E30 | Kylie Lahey: Conquering Mental Health Hurdles for the Elite Athlete

Welcome to the team behind the team podcast. I am your host Dani Mae. This is the monthly show focused on building conversations around the team-based model approach to ethic, performance, strength, and conditioning, sports medicine, sports science, mental health, and wellness and sports nutrition.

Hello, and welcome back to the team behind the team podcast. I’m your host, Dani may, and we have got a great episode plan for you this month. This is March spring break is right around the corner and we got coach Joe crosscheck. Our coho co-host is in the house, Joe. What’s up today, baby. Oh much coach to sta and join March.

It’s a great month, turned 33. So I’m getting a little bit older, a little bit slower coats, any plans for spring? Oh, spring break. Yeah. Uh, try to catch up on some sleep for David is just dragging you down. It’s keeping you up. Huh? He’s a wild man. Alrighty. Two months. And he’s uh, yeah, he’s he’s killing the game.

Love it. So cute. The kids are blessed, so we’re good. We’ll be, we’ll get you some sleep over spring break. Hopefully comes down. I’m looking forward to it. Well, with that, I just wanna introduce our guests, our special guests today. Uh, Man this episode, again, just probably one of the near and dear topics of my heart is more recent.

Um, just with what coming through the pandemic. So we want to welcome Kylie Lahey to the show, Kelly, how you doing today? Great. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks for making time and, uh, really excited. She’s going to talk, we’re going to get into all things mental health today. So really looking forward to that.

So real quick about Kylie, just newlywed kinda got married in September. That’s great. How’s that going? Kylie? It’s good. It doesn’t feel that much different. That’s right. I love it. So Hey, some good positive things going into 22. Uh, I like to hear so welcome to the show. We’re glad you’re on board. So, um, we’ll let you kick us off today.

And just take a moment and introduce yourself, uh, give the listeners, uh, just a snapshot of your career path and how you got to Texas. And then at the end, kind of what role are you playing currently with our student athletes? Yeah. Um, well, first I was excited to be here today because you know, I, I talk about mental health all day for a living.

So why not talk about it on a podcast too? Um, my history kinda starts way back. I learned to swim when I was two years old at a summer daycare and, um, swim super competitively all the way up until junior year of high school. And I got a really bad bout of mano. And at that point in time, um, Kind of had to readjust my goals for a bit, but I always tell athletes that swimming never leaves you.

And so when it came up towards college, swimming was something that I wanted to try to get back into, which ended up, uh, after I was done looking at the, at a line at the bottom of the pool every day, I switched into open water and triathlon training. Um, and that just allowed me to really enjoy the benefits of athletics and, um, just moving your body.

So there’s that half of my story. And the other half after I graduated college, um, went to the university of Colorado Boulder and, um, I had some time to kill before I wanted to go into pursuing being a therapist for grad school. I didn’t want to come out of school and be a 23 year old therapist. I knew I had my own stuff to figure out, let alone to try to help other people.

Um, so I decided to go to cosmetology school, actually, I’d always enjoyed. Yeah. I had always enjoyed the beauty industry. Um, and you know, as I navigated those 15 months, uh, it actually opened my eyes. Not only just to how lucrative that industry was, but a whole other side of education and post high school, um, a lot of systemic justice.

You name it related. Uh, experiences that my classmates were going through. In addition to the fact that being a cosmetologist is creative, but also kind of like being a therapist. Um, if anybody’s gotten their hair done, you know, that you’re telling your hairstylist everything. So if it in perfectly with going into being a therapist and it kind of felt ready and, but that cosmetology school experience is actually what led me to pursue social work.

Cause it’s, it’s a pretty broad area of mental health. Sort of study, but it also has a justice component to it. And that’s how I ended up looking for social work. I said, I want to go to a really good school and UTS social work school is one of the best in the country. And Austin is one of the greatest cities in the country.

And so applied, applied there, got in, moved my life. And throughout my two years in grad school at UT my internships were in high schools and, um, an eating disorder hospital about for a year and a half. And during that time, I learned so much about the medical side of, uh, of clinical mental health treatment.

