonstrations, learning laughing there was even some happy tears when success stories were shared. Right? Because a lot of them were parents themselves in that course. But yeah, that path of EMDR and working with athletes again, was so personal. And imagine this going from a Desperate mom seeking knowledge on how to parent and athlete who’s struggling to being able to get the skills to use EMDR with athletes and then studying under such a distinguished EMDR role model, to finally creating a training with that same role model and other brilliant therapists. I mean, it was such an undescribable experience. I’m so happy she took us under her wing and shared her knowledge.
Kim Howard 05:29
Yeah, that’s, that’s really awesome. I really liked that story. So I’m glad that you guys were able to connect, and then create this group of people who, who help each other professionally, and also helping their clients, which is ultimately the goal. So thank you guys for doing that. That’s wonderful. Can you tell us what your favorite part of working with EMDR therapy is?
Jennie Carlestav 05:51
So many things, actually, my favorite part and using EMDR with the athletic population, is really seeing the athlete overcome that debilitating anxiety and fear that once contributed to their performance block, but also being able to see that athlete reset their nervous system, so that they’re able to return to the sport and play again.
Kim Howard 06:16
That’s beautiful; it really is because I feel like maybe not always, but I feel like most athletes, like the sport they’re doing right, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t do it, if they didn’t enjoy it. Hopefully, they’re not forced into doing something by an overzealous family member. But hopefully they really enjoy the the sport and to no longer have that in their life because of performance fear, or some sort of coaching trauma situation, or quite frankly, you know, our teammate, situation, you know, it’s a shame. And so it’s good that there are solutions out there for people who want to keep a sport and their life continue forward. So that’s great that you guys are doing that work. Thank you.
Jennie Carlestav 07:02
You know, but yeah, let’s add to that, though, because when I end up working with athletes, almost always in the end of treatment, they report feeling more confident and empowered. Because now they have the tools to reach that optimal peak performance. That that’s the thing that inspires me to do what I do, and at the end of treatment with your athlete, the it’s just they’re able to see now and become aware of how their mental health directly affects their performance. So what that means Kim is that that’s one more athlete out there that can spread the word and advocate from mental health and sports. I mean, it’s happening already with professional athletes like Simone Biles, she’s in the news a lot. The Olympic gymnast, she took two years off to prioritize mental health. Yep. And you have the tennis player, Naomi Osaka, she talks so openly about her depression and anxiety before she withdrew from the French Open. And then you’ve got Michael Phelps, he continually just advocates for mental health. And then you have the Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn, who is just changing the narrative of mental health right now. And those are just a few athletes who publicly highlighted the importance of, of mental health and sports. So for me, it’s such an honor to be a part of that movement. And that’s what I love about using EMDR with athletes.
Kim Howard 08:33
Yeah, that’s a that’s a good answer. It’s a good reminder that athletes are human beings, just like the rest of us, they just happen to have a talent for whatever sport they’re playing, right. And some of them are really, really good. They make it all the way to a pro situation or a college scholarship ride or the Olympics. And so we forget that they’re human beings, and they have the same struggles as everybody else. And I’m glad they’re publicizing that. Because how many times have you seen a movie, or even heard your own children’s coaches? Or maybe you were coached as an athlete, and the coach will say, Get your head in the game? Right? No, that could that phrase is so so common, because it’s true. If you can’t, if your head is literally not in the game, and figuratively, you’re not going to do your job as an athlete, and you’re gonna be upset with your performance, your team’s gonna be upset. And so as your coach, you know, and so it’s good that that you guys are reaching that population. So yeah, thanks. What successes have you seen using EMDR therapy for improving an athlete’s performance?
Jennie Carlestav 09:34
I really wish your listeners can see the smile I have from ear to ear right now because when I think of success stories, two really are near and dear to my heart, right. The first one is a jujitsu athlete, and his past painful non sports related incident had triggered him to freeze up during practices and competitions, which caused him to like tap out When he was in a chokehold position. So his family reached out after trainers and coaches were really stumped on what was happening. Because they would say, Hey, by all regards, this athlete is stronger, larger, more agile than the competitors in his weight class. But not only that, Kim, he was he wasn’t presenting this performance problem before, it was just a recent thing. So in my second session, I went to his practice and observed him, I noticed that while he was being pinned down by an opponent, and that opponent placed pressure around his throat area, his eyes had just glazed over, and he froze, immediately causing him to tap out on the mat and forfeit our next session, I brought him in, and I said, Hey, I want to tell you what I observed in your practice. And he said, You know, I didn’t even know I was doing that stuff. Turns out, what we do EMDR is after a float back, a childhood memory popped up of him being at the age of four, he was at a birthday party, playing with a bottle water, you know, messing around with a bottle cap and put it in his mouth to chew on. And then the next thing he remembers is a parent putting their hand down his throat, his feeling was I’m gonna die. I’m not going to survive this. So we’ve reprocessed that memory. We did specific resource development installations that I use for athletes, we use the bite taps around that area of his body that was activated to really help reset that nervous system. And I taught him heart rate variability and heart rate coherence, which we’ll talk about later. And two weeks later at a competition, Kim, he got gold. That’s awesome. Until either you got another one. So I think it’s so cool that in our profession, sometimes we do get these texts after the fact to say, Hey, this is what I’m doing. Now. Look, look what I accomplished, right? Yeah.
