Coping and managing mental health

As with most things in life, prevention will always be preferable to the cure.

As athletes, you’ll spent countless hours weekly working out in the gym, building muscle size and density, stabilising your joints and building an incredible fitness base, and for what reason? It’s not to look good on the beach for the end of season team trip, it was so you can stay on the field and away from injury.

Rugby is a collision sport with impact similar in force to that of a car crash. So, having the extra layers of muscle in the right places help cope with the contact, and allows you to keep doing what you’re paid to do: play the game.

We all know a player competing with an physical injury is a much less effective player, and so we need reframe the same approach for the mind. If a player is struggling with their mental fitness, they’ll under-perform. Recent research states that “mental health is one of the key contributors to productivity, and employers should do more to ensure the mental well-being of their staff”.

Athletes that can actively productively manage their own mental wellbeing will find themselves more productive on the training picture and ultimately on the field of play.

This involves developing coping strategies for a wide variety of issues, including mental wellness strategies, action plans and keeping to healthy daily routines.

These techniques are something very few of us were taught at school, so are often something we have to learn as adults.

In this blog we explore four key areas in preparing for, and understanding coping and managing mental fitness:

• Prepare
• Where do we need help?
• Understanding triggers

The devil is in the detail, so let’s start.

Becoming prepared
One of the toughest things about mental wellbeing is that often many people are unaware they are struggling until it’s too late.

We’ve all had tough times before, dealt with them and have been resilient enough not to let it affect our professionalism or productivity.

But some situations can become overwhelming, leaving people feeling weighed down and not knowing where to turn, how to get help or help themselves. Somewhere throughout this journey they’ll identify things are going badly and when that happens, specialist training will help them to understand their emotions.

When you accept and understand that problems may occur, you can better formulate preventative solutions for yourself, colleagues and those nearest and dearest.

Being best prepared to understand and manage your mental state will keep you in control, and control will help you choose a clear and decisive direction to help yourself and those around you. This will allow you to avoid the need for intervention or external support – that cost.

Where do we need help?

As mentioned earlier, understanding how you can identify an issue before it becomes a problem is the best way to avoid it all together.

The most common mental health issues facing teams and work forces are often the same facing us in everyday life like:

Stress
Stress is an instinctual reaction for when we feel things are not going right, or we believe we are under attack. Our body moves into fight-or-flight mode getting ready to react physically and quickly.

On the team, an example of this is when we might be asked to play a new position, one we are not familiar with and worry we may not be able to perform and let people down.

Anxiety
Again, this is a natural reaction to concern and worry. Often anxiety can be created when we are uncertain about a future outcome.

As in the example above, a full-time professional athlete can often experience anxiety when considering transitioning back into the world of work from professional sports as they worry about the unknown elements of the next stage in their lives.

Depression
Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act.

In the team environment, athletes have been known to experience depression through dealing with long-term injury and the feeling of displacement as they watch from the side-lines outside of the team unit. Depression is also intrinsically linked to Stress and anxiety.

Anger
Similarly, to stress, anger is a natural reaction that will also move you into fight-or-flight mode. It’s not all bad, as anger is a great motivator to find a solution but it becomes a problem when you have excessive anger or you cannot control it.

Understanding triggers
An emotional trigger (sometimes referred to as a ‘toxic influence’) is an external action that produces an unsettling physical and/or psychological reaction. This reaction can leave the victim in a state of panic, anxiety, depression, despair, confusion and/or a negative state of mind.

The key to coping and managing your mental wellbeing is understanding the triggers that lead you into an unproductive state.

When learning to manage mental fitness it is important to understand the root cause of these triggers and learn to avoid them where possible.

Examples of triggers at work:

• Being emotionally attacked
• Getting physically attacked
• Financial pressure
• Being spoken down to
• Being embarrassed
• Being dressed down in front of others
• Loneliness
• Boredom
• Workload pressure
• Reminders of painful experiences (anniversaries)
• Traumatic attack on your senses (loud noises, scents, sights and taste etc)
• Unsettling information (bad news)
• Working with incompatible people.