Don't be Scared Homie: Fighters Should Have a Therapist
If you watch mixed martial arts, most notably the UFC, you will quickly realize there is a long standing culture of bravado and toxic masculinity in the martial arts community. From the more obvious expressions of fear being equated with weakness, to the more subtle versions of mental health supports being renamed, “mind coaches,” there is a frailty in acknowledging emotions, mental health struggles, and the importance of receiving help and guidance for more than just one’s physical body.
Fortunately, while the fearless herculean archetype once reined supreme, there are new models appearing in the martial arts community. There are now individuals brave enough to acknowledge that fighting and martial arts is a layered discipline that exposes one to their core wounds, fears, and insecurities. Rather than cover these up with bravado and false confidence, there are fighters who openly speak about their experience with fear, insecurity, and psychological stress.
One of the most powerful things about martial arts and fighting is that is takes us to our primal roots. Much of our personality structure rests on behaviors that once served a function of survival. If these techniques worked in childhood, they typically stay aboard until we outgrow them or have an opportunity to expose and rework them. Fighting is one avenue to expose these compensatory parts of ourselves.
Most notably, hall-of-fame fighter George St. Pierre speaks about his pursuit of martial arts as a way to combat bullying in his childhood. It was the core emotions of embarrassment, fear, and self-protection that propelled St. Pierre into martial arts. What started as a practice to build confidence and an ability to defend oneself eventually carried him to stardom and champion status. It was later in his career that St. Pierre would openly talk about loving the training, but dreading the actual fight. The stress, anxiety, and mental strain of the actual fight was not something he looked forward to, but he slowly developed a relationship to the discomfort and was able to tolerate these experiences as he rose the rankings of the UFC.
Other fighters have shared how their pursuit of fighting linked directly to anger and aggression stemming from abuse and violence in their homes. Often feeling powerless, fighting became an avenue to prove oneself, exert their aggression, and purge feelings of anger in a safe environment. These fighters, who frequently get celebrated for their aggression and “chip on their shoulder,” speak intimately about the larger battle that fighting symbolizes for them.
We all compensate with behaviors that give us a feeling of being protected, defended, and in a position of apparent control and power. Eventually we can face these compensatory behaviors and create a more genuine relationship with our fear, if we choose to take that road.
When pursuing the path of martial arts and fighting, we have the opportunity to once again come face-to-face with our survival instincts, as well as all the ways they compensate to feel safe. Because of this, martial arts provides a rich space to heal and grow as an individual, especially when done in combination with guidance, mental health support, or psychotherapy.
False confidence and over-riding fear can work for performance, no doubt. But there are other methods worth exploring. It is a psychological rule that the feelings we override and suppress will eventually find themselves out in unconscious ways. They even have the ability to overtake us entirely if not addressed. For this reason, an individual pursuing the path of martial arts and fighting can benefit greatly from psychotherapy and counseling, namely because it offers a space to come into direct relationship with all the thoughts, feelings, and impulses that arise during training and competing.
Psychotherapy differs from coaching in that we do not simply focus on re-framing and finding strategic ways to perform. Rather, we focus on coming into an open and honest relationship with the truth of your experience, no matter what that is. While a coach might help you override your fear, a psychotherapist will bring you in direct relationship to your fear. Where a coach might teach you techniques to push away negative thoughts, a psychotherapist might encourage you to move closer to them, study them, and explore the base root of these thoughts.
The idea in psychotherapy is that the closer we move to that which scares us, the more we liberate from fear. Not from the perspective of moving past it, but instead from developing a working relationship to it. The same goes for negative thinking. If we remove the impulse to remove these parts of ourselves and instead move closer to them, we can begin to witness and manage them through the practice of observation and mindfulness instead of bulldozing past them.
Offering psychotherapy to individuals who are training and fighting, there are significant themes that arise - doubt, competitive feelings, fear of failure, lack of confidence vs. overconfidence, shame, superiority, aggression, rigid thinking patterns, the desire to prove oneself. We also find ourselves exploring significant points in our past, including the places where we started to develop a relationship to our body, our power, and our mind.
It is undoubtedly potent and powerful work.
To learn more, visit CraigSalernoCounseling.com and schedule a consultation today. Don’t be scared, homie.