Kim Howard 12:01
Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s, that happened at an age where he apparently didn’t remember that it happened to him. And he didn’t realize he was carrying that around, but his body identified it. So yeah, so it does keep score is very true.
Jennie Carlestav 12:17
You know, and that’s a really good example of a non sports related trauma that can still get activated in an athlete. The second success story, again, a really, really near and dear to my heart. But this was a soccer athlete, and his painful experiences were all all sports related, which would trigger him to freeze up during practice in competitions as well. Now, this athlete was only 15 years old cam, he had gotten recruited to Major League Soccer next program. Huge right? And for people who don’t know that it’s a pathway for athletes to either get recruited after high school, to play at a D1 university or go straight into the professional soccer. What was unique about this athlete was because he got recruited to this MLS next program, he would be jumping six divisions from his previous league. I’m hearing that super rare, due to that intense pressure, that level of play. And the pressure he put on himself, he started experiencing performance problems, which he was no longer able to perform the skills that got him recruited in the first place. His teammates, were yelling at him, like what you mentioned, right? coaches were yelling, and he was just making mistakes. And eventually, towards the end of that experience, he was getting subbed out of games. And towards the very end, he barely even played at all. And this crushed him. These were examples of like humiliations and failure after failure. So by the time we started working together, he was having full panic attacks before every practice and every game, and literally, on the verge of quitting the sport. Good news is after treatment, his performance skills returned, eventually became captain of his high school soccer team. And honestly, the most important part of this story is that he regained the love for the sport, and still continues to play. Now, imagine not even having the opportunity to shine before you get to that point. I mean, his light would have just dimmed before it would have fully started. So I have the luxury of time with this particular athlete. So we were able to process all the painful experiences, all the humiliations, all the mistakes, looking through all his negative beliefs that he was just digesting through these experiences. And we also got to process all the injuries, the concussions. He had the broken Shoulder. And, you know, his success story really inspired him to create a video of his mental health journey in sports. And I’m, I’m honored to have that journey on my website. Now. It’s It’s such a beautiful story.
Kim Howard 15:15
That’s fantastic. I’m so glad that both of those athletes were able to find you and not just for their sports performance improvement, but for their overall mental health improvement. So I’m really glad that that they were able to connect with you and that it turned out well for them. So that’s wonderful news. So yeah, yeah, definitely. Jenny, what are some examples of trauma that you see come up in the athletic population?
Jennie Carlestav 15:41
Oh, yeah. Well, athletes who have experience significant upsetting events, sports related and non sports related, like I talked about, could develop a performance problem, right? And if that problem persists, that athlete perceives the sport and competition negatively, which results in immense amount of anxiety. So examples of sports related traumas that could affect an athlete’s performance. That’s we talked about that that’s humiliation, right, or losing a game due to their own performance comments from trainers, coaches, and teammates again, but not only that, Kim, comments from fans. And nowadays, social media comments are a factor as well. It’s huge. And then I have to add injury to that, because as trauma therapist, we know that injury really essentially is trauma to the body. And research has proven that, like you mentioned, the body will remember and hold on to that trauma, until it’s clear that in the nervous system.
Kim Howard 16:50
That’s very, very true.
Jennie Carlestav 16:52
Yeah, and sports related traumas that could affect athlete’s performance. Well, honestly, that’s that could be any of the big traumas, as well as the small traumas can be bad childhood experience, painful relationships, any perceived failures. The thing that I want people to know here is that remember, if anything occurring in the present, looks like sounds like smells like or even feels like a past significant negative experience. Our brain, our heart, and our nervous system will potentially linked up to that memory and trigger a fight flight freeze response, which for athletes that could end up in a sports performance problem, right examples of those are an athlete being unable to perform a skill they once performed at ease before that’s called Lost movement syndrome. Or, and you see this sometimes to an athlete freezing up or having that hesitation movement while performing well in the sports world. That’s called the yips. And essentially, that’s just the nervous system misfiring, you have athletes who are fearful or over anxious. So now, they’re overthinking how to do a skill to the point to where, honestly, it confuses their body with too many signals. And a big one also is when an athlete can’t stop thinking about the outcome, or can’t stop thinking about messing up so that they overcompensate. And this is really common, they train longer hours, they train harder, and they train more frequently, and still no improvement, which we know leads to even more problems. So I mean, those are just some examples of possible sports performance problems coming in the way for athletes.
