
It feels dark. You feel hopeless. You can’t control your thoughts and they’re all negative and won’t stop. You want to get away from your thoughts but you can’t. You want to go to sleep so you don’t have to keep thinking the thoughts, worrying about your life, not believing you can come out of it.
This is what depression feels like.
I share with you, my personal experiences, to help you better understand how others who have admitted their battles with depression may feel such as superstar American swimmer Caeleb Dressel.
This five-time Gold Medal winner at the Tokyo Olympics, who this week qualified for the Paris Games in the 50-meter individual event and 100-meter freestyle relay, has been open about his serious emotional struggles over the past few years and talked about battling this problem still during a press conference this week.
“I’ve had a lot of ups and downs this week in my hotel room,” he said. “Quite a few actually.”
His wife, who has been with him through his hyper-disciplined, often lonely swimming life.
“She knows first-hand the struggles that come with this sport, the tears that come with it, the frustration,” he said. “There are things I hate.”
He said he sometimes wishes he was a 10-year-old when it was all just about swimming and having fun and not all the other pressures attached to being a world-class swimmer.
Dressel is not alone in dealing with the mental challenges of swimming. Superstar Michael Phelps has been open about his emotional downs dealing with life after swimming.
For elite swimmers there’s so much focus on dropping times, practicing so hard and so much your entire life. It can be all-consuming and potentially an unbalanced way to lie in pursuit of being an Olympian, which eventually ends and then swimmers have to figure out what to do with the rest of their lie and ask “Was it all worth it?”
Shaine Casas, who made his first Olympic team this week by placing first in the 200-meter individual medley, spoke about what it felt like to reach his goal.
“That swim represented my entire life’s work,” he said. “This is the craziest day of my life,” he thought before the race because it was the culmination of a life consumed by swimming and making the Olympics.
Listening to several press conferences of U.S. Olympic swimmers this week, it’s clear mental health therapists, sports psychologists, and confidence coaches have become commonplace in this sport where extreme sacrifices of time and physical exertions are so much more necessary than in many other life pursuits.
Kate Walsh, who qualified for the Paris Games in the 200-meter individual medley, said she has sobbed around disappointments in swimming and sees a therapist. Joining her in the same event will be Kate Douglas who also sees a therapist “to deal with all the expectations.”
Douglas talked about her feelings about the 200 individual event: “I used to be scared before swimming the 200-meter IM,” she said. “I still don’t love it.”
Carson Foster, who made the team in the 400-meter individual medley, says he didn’t initially want to seek a therapist and didn’t want anyone to know about it, but it has “totally changed his career.”
The common thread I see in all these swimmers’ comments is a struggle to deal with the pressures of striving to be the fastest swimmers in the world. They’re aiming high and when you do that you test your will and see if you’re willing to not go to parties with friends. You suffer in the water – constantly, every day, year after year. Your natural inclination can be to just stop swimming so fast because it hurts, yet because you’re elite you feel you want to reach your potential and not let your coaches and families down.
You want to have fun but pain isn’t fun. Getting up early in the morning to practice swimming becomes tedious and boring. You want to do something else. And yet you want to be great.
It’s a mental battle.
These swimmers are admitting that, and seeking help, and that’s a good thing.
Because mental illness is serious.
As painful – and maybe more so – than swimming.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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