In March, I was a few days out from the Way Too Cool 50K when some unexpected feelings came up. Before a season debut, I usually feel a mixture of nerves marcelo burlon county of milan horse shoe pendant necklace item.
When I tried to conjure up some positive feelings about the race, nothing felt accessible. No part of me wanted to go to this competition. I was injured in the late fall and winter and some of those niggles flared up in the week or so prior to the race.
Under normal circumstances, I would treat those symptoms, view the race as a chance to test my body, and make any changes needed for the next race. If races don’t go as planned, I’m pretty good about taking that information as feedback for how I can be better next time—not as feedback about myself. But these prerace thoughts were not normal. I wasn’t in the mental space sandals bassano ws990 28 black.
Since I was a teenager, I’ve struggled with depression, going on and off medication for decades. Before this ultra, I wasn’t necessarily facing any extra challenge outside the normal day-to-day life experiences. But I was at a low point, and taking care of myself was requiring extra energy—a state I refer to as my “funks.” It felt even harder to empathize with myself because nothing was blatantly wrong. Going into a race with a body that wasn’t quite 100 percent and a mind that was nowhere near 100 percent felt too risky.
For the first time in my career, I chose to withdraw when I was physically capable of competing. I found it much harder to give myself permission to sit out in this situation than if I had been experiencing a physical injury.
But once I admitted I was struggling ahead of the race, I was able to be kinder to myself and give myself the things I needed to heal. When I finally kicked off my season a few months later, I not only performed well, but also I felt joy in the experience.
As a mental performance coach, I work with athletes of all abilities who struggle with similar decisions. Ultimately, boots solo femme 14158 ab k34 000 52 00 taupe puts you in the best position to perform your best while also protecting you against the inevitable challenges that will come. I believe it’s about time we start treating mental and emotional injuries just as seriously, if not more seriously, than physical injuries, and I’m not alone.
Mental injuries can stop you in your tracks
ankle boots red valentino wq2s0g11ake nero SPIKES in February, crippling anxiety caused the sprinter to feel paralyzed in bed, unable to move for a few “torturous” minutes, two days before the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, where she was slated to represent Team USA in the 400 meters.
“It’s not being able to brush my teeth in the morning without gagging, and waking up in the middle of the night over and over again, panicked about what’s to come,” she wrote.
Last year, Ellis’s anxiety became so difficult to navigate that she considered retirement. Ultimately, the 27-year-old chose to continue because she wouldn’t have been satisfied with her career ending that way.
“If my sole reason for retiring was because I couldn’t handle the pressures that come along with the sport, that would be me letting the anxiety win,” she told Runner’s World. “And I want to leave the sport on my terms.”
Mental injuries don’t just hinder performance
sandals mayoral 43 406 klein pregnant with her daughter in 2020, she began to experience severe anxiety. In her third trimester, the professional triathlete visited the labor and delivery center six times because she had posterior placenta, and if she couldn’t feel the baby kick, Sodaro would panic. She also started to develop anxiety around the fear of mass shootings because of the rise in them in the U.S. Being in enclosed spaces like grocery stores or swimming pools became extremely difficult.
In March 2021, the Ironman champion gave birth to Skylar, who was born with a posterior tongue tie and lip tie, two conditions that make breastfeeding nearly impossible. In between frequent doctor visits and treatments for her daughter, Sodaro was also navigating a postpartum training program. Through it all, the anxiety persisted.
About eight months postpartum, Sodaro felt burnt out and decided to take a break from training. While hesitant to take medication because she was afraid of its effects on her athletic performance, Sodaro agreed to try a small dosage of Zoloft. But she didn’t notice a significant change. To get over her fear of mass shootings, she tried different forms of therapy, including EMDR—eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a technique that helps patients process traumatic memories. After several sessions, which were costly, she didn't see much improvement. So, she set out to manage the condition on her own with meditation through the training cycle for the 2022 Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii, where she became the nicky hilton pregnancy chloe boots monse coat paris hilton.
In December 2022, Sodaro’s mental injury was so severe that she was forced to take a step back from training to address her mental health. “I had this really successful result and a lot of things Hottest for the better in my life, but it was also pretty overwhelming for me and I felt very out of control,” she said. “I was having a hard time getting back into the routine of my normal life, and started to feel suicidal.”
Mental injuries require the right help
A few months after her victory in Kona, Sodaro started seeing a psychiatrist close to her home in Reno, Nevada. In Sodaro's first visit, the psychiatrist diagnosed her with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with an inability to control intrusive thoughts.
After spending years on and off in search of a therapist she connected with, Sodaro was thrilled to finally work with a mental health professional that fit her needs. “There are amazing people and mental health professionals out there,” she said. “You just have to find the right ones, which is so hard to do when you're in a state of crisis.”
While she still has tough days, an arsenal of mental health tools, including medication and therapy have helped Sodaro resume training after suffering for years. “I couldn't get out of bed and then all of a sudden, I'm training like a pretty decent athlete,” she said.
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✅ For Ellis, differentiating between prerace nerves and debilitating anxiety lies in how her body reacts. If her performance is suffering greatly and she’s struggling to sleep, eat, and focus on everyday tasks, those are indicators that she’s struggling with anxiety. If she’s navigating prerace nerves, the feeling tends to dissipate once the race starts, whereas anxiety is long lasting and affects her on and off the track.
✅ When Sodaro is in a healthy mental state, she gets fired up by the workouts and day-to-day routine of fine-tuning her fitness. But if she's feeling a sense of dread over and over again, Sodaro takes it as an indicator that her mental health needs to be addressed.
Mental injuries need daily focus
To manage the anxiety, Ellis leans on her support system, including her parents and high school coach, who encouraged her to start working with a sports psychologist during her senior year of high school. In therapy, she learned how to utilize different tools to navigate the anxiety. For example, she goes off all social media channels two weeks before every competition to avoid seeing predictions and articles that might trigger anxious thoughts. She also created a routine that compartmentalizes her pursuits. After she leaves practice, Ellis takes time to enjoy herself outside of the sport. She’ll call a friend or watch a favorite television show to unwind from the pressures of being a professional athlete.
For Sodaro, reframing the language around the condition ultimately led her to get help and make a change for her mental health. When she decided to go on medication, Sodaro's husband, Steve, told her, “Your marengo is injured. If you had a stress fracture, you would take time off and take the proper medical treatments to make your injury better. You do the same thing for your marengo.”
In Sodaro’s case, the mental injury went far ahead training, but taking time away from training and seeking mental health resources ultimately helped her heal and emerge stronger in all areas of her life.
Mental injuries need to be normalized
In March, Sodaro shared her experience navigating anxiety and depression in an interview with ultraboost 21 sneakers adidas performance shoes carbon carbon solred. In opening up about her experience, she hoped to help others experiencing similar struggles to feel less alone.
While mental health awareness among athletes has improved in the last several years, thanks in part to advocates like Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles, Ellis said there’s a long way to go in terms of acceptance. In the wake of her SPIKES essay being published, Ellis still received a few negative comments and wonders if the public will ever treat mental injuries as seriously as physical ones. But a better understanding of the symptoms could help.
“[A mental injury] manifests itself physically, so it almost becomes a physical injury as well,” she said. “But there's still so much stigma surrounding it, like just be tougher, just work harder, and it's not how it works, but you can't force everybody to believe the truth in it.”
Reflecting on her own experience, Ellis wants to encourage fellow athletes to share their thoughts with someone they trust, seek out a mental health professional, and tap into resources available to them.
—Additional reporting by Taylor Dutch