Kim Howard 18:49
Those are good examples. Thank you, Jenny.
Jennie Carlestav 18:51
Yeah.
Kim Howard 18:52
Are there any specific complexities or challenges with treatment in this population?
Jennie Carlestav 18:58
Definitely. Well, you know, when you’re working with athletes, sports schedule, it can be really, really tricky. Coordinating when they’re in season versus offseason can be a nightmare sometimes. But yeah, I mean, they’re busy, busy, busy all the time. And then, for those who are athletes, not in the resident of California, where my practices, it’s finding time and coordinating for them to fly into California, right to get that treatment, you know, so scheduling intensives that’s a really great way to get around this where an athlete will come for three consecutive days. And we’re just processing processing processing, right?
Kim Howard 19:51
Is that what you typically do with your athletes? Do you typically do more intensives with them, or is it just sort of based on who it is?
Jennie Carlestav 19:59
That really depends on the athletes time constraints and goals, I’ll have some athletes that’ll say, or even coaches or club teams will reach out and say, Hey, we have this athlete, we’ve got a tournament coming up in two weeks, and he’s not performing. So, yeah, intensives are a great way to power through that. But you know, it all really just depends on their goals, what they want to accomplish there some, I mean, the case examples, I told you, one, I was able to do full comprehensive treatment, because we had the luxury of time, versus the other one who was having a competition coming up. And I really needed to get over the hurdle and perform again, right? That’s one complexity. Another one that can come up is when you’re working with elite athletes and professionals, there’s a good possibility that you might be working within a collaborative team. That’s coaches, trainers, parents, or the sport organization, all of which can like they have great intentions. But that’s a lot of people and a lot of minds. And a lot of opinions come in about the athlete, right. And so knowing your role as the mental performance therapist, that’s really, really important, or else it gets tricky. Really quick.
Kim Howard 20:54
Yeah, many chefs in the kitchen is usually the same sous chefs, right? So somebody’s got to be the lead. Somebody has to be in charge. And it’s hard if you’ve got, especially at a pro level, and probably even college because college sports bring in so much money from alumni and donors and ticket sales and endorsements and stuff for the team. And so, when you’ve got all of those people, you’ve got way too many people in the situation, you know, people needs to be the athlete, and the therapist, you know, and then let the reporting out happen after the after the fact but I’m sure that’s not how that works.
Jennie Carlestav 22:04
So, it’s yeah, all I’m gonna say on that is, it can be definitely tricky. For sure. Like you said, too many chefs in the kitchen. Yeah.
Kim Howard 22:14
What do your sessions tend to look like when working with this population?
Jennie Carlestav 22:19
So, my first and second sessions, they’re always about educating the athlete. It’s talking to the athlete about trauma informed therapy, from a human performance optimization perspective. That’s a mouthful. So basically, it means explaining to the athlete, that trauma, whether sports related, or non sports related, can affect their performance, right. One of the books that I really love and I got so much information from was from Dr. Alan Goldberg, he’s the author of this is your brain on sports. And he concluded that all performance problems are rooted by upsetting experiences. Kim, that’s trauma. Right. And as as EMDR therapists, we know that our hearts brains and body, like I said, and you said, we’ll hold on to that trauma. And at some point, there will be a trigger event that happens and the athlete will feel unsafe, and will activate their fight flight freeze response. But you know what, for an athlete and mid performance, they can’t necessarily fight or flee. So it’s often the freeze response that occurs in their body cam, that freeze response is really, the athletes being forced to have their performance go offline, in their nervous system, all the things that they’ve been practicing for hours, months and years, that intuitive movement that goes offline,
Kim Howard 23:58
Your body doesn’t know how to respond. And then like you said earlier, everything’s on video, now, we’re live, or, you know, we’ll be on video later and you may or may not want that shared and so it’s it’s there under, uh, I think much more of a microscope than they then athletes used to be, you know, back before cell phones and video and YouTube came along. You know, it was a little different, you know, somebody might be recording it home camera, or the news might have it on tape, but individuals didn’t have it. And they certainly weren’t sharing it across social media because we didn’t have social media. So the embarrassment level is different than than it is nowadays. It’s It’s intense. And I remember going to a when my daughter was a young teenager, about 13-14. She and one of her friends and her mom, we went to this session at George Mason University put on by a local therapist, about teenage girls, and the girls had their own track. And then the parents had they’re own track. And then they, we all came together at the end of the day. And I remember when we were in the parents track she talked about, she said, I know that people nowadays think that your children are growing up the same way you did, she said, but they’re really not, you know, especially because at the time, we lived in Northern Virginia, and she said, everybody here has type A, everybody here was go, go go. Everybody here is competitive. And she said, and our children live in that kind of environment. And then if you add anything like a sports or any kind of musical talent, or anything that requires any kind of education, and continuing practice, and possibly competition, you know, it just makes it even worse. And she said, You’re, you’re not raising your kids like you were raised. The whole advent of social media and all of that, and how that is shared and spread, whether it’s good or bad impacts them. And so I think that parents out there need to remember that, you know, that our children are have grown up and are growing up in a different, different world than we did.
