Sport Psychology Tactics - How Combat Sport Athletes Can Use Brainspotting & Bodyspotting to Improve Their Mental Health
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Combat Sport Athletes, Mental Health & Mental Toughness
Combat sport athletes may be involved in one of the most grueling forms of competition. Whether they are competing in tournaments such as the UFC, Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitions, or boxing matches, these types of athletes need to have a fortified type of mindset every time they compete. Many, if not all sports carry inherit health risks, but there is no question that every single time combat sport athletes compete they are putting their lives on the line. But these types of repetitive stress tests along with the secondary health consequences of the sport can shorten a combat-sport athlete’s career longevity.
One idea that has not only permeated the combat sports world, but also the sports medicine industry is how physical pain and sports-related injuries should only be dealt with through physical interventions (e.g. physical therapy, sports massages, surgery, etc.). Any presence of pain or accumulation of injuries is associated with either mental and/or physical weakness. For this Training Report I am going to take the time to debunk these myths by exploring the actual neuroscience of combat sports trauma, and the different ways this athlete population can work on these issues from a psychological perspective.
The Neuroscientific Implications Of Combat Sports Trauma
Combat sport athletes no doubt must find some enjoyment in the sport in order to sustain participation in it. But even with the experiences of enjoying the sport there are no doubt stressful events that occur during participation in these events. There is a misconception that stress is only a ‘bad’, but the fact of the matter is that we all need stress in our lives, and even excitement can be considered a type of stress. Nonetheless, even an accumulation of positive stress events can overwhelm the body’s threshold for stress-tolerance (e.g. even though exercise is good for you, and exercise is considered a stress-inducing experience, too much exercise can lead to overtraining or Rhabdomyolysis).
In terms of combat-sport athletes, the constant physical stress accumulation can lead to long-term negative side-effects such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) if left untreated. Combat sport athletes are at increased risk for sustaining injuries, and the regular participation in one on one combat situations where other humans are inflicting physical attacks on the athlete’s body WITHOUT QUESTION will lead to psychological stress responses. How do we know this? In the book The Body Keeps The Score, author Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk beautifully illustrates how the brain functions during a trauma event, ‘the emotional brain has first dibs on interpreting incoming information. Sensory information about the environment and body state received by the eyes, ears, touch, kinesthetic sense, etc. converges on the thalamus where it is processed and then passed on to the amygdala to interpret its emotional significance. This occurs with lightning speed. If a threat is detected the amygdala sends messages to the hypothalamus to secrete stress hormones to defend against that threat. The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux calls this the low road. The second neural pathway, the high road, runs from the thalamus via the hippocampus and anterior cingulate, to the prefrontal cortex, the rational brain, for a conscious and much more refined interpretation. This takes several microseconds longer. If the interpretation of threat by the amygdala is too intense, and/or the filtering system from the higher areas of the brain are too weak, as often happens in PTSD, people lose control over automatic emergency response, like prolonged startle or aggressive outbursts.’
The author continues with this critical and final point, “In PTSD, the critical balance between the amygdala and the medial pre-frontal cortex shifts radically, which makes it much harder to control emotions and impulses. Neuroimaging studies of human beings in highly emotional states reveal that intense fear, sadness, and anger all increase the activation of subcortical brain regions involved in emotions and significantly reduce the activity in various areas in the frontal lobe, particularly the medial prefrontal cortex. When that occurs the inhibitory capacities of the frontal lobe break down and people “take leave of their senses”: They may startle in response to any loud sound, become enraged by small frustrations or freeze when somebody touches them. Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it. When our emotional and rational brains are in conflict, a tug of war ensues. This war is largely played out in the theater of visceral experience, your gut, your heart, your lungs will lead to both physical discomfort and psychological misery”.
When we consider these explanations of trauma and start to make the connections between the secondary and third order consequences of combat sports, athletes that compete in these environments need to shift their mindset on how they view physical and psychological maintenance. Treating these symptoms is actually a form of mental toughness and will help combat sport athletes increase the chances that they will sustain a long-term career in this field of performance. So what are the different options they can turn to to help accomplish this?
How Combat Athletes Can Improve Mental Performance by Processing Emotions
When we think about what an emotion actually is, an emotion is a physiological sensation that is directly tethered to an idea, memory or experience. When we view emotions from this perspective, that really makes the current emoji chart quite inefficient. Many experts within the field of sports medicine are beginning to recognize that pain and sport-related injuries are a type of emotional experience. I have worked with many athletes who were told by medical professionals that the pain they were experiencing was ‘in their head’. The professionals that told them this were right but for the wrong reasons! EVERYTHING you experience is in your head, and just because doctors can’t see something on an MRI doesn’t mean that the pain isn’t real.
From my perspective, processing emotions means fully experiencing physiological sensations associated with the idea, memory or experience. Many athletes regardless of sport populations do not instinctively want to do this, because these sensations are uncomfortable. But processing these experiences from a focused, psycho-somatic process will help the athlete’s brains fully ‘unload’ the accumulated stress in their bodies and move on to a clear mind that is not hampered by mental blocks or the unprocessed trauma from physical stress. Furthermore, because an emotion really is coming from the body, fully exploring that emotion gives athletes more access to their body. The more access athletes have to their body, the better their performance outcomes will be. So what are specific therapies that can help with this?
How Brainspotting & Bodyspotting Can Help Athletes Mentally & Physically Recover
I have talked extensivley about Brainspotting in previous Training Reports. Brainspotting is a brain-based psychotherapy that aims to help athletes move from a state of psychological dysregulation to regulation. In Brainspotting we say ‘where you look, affects how you feel’ which refers to how we have athletes utilize their field of vision, combined with focused mindfulness to help engage the regions of the brain that are responsible for the creation of regulation/dysregulation behaviors and bypass the regions that are not. But in Brainspotting there is a specific technique that is actually aimed at helping athletes deal with the emotional component of combat-sport related injuries and chronic pain. This technique is called Bodyspotting.
Where Brainspotting is typically used to help athletes overcome the emotional aspects of traumatic memories, Bodyspotting is focused on helping the client’s brain ‘breakthrough’ post-injury muscle guarding behaviors as well as helping athletes reduce pain sensations felt in certain areas of the body. While most doctors and physical therapists see muscle guarding behaviors and pain experiences as a type of ‘lack of insight’ psychological issue, the fact of the matter is that these problems most likely are PTSD-like responses generated between the brain and location of the origin of injury. If you or someone you know is dealing with this type of issue, use this link to reach out to learn more about services!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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