When Athletes Feel "Broken"

Source: Prostock-studio/Shutterstock

I’ve been listening for some months in philosophical counseling sessions to recovering athletes’ stories about the challenges of growing up under authoritarian coaches. Such coaches use fear-based methods to dominate and control their teams, consistently value scores and records above human beings, and pursue winning at all costs.

There’s a common belief in mainstream sports culture that such authoritarian approaches—in which the coach has absolute control and may use any means available to win—are necessary for “success.” They may use threats, insults, manipulation, intimidation, punishments, overtraining to the point of injury, and restrictions on food, water, rest, and medical care, among other tactics. The underlying belief is that the ends justify the means, and coaches can and should do whatever it takes to “get results.”

But for every great “result” that coaches believe their brutal methods achieve, one can find a long trail of damage: athletes who are injured, burnt out, depressed, anxious, traumatized, suicidal, dissociating, struggling with eating disorders, and ultimately feeling forced to quit in spite of their talent, discipline, and their love of the sport. But these are just the presenting symptoms.

There’s a deeper damage done. So many athletes speak of a feeling of being "broken," and it's worth understanding the fundamental damage done.

Broken Relationships and the Dissolution of Trust

First of all, recovering athletes often speak of feeling “broken” in their capacity for functional relationships, due to a lost ability to trust. The fear-based coaching methods of intimidation, threats, coercion, and punishments have a destructive effect on their prime relationship with their coach, which carries over into other relationships, disrupting the development of bonds in which they might find a sense of stability, connection, and self-worth.

From the athlete’s perspective, a coach who “turns toxic”—angry, mean, hyper-controlling, and demeaning—is no longer someone the athlete can count on to help and teach them. Instead, such a coach is capable of punishing them for every vulnerability (for pain, fear, exhaustion, or any mistake), dismissing injuries, and shaming them for the way they look. When the athlete tries to tell the truth about their struggles to this kind of coach, they are ignored or (as many athletes remarked) taken to be lying, making excuses, lazy, or insubordinate.

The loss of trust in the coach-athlete relationship often carries over into other future relationships, as athletes struggle to open up to others after having their basic needs dismissed by the very adults they depended on most for their safety and support. Without early experiences of security, trust, and respect, future relationships (at school, at work, with friends, and with romantic partners) can be difficult to forge. New relationships often require the significant work of unlearning default patterns of domination and submission, and then healing from years of living without understanding or encouragement.

Broken Self-Esteem and Sense of Self

Another way that athletes often feel “broken” after enduring “rule by fear” coaching methods is with regard to their self-esteem and their sense of self. Athletes who grew up in an authoritarian power structure often express the feeling that they are not worthy of care or respect. They learned that their basic physical and emotional needs and their sense of who they are as a person didn’t matter, as they were regularly dismissed and sacrificed on the altar of the coach’s power and record of wins.

Furthermore, many athletes who endured the fear-based approach to coaching did so at an age when they were just beginning to develop a sense of who they are and what makes them unique. In excessively controlling environments—which do not allow basic freedoms of thought, speech, emotional expression, creativity, exploration, problem-solving, or choice—the process of individuation is cut short and given no nurturing space to grow.

Long into their retirement, some athletes declare that they still “don’t really know who they are.” They always “just do what is expected” of them. And they may find themselves getting involved with others—in friendships, romantic relations, or at work—who like to “run the show,” while they act as the people-pleasing assistant.

Sport and Competition Essential Reads

The Unseen Threat of Sexually Predatory College Coaches

March Madness: Mental Health Pressures in Collegiate Sports

Broken Autonomy and the Dissolution of Boundaries

As is probably becoming clear, an authoritarian power structure restricts the opportunity for athletes to grow into autonomous adults who can think and speak for themselves, evaluate for themselves, set goals for themselves, make choices for themselves, advocate for themselves, and govern their own lives. In fact, it acts to destroy or dissolve anything that might be the athlete’s “own.”

I have noticed that when the development of autonomy is broken off or cut short, there is also often a dissolution of personal boundaries. The autonomous individual—who has a sense that there exists a person that is “their own” who is “for them” to govern according to their own wits, creativity, and determination—is able to draw lines that defend the integrity of their own personhood, their principles, and their choices, and resist another’s attempt to use, abuse, or overpower them. But when subjected to environments of intimidation and control 20+ hours a week for years of one’s young life, athletes’ personal boundaries dissolve.

In such an environment, athletes learn to silence and disregard every inner protective signal that might serve as an alarm bell to preserve and protect the integrity of one’s self. One client said it clearly: “I have been trained my whole life that if I ever feel pain, hunger, exhaustion, fear, or doubt—to deny, deny, deny. I’ve been trained to actively push down all my feelings, to ignore any sense of danger, and to push past any kind of resistance… or else.” In this process of denying all self-protective signals, personal protective boundary lines become blurred until they are erased.

Even long after retirement, athletes often find they cannot hear clearly their own body’s warnings that injury is near or their own voice of suspicion that the person they are with poses a danger. In their effort to please others and avoid any anger or punishment from them, they do what others ask.

Conclusion

Riddled by overuse injuries and mental health struggles, athletes who grew up in toxic training environments eventually leave the sport. Few athletes return to articulate to their coaches what they really went through. All that the authoritarian coaches can see is that “they’re quitters” who are too weak to stand the pressure. They treat their lost athletes as exiles and turn to reproduce the cycle with the next batch of kids with big dreams. My hope is that finally telling athletes’ stories will, at the very least, raise awareness and throw a wrench in the cycle.

A longer version of this post appears on the Curious Soul Philosophy Blog.