Jennie Carlestav 25:58
So, absolutely. And then imagine you as an athlete, having to relive that by seeing it over and over again, your body remains in that heightened stress response, fight flight freeze mode, right. And so another thing that I do is in, in my second session, or even sometimes in the first, a big part of that psychoeducation is to teach athletes how to number one, get out of that fight, flight, freeze state, or stay out of it to begin with. And that really is the education on heart rate variability and heart rate coherence training. And Kim basically, that’s when a hardest putting out a stress signal. Because it’s feeling anxious, frustrated, or fearful, or any upsetting emotion for that fact. It creates an incoherent Heart Rate Variability pattern, which is just information that the heart sends to the brain saying, hey, look, something’s going on. Right, which tells the brain to go into that heightened stress response. Well, when an athlete stays in that heightened stress response, mental state, cortisol and adrenaline start to seep into their nervous system. So now, the athlete brain is operating on a feeling of internal danger. Right? On the flip side of that, is a coherent Heart Rate Variability pattern. And this is where we want our athletes to operate in. This is the athlete in the best place for performance. It’s called Heart Rate coherence. And what that is, is just the synergy between the heart, the brain and the nervous system, which means instead of the heart sending out incoherent patterns, to the brain, it’s got a nice steady, even coherent pattern message. And now the brain brings in that blood flow to the frontal lobe, which results in full concentration for the athlete, that’s called being in the zone, or being in the flow. This is truly optimal peak performance. And when an athlete is in that state, Kim, I’ve had athletes describe it to me as everything is like going in slow motion, and they’re at normal speed, or a soccer players taking that shot on goal. And instead of that goal being 24 feet in width, it feels like it’s 50 feet wide, and they can’t miss no matter what, or a baseball player up at bat. And that ball feels like it’s traveling at 10 miles per hour instead of the reality of 100 miles per hour on a fast pitch. So that second session that looks like education, because you are training the cardiac muscle, which is the heart has sent a coherent Heart Rate Variability pattern to the brain. Again, I can’t emphasize this enough. This is optimal performance state. This is the most consistent even place for our system to be at and the best use of an athlete’s energy.
Kim Howard 29:21
I have friends who are runners. I don’t run so I tell people…
Jennie Carlestav 29:25
I don’t either.
Kim Howard 29:26
If you if you ever see me running, you need to go with me because the building’s on fire or the zombies are attacking and we need to go the opposite direction. So I only run when it’s an urgent, urgent situation or I might run through an airport if I’ve got a tight connection. I have had runner friends say that very same thing about the same term you used earlier about being in the zone and they get to a point where in their run and I don’t know what mile it is because I don’t know how far they usually go. But there’s just this situation that happens where everything is hitting all the pistons, right? This is zone and they that’s what they do it they get this what do they call it a runner’s high or?
Jennie Carlestav 30:03
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kim Howard 30:05
And I’m like, Okay, that’s good to know.
Jennie Carlestav 30:07
And they can go for miles and miles.
Kim Howard 30:10
Yes. They can’t catch up with those people. You know, we’ll see you back at the house. So yeah. Jenny, are there any myths that you would like to bust about working with athletes?
