“Uncomfortable Conversations” is a series by Kirsten Brehmer exploring a broad range of topics that are hard to talk about, often go unspoken and need a space to be heard. The heart of this series are the challenging experiences, questions, life events, personal struggles and conflicts that we shy away from sharing – but need to talk about. She hopes this column will help create a community through conversation by advocating for the importance of growing our dialogue, educating ourselves and being open to learning and listening to one another’s opinions. Fellow Bruins are also welcome to submit op-eds or letters to the editor as part of this series to expand upon whatever conversations they believe need the space to be had.

Sports are an integral part of society when it comes to daily entertainment, hobbies or exercise and many can sympathize with the physical demands it takes to be an athlete.

But the mental strain is often unrecognized.

Whether it be at the collegiate or professional level, both athletes’ bodies and minds face challenges.

Because sports revolve around the idea of winning and losing, vulnerabilities athletes experience can be labeled as a weakness.

The stigma around athletes and their mental health needs to be broken.

Danny Martinez, a clinical psychologist with UCLA Athletics, said needing to look a certain way, act a certain way and think a certain way to achieve certain results is part of the mental health stigma athletes face because of the continuous expectation to be competitively great.

Athletes face a variety of mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, overtraining syndrome, traumatic stress disorders, eating disorders and sleep disorders.

I was a soccer player who played goalie for the majority of my career in the sport. It took me a while to realize that the anxiety I projected onto myself was not always natural.

By the time I was in fourth grade, I was already getting shaky and nervous for game days. Even though I was just a kid, I felt as though the stakes were high. My make-it-or-break-it mentality nonetheless developed and stuck with me throughout high school.

It’s hard to imagine the pressures that any athlete faces, let alone college student-athletes.

Research shows that rates of mental health issues are higher among college athletes compared to professional athletes.

“Student-athletes, they have a lot of arenas where they feel like they need to perform, both in the classroom and on the court or the field, so it’s a hard balance of not just student-athlete, but self-athlete, of finding their own identity and finding something outside of their sport,” said Ariel Guldstrand, a student-athlete well-being coordinator and associate athletic trainer for UCLA Athletics.

In college, athletes face a unique variant of challenges because they are not only trying to achieve athletic excellence, but also academic excellence.

It wouldn’t be abnormal for a college athlete to have midterms or finals during the peak of their sports season.

When an athlete gets injured, it may not always be just a physical issue they endure, but a mental one as well.

The tail end of my first varsity cross country season was cut-short due to an injury. The sudden loss of the sport I loved also felt like a loss of who I was as a person.

If your life revolves around doing one activity you enjoy so deeply, imagine the sudden inability of not being able to do it anymore. Injury can lead to an athlete experiencing a loss of identity.

“I think it’s really easy to lose sight of your identity outside of your sport, because you’re constantly chasing perfection,” said Amy Schwem, a former student-athlete at William & Mary.

Schwem is also the social media manager at The Hidden Opponent, a leading nonprofit aimed at addressing the mental health struggles of athletes through education and advocacy.

“Every athlete is competitive and wants to be the best version of themself and it’s very easy to forget that the best version of you as a person, your performance in your sport is only a fraction of that,” Schwem said.

Striving for perfection has clear consequences for athletes. Underperformance, questioning one’s self-worth or a continued fear of failure can undermine athletic abilities and contribute to high anxiety levels.

“There is always a challenge of finding that balance, of finding both stress management and also healthy performance,” Guldstrand said.

In my experience, this perfectionist mindset cognitively distorted my relationship with running, leading me to part ways with the sport for over five years.

Injuries can also create new traumas, Martinez said.

For instance, phantom pains from a previously broken bone, or being paranoid of re-injury, can come with the territory of getting hurt as an athlete.

Recovering from an injury is mental just as much as it is physical.

Everything from replaying memories over again, seeing situations that remind an athlete of their injury and struggling being around the environment where they got injured can impact the mental health of injured athletes, Martinez said.

“It’s so important to be in the weight room as an athlete, to train your muscles, and it’s equally important to train your mind,” Schwem said.

Despite physical setbacks from injury, my mind played the greatest role in keeping me from going back to doing what I loved. I remember telling myself if I can’t be as fast as I was, I’m not going to go back.

However, thankfully, resources supporting mental health for athletes are growing.

For example, a training program aimed not only towards athletes but coaches as well called Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement is both a remote and in-person service that is giving individuals in sports the ability to learn mindfulness-based training for their mental health.

Seeking help for one’s mental health is easier said than done, but in the long run it’s worth it.

“I think it’s really important to just continue opening the conversation,” Schwem said. “The more we talk about it, the more that we’re chipping away at that notion that athletes can’t struggle or shouldn’t struggle, or can only struggle if it’s not interfering.”

Athletes should know that they do not have to solely seek help during times of crisis, but also periods of transition. Even just exploring a greater understanding of themselves and their well-being is something that trained professionals welcome, Guldstrand said.

Because my relationship with my mental health has changed, so has my relationship with running. I am no longer comparing myself to the athlete I was, but rather re-learning how to simply enjoy something that I always loved doing.

The conversation on mental health is broadening, but the perception that athletes seeking help is a weakness persists.

I began running again when I started attending UCLA last year.

What I began to realize, however, is that running never really left me, I left it.

“It’s very important to create what I would call a culture of care, which is this idea that we care about you as an individual and as a whole person, and that, in itself, is just going to have good outcomes,” Martinez said.

Athletes are much more than just their sports and making sure they know that they are valued beyond what they do on the field, track or court is more important than winning on any day.