Jennie Carlestav 30:19
Oooh, yeah. Off the bat, I think, you know, a couple statements that might consultees or other therapists even interested in working with athletes I have said before is, you know, I get this a lot. I don’t know if I can work with an athlete, because I’m not familiar with the sport, which isn’t an honest statement. The truth is, you don’t have to be familiar or an expert, with the sport that you athlete is playing. But you should be open to learning basic terminology. I mean, at the very least, be curious and ask your athletes questions. It’s that genuineness, to want to get to know them and their sport that helps build the connection. And from there, as an EMDR therapist, we’re trained to look at how trauma shows up in the nervous system anyway. And meaning it’s how trauma directly affects athletes performance. So that’s like, myth number one, that’s a big one. The second one is, and I get this a lot too, athletes are really aware of how sensations show up in their body. And I’m referring to the S in the TICES part, you know, where as therapists we asked, Where do you feel that disturbance in your body? Truth, Kim, in my experience, working with athletes, an athlete can be incredibly disconnected and dissociated and how emotions show up in their body. I mean, sure, an athlete has mastered kinesthetics, which is knowing how to move your body. But that’s completely different than them understanding how their body is feeling emotionally. So the challenge either out to an athlete who’s on the fence of dealing with their emotions is, again, I tried to educate them, help them understand that the brain, the heart, and the body, are connected. And I introduced books, like you mentioned before the Body Keeps the Score. And I’ve mentioned several times, this is your brain on sports. And then I say to them, Look, emotions are in the body, whether we want them to be or not. And when you suppress an emotion, by extension, you’re closing off access to your body. Now, the athletes that perform better typically have more access to their body than their competitors. That statement is like, wow, and it and it really grabs an athlete’s attention.
Kim Howard 32:51
Those are good points. And we will list both of those books with links in our podcast description. So the listeners can go and find out more about those two books and those two authors. And going back to your comment about being curious about with your athletes, I get the impression that most athletes like to talk about their sport. And I don’t mean that in a puffed up way. But they are happy to share information about how their sport is played, or how their teams work. And in there, they happily share that information with people who want to ask and who are curious, so don’t be afraid. Absolutely to ask them. So that’s good advice. Thank you. Thanks, Jenny. How do you practice cultural humility as an EMDR therapist?
Jennie Carlestav 33:37
You know, for me, this means an ongoing journey of self awareness. I am a child of Asian immigrants coming to America. And because of those experiences, I can empathize and how culture can alter the way we might view experiences in life. So for me, it’s respecting the clients that I get to work with, and the willingness to learn from the experience, they share my session. But also being primarily a trauma focused therapist, I think I have a delicate honour of holding space for my clients. That often means hearing about their childhood stories, and how maybe just maybe their own culture played a factor to their experiences. So I think really, Kim, what it means is a commitment to learning, which is the openness to learn from your clients and all the stories that they bring in.
Kim Howard 34:39
Yeah, that’s a good answer. Thank you. You’ve already mentioned a couple but do you have any favorite free EMDR related resources that you would suggest either for the public or other EMDR therapists?
Jennie Carlestav 34:49
Yes, free resources. These are really good and I got these starting out as well. So I want to pass these along. They’ve been really helpful in my work. The first one is The mental performance warm up script. And that is from support for sport.org. That was a that was a lot their support for sport. And that’s the performance mental routine that athletes can use to kind of get them in the right state of mind, right, and they can practice this over and over again. And as we know, the more you practice, the better we get at it. So a second one is called the progressive muscle relaxation script. And this is from the center of clinical interventions. And I also saw recently being handed out at a Baylor education convention. And it’s also on this the National Center for PTSD. So that’s a really good one to have. For parents looking for support for their young athletes. I love to watch you play.com. That’s a really long one. I love to watch you. play.com is about raising happy, healthy athletes. And when I was doing my research way back before I started working with this population, I came across this website, as a parent, as we discussed, who just wanted resources and how to help my own kids. And it’s got resources, it’s got articles, it’s got cast as well, there’s a lot of great information on that. And I have to highlight the Heart Math, educational videos through heart math.com. And that just played to the clinician, the athletes, anyone that they are how heart, brain and body are connected. And I talk a lot about heart rate, variability and heart rate for here and how to get an athlete that as well. And so those are the free ones. But of course, there are so many fantastic resources out there, Kim, for EMDR therapists that are just beginning and then EMDR treatment for athletes. But unfortunately, they’re not free. But I want to mention them because they were such huge pieces of resources for me starting off and that Suzy Morgan through position, EMDR Academy. And she was one of my earlier mentors who really helped shaped who I am as an EMDR therapist, she’s created these great small snippets of videos for the clinician, so that they can successfully navigate the ins and outs of EMDR and use it successfully and confidently. And so those are called the readiness course. But on top of it, she made the same kind of videos for the clients themselves to watch and how to prepare them for EMDR treatment. And that’s called the self help resources. And I can’t go without mentioning Dr. Sarah Gilman, she was the one that started this whole thing for me. And the whole movement, I think, within the EMDR community and working with athletes is she has that EMDR performance training, part one. And she also did the EMDR Performance Training Part Two with myself and fellow colleagues on just sports performance using EMDR. And that’s all on On Demand courses through the EMDR professional training. So if you are thinking about working with athletic population, that’s a great, you know, resource because we really, really go in depth on things that I mentioned today.
Kim Howard 38:40
Those are great suggestions that I will include all those links in our podcast description. And as I mentioned earlier, as the parent of two former high school athletes, I wish I had known about some of those parental free resources, even if they weren’t free to help my athletes at the time. So I hope everybody who’s listening will look at those and get them because it sounds really good. So thank you for sharing those.
Jennie Carlestav 39:04
Absolutely.
Kim Howard 39:05
Jennie, what would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about EMDR therapy and improving sports performance?
Jennie Carlestav 39:11
So for any athletes who might be listening here today, if you’re experiencing performance, anxiety, or even struggling with your own confidence for dealing with an injury, recovery, or even re entry into the sports or maybe even having lost movement syndrome, or if none of that is happening and you just want to boost your confidence and reach that optimal peak performance. There is resources and help for you. You’re not alone. You know, there’s evidence based research proven techniques and treatments that can help you return to peak performance and get you loving the game again. And playing is the most important thing right?
Kim Howard 39:59
Yeah, you’re playing it, that’s what matters.
Jennie Carlestav 40:03
And for athletes who, again, might be listening, if you’re on the fence about taking the time to talk about your mental health, I hear athletes all the time, that tell me they wish they would have started and sought out help sooner, but they didn’t believe that they had the time, right to go through treatment. You know, it all depends on what your goal is, it doesn’t have to be long term treatment.
Kim Howard 40:30
And I also think that people often don’t make the connection between physical performance, which is what an athlete does, and, um, mental performance, they don’t, they don’t write, they don’t understand that the two go hand in hand. So each other they do, they really do. And I think that, you know, your brain is the is the part of your body that directs everything that you do physical, emotional, mental. And so it only makes sense that if that is out of sync, and your nervous system is out of sync, and you have some issues that you probably don’t even remember, like the four year old, who choked on the cap, you know, the four year old wrestler, you don’t remember those things, you know, and that could very well be impacting your performance. And so there’s nothing wrong with seeking help to figure that out.
Jennie Carlestav 41:17
So, right. And, you know, I want to add to that, that the heart plays a huge factor. It’s, it’s our, it’s our control center, you know, and it really dictates if you’re feeling that frustration or any negative emotion, it sends information to the brain, much more than the brain sends information to the heart. So that heart is the control center, if it’s, if it’s off kilter, or feeling anything sad or frustrated, or any sad emotion, immediately sends it up to the brain, and the brain sends it down to the nervous system. So being able to control that emotion and understanding what they’re where that emotion is coming from, is really key to switching up that performance problem that you might be having. Good point.
Kim Howard 42:06
Thank you. If you weren’t an EMDR therapist, what would you be?
Jennie Carlestav 42:13
Who knows, Kim, maybe, maybe I would have gotten the athletic route, honestly, I loved it, I was I was that athlete that was, you know, drawn to waking up early, working out playing the sport. And then it was that traumatic event for me that really stopped it all. But, but also, maybe, you know, because of that experience, I’m able to give perspective to the challenges that my own kids had, when they are facing, you know, their hardships and competitive sports. And because of that, that led me to the trajectory of being in a position to help heal support and guide athletes now, to remain in the sport they love. But if I were to have to answer that question, what would I be if I was not an EMDR? Therapist? Probably a photographer, or maybe Oh, my own flower shop.
Kim Howard 43:10
I like those are new answers. We have not gotten that before. Flower shop or photographer – are both great. There’s no wrong answer that question just to see what people say. So you know,
Jennie Carlestav 43:22
But hopefully still making people smile and feel better.
43:26
I think photography and flower shops do both. Yes, yes, you have some sort of flower allergy, then maybe. So is there anything else you’d like to add Jennie?
Jennie Carlestav 43:46
athletic population may be overlooked, therefore underserved in regards to using trauma informed therapy? for maybe a couple of reasons, in my opinion, you know, first is when when we think of trauma in the traditional sense, we may tend to not think of athletes just like you mentioned, correct, as opposed to a group of maybe like first responders, but as EMDR therapists, and we mentioned this a lot. It’s not just about the big traumas that leave people unable to move forward. It’s all the little traumas and the multiple little traumas that build up over time, like humiliation, bullying, failures, hurtful comments from other people or the public or making mistakes and performance and injuries, or, frankly, any significant painful life experiences. And athletes, and athletes experience all of the above, but unlike the average person, they’re vulnerable moments, Kim, they’re dissected by 1000s, and hundreds of 1000s of people and so we have to remember that although and you mentioned this, they might appear to have superhuman abilities when they perform. They really are just like us vulnerable to motions, and I think that they might be actually overlooked and underserved.
Kim Howard 45:05
Yeah, absolutely. And it goes back to that old thing. You know, when most of us, you know, when you’re in high school, and you’ve got most high schools have some kind of football team or basketball team or both. And you know, if we’ve got the star quarterback, or you’ve got the best guy on the basketball team, or the best girl, and you think they have it, all right, and you have no idea what’s really going on behind the scenes in their family life, in their personal history. And that translates up the ladder as they go into college or as they perhaps play a professional or semi professional sport. And you have no idea what kind of weight they’re carrying, and what they do for a living, whether it’s playing the sport in high school, or college or pro, unlike the rest of the average Joe’s out there is seen by so many other people, right and impacted in such a way that I don’t think you can really quite understand it, unless you’re an athlete, whether what no matter what level it is, you know, you have some leaks, you can connect to them in some way. So I’m glad that you guys are out there doing that to help people not just improve their sports performance, but to improve their their life, you know, and so thank you guys for that.
Jennie Carlestav 46:14
You know, I want to bring up and you may have heard this before, there’s a study in 2022, from the National Council of Youth Sports that reported 60 million youths between the ages of six and 18, playing organized sports. We were one of the parents of these athletes, right? And I still am. But yet, seven out of those 10 youths dropped out by the age of 13. Do you know why? Can you guess it?
Kim Howard 46:43
Well, it’s probably because they don’t think they can perform well, they don’t they don’t play the sport well enough to continue. Or there’s been some kind of situation with a bad coach.
Jennie Carlestav 46:55
Yeah, that that definitely plays a factor, which leads to the number one reason because of those things that you mentioned. It’s just not fun for them anymore. And so as an EMDR therapist, you can unpack a lot of painful experiences. With that statement alone. It’s just not fun anymore. But for the athletes that somehow continue to play on and even go pro. Will they pay the highest price, and they become objects for fans and media to dissect? Yeah. You know, it got me thinking. Did you ever watch that Netflix documentary on David Beckham?
Kim Howard 47:37
I did not.
Jennie Carlestav 47:38
Yeah, so he spoke candidly about the public abuse that he faced following the 1998 World Cup game, which in his words, left him clinically depressed. And when he got that red card that got him, you know, rejected in the game, he says that still haunts him. So for me, it was almost painful to watch, because the amount of abuse that this athletes who had given himself, you’d give him his entire life for the sport, was now facing, it was just really painful to watch. And my point is, if you’re a trauma informed therapist, and interested in working with this population, there are a lot of athletes that will absolutely benefit. So I recommend reading the books on this topic, taking the courses, finding a mentor reach out to me, I’d love to pay this knowledge forward, just like the two mentors that I had gifted me and just get more trained, trauma informed therapist to really be on the path to working with this population, because there’s always going to be athletes, and they’re always going to need that support. Gosh, I needed it when I was in younger and left the sport. Sounds like your kids could have used it and you as a parent. So there’s a lot of work out there. And I think we could do a lot of good.
Kim Howard 49:03
Yeah, absolutely. People find it very easy to be hide behind a keyboard or be one of those faces and a stand and and say really disrespectful, nasty things to other human beings because they didn’t perform the way they wanted them to perform. Or because they’re on the opposite team and the other team is doing better than your team. I mean, people come on, you know, I’m not saying it’s just a sport, but it’s a sport. They do what they do for a living, they are putting themselves out there in the public arena. What you do for a living is in an office or in a in a vehicle driving a truck or delivering packages or working in an office or doctor’s office or whatever your job is not for public consumption. So don’t miss treat people like that. I mean, you could be upset that the team didn’t do well. You can analyze you know, be the armchair quarterback or the Sunday/Monday morning quarterback and say well, they should have done this or they should have done that. But don’t be so horrible to spew such negativity on people who are just out there trying to do what they do, you know, you talk to athletes, and they’re like, I get paid to do what I loved as a kid playing bat ball or running or whatever the sport is. And they have loved this sport for so long. So I just think as a society, we should do that thing, that kind of thing to people.
Jennie Carlestav 50:21
I agree with you. And and the thing that that really hits home with me as a therapist is we get the inside view the, the behind the curtains view of how those negative comments affect those athletes, the way they digest that comment. It’s just a comment to maybe a fan or somebody on social media, but it’s real. And those words are painful, and they hit home and they stick to the blades.
Kim Howard 50:51
Yeah. So when my daughter was in Girl Scouts, when she was a Brownie, I reluctantly took over the Brownie troop, because no one else would. And if you knew anything about me, you know, I’m not a camper. And the girls were like, When are we going camping? I’m like, next year, but we did this project. And I can’t even remember what it was for and who was involved. But I remember we had a construct piece of construction paper and we all cut out hearts. And then we took pins, and then we stuck pins into the hearts and the we pulled the pins out. And we said when you basically the story was, when you say mean things to people, it puts holes in their heart. Yeah, and this is what it does to people, my daughter is now 23 and she still remembers that project. And she still sometimes will talk about it. And so it was impactful thing that we did as a group. And it’s the same thing with talking about, you know, athletes on social media, and yeah, hiding behind your keyboard and, and saying nasty things and basically trolling don’t troll people give us the athlete or politician or I mean, you can give your opinion, but don’t, don’t take it down where it’s just degrading somebody, it’s, it’s not, it’s not worth it. And it’s not good for you. And it’s definitely not good for the person on the receiving end. So I can certainly understand how somebody is famous as David Beckham would be just completely traumatized by, you know, getting kicked out of such an important game for his team, you know, and then having the the aftermath of that I when I was a kid growing up, I was not an athlete, I was a band geek. But I use that as well. I used to watch Wide World of Sports every Saturday afternoon. And I remember that video clip they always used to play and they talked about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat with the line in the opening credits. And the agony of defeat was some skier going down the hill and just something happened. And this person ends up tumbling over, like all of the billboards and all of the area that’s marked off for the spectators. And I was like, holy cow. I mean, that image caught on tape. This is well before social media, this is in the 70s and 80s. Right. But you think about that, that and that is what happens when athletes don’t perform well. You know that one moment in time, they made a mistake, and it’s just on repeat reel over and over again, in their minds, in the spectators minds on social media on the news. So you know, kind of put yourself in their shoes for just a minute. I’m not talking about the money and the fame and all the fancy cars and the trips and all that. Just put yourself in your shoes. If you made a mistake at work. Would you like it to be publicized? Probably not, you know.
Jennie Carlestav 53:28
So being a good human. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Just boils down to that.
Kim Howard 53:34
Absolutely. Jenny, is there anything else you’d like to add?
Jennie Carlestav 53:37
Oh, a cool thing about working with this population, Kim is that we get to go on site. So my sessions are in the office, they’re at, you know, their telehealth, but I get to go and on site to the places where my athletes train. And that’s pretty neat. So if you’re on the fence about working with this population, that that’s bonus, a little bit of a benefit.
Kim Howard 54:02
That’s exciting. You can see the practice. I mean, gosh, people, people go to see sports teams practice all the time. And yeah, a few I used to I used to live in the north northern Virginia area and when Dan Schneider owned the Washington football team. He used to make spectators pay to go to offices. Yeah. I think he was probably the most hated man in Washington. Politicians aside, nobody liked him. You know, if you get to go see a sports team practice for no charge. Hey, yeah, that’s kind of cool.
Jennie Carlestav 54:35
So and at the same time, you’re helping your your athlete clients, so it’s a win win.
Kim Howard 54:40
And, then word might spread, you know, other people seeing that athlete improve or not freeze and they’re like, Hey, what are you doing differently? You know, because they’re always looking for, you know, say, Hey, I went to therapy and this is what happened.
Jennie Carlestav 54:54
So, word spreads and you become an advocate for mental health. Yes.
Kim Howard 55:00
Absolutely, absolutely. I was just gonna thank you for being here today. We appreciate it.
Jennie Carlestav 55:03
Well, thank you so much, Kim. I’m really happy to have this conversation with you and all your listeners it. It’s, it’s fun work. It’s it really is and it’s satisfying and meaningful. So thank you for letting me talk about it on the podcast
Kim Howard 55:22
This has been the Let’s Talk EMDR podcast with our guests, Jenny Carlestav. Visit www.emdria.org. For more information about EMDR therapy, or to use our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory has more than 15,000 therapists available like what you hear, make sure you subscribe to this free podcast wherever you listen. Thanks for being here today.
Date
April 1, 2024
Guest(s)
Jennie Abito Carlesav
Producer/Host
Kim Howard
Series
3
Episode
7
Topics
Performance Enhancement
Extent
55 minutes
Publisher
EMDR International Association
Rights
©️ 2024 EMDR International Association
APA Citation
Howard, K. (Host). (2024, April 1). EMDR Therapy and Sports Performance with Jennie Abito Carlesav (Season 3, No. 7) [Audio podcast episode]. In Let’s Talk EMDR podcast. EMDR International Association. https://www.emdria.org/letstalkemdrpodcast/
Audience
EMDR Therapists, General/Public, Other Mental Health Professionals
Language
English
Content Type
Podcast
Original Source
Let's Talk EMDR podcast
Access Type
Open Access