So then my final semester, I had the chance to apply to be an intern in our behavioral health program here at UT. And, uh, it was all of the skills I had learned in my internships. And even just from relating to people in cosmetology school, And my background is an athlete fit in perfectly to go into this role at UT.

Um, and they kept me around. So something went okay. And, uh, now on a day to day, I meet with anywhere from one to seven athletes for half an hour or 50 minutes at a time they have access to us. They can talk to us about anything and everything, um, at no cost to them. And we just want to make sure that we show them how much we value their mental health and taking care of them, and also give them a space to talk about the, the pressures, the stressors, whatever it is that they are experiencing at this time of life.

That’s powerful. I think too, just triggered some stuff in me. Listen to you. I’m so appreciative of this landscape we’re into with mental health. And we’re going to get into some of that in a second, obviously, that it can be a little bit, somebody could maybe be a little bit too much, but I remember coach Joe, my senior year in college, Kylie, I blew my ACL and went into depression.

And back then your mental health program plan was simple. You met with the coach and he put a foot in your rear end and you had to kind of like bootstrap it up and, you know, figure it out. And it was usually just a thread if you don’t pick it up, you’re out of here. And so that was my mental health program back then, I think just, you know, I have four daughters and definitely I’ve dealt with this personally in my home and to have somebody to talk to and to kind of figure out what you’re thinking about and kind of rationalize and separate.

Some of that I think is so important for these kids today. So. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It was a big deal up in Seattle during my time there, when I was stationed at a Marine Corp security force battalion, you know, there’s not much sun up there, so there’s a lot of depression that sets in and, you know, as soon as seasonal.

Yeah. Yup. And, uh, as a platoon commander to try to tell him like, Hey, take vitamin D and stuff like that and try to, you know, but we had the chaplain who was a big help, but he was kind of like our mental health guy. And then we had, um, some, some other civilians contractors who would help out too. But, and you know, prior to that, I was in Hawaii.

So there was not much mental health going to Hawaii. You just go to the beach, I guess you could say, but yeah. I was surprised on a weekly, monthly basis. How many guys? Not just from my platoon, but the battalion in general had to go see somebody and talk to somebody about what was going on. And, um, and it could be anything.

I mean, it doesn’t have to be just sports or, you know, what’s going on in the service it’s family stuff back home. It’s it’s everything. So, I mean, it’s such a, can be such a broad topic and it indefinitely goes funnels all right. Back into performance where all eyes are on it. So, yeah. Yeah. That’s good. I think that the current landscape of sports with young people has drawn a lot of tension on mental health currently and how it appears to be declining in a lot of athletes lives.

Right. Um, Kylie, what have you seen regarding mental health? Has it worsened? And if so, what are some of the causes. From your seat, would you be seen from it? I think this is a different conversation now in 2022 than it would have been prior to March, 2020 because of the pandemic. Um, but I do think that.

There is a lot more attention to mental health and that mental health does appear to be declining. I think this is because it is harder than ever to be a young adult emotionally than in any time in history. Um, I truly believe that the way our world is just moves so fast and everything is so interconnected through social media and technology, that it’s really just immensely difficult to stay planted and content in the present moment, um, to let alone, you know, develop a sense of identity without comparing yourself or being told who you should be.

You make up stories in your mind. It is, uh, all of these things contribute to making it so much more difficult to, uh, feel content happy, healthy. Um, all right. So I mentioned I have four daughters. We have a family, Snapchat, Joe. All right, this that’s all I use it for, for me, my wife, my daughter, just to keeps us connected.

And, but I don’t know if you’ve witnessed this up close of seeing them managed Snapchat. They’ve got this thing called streaks that you’re always contact your Senator and it doesn’t take long. But one day I glanced over at my daughter and the list of people that she had to send little pictures to. I don’t know if I could keep up with it, you know, like in.

Like to admit it or not. That’s a mental pool, right. It’s built that way. Right. It is built to keep you coming back to it. Right. And the, it actually impacts the, the content that you’re sharing with people, right. It’s not a, it’s not productive anymore. It’s just to maintain your number, which relates to status.

And I hear about streaks all the time, um, as a gauge of your closeness to someone too, which is also a really interesting way to be gaging your relationships. Um, one part of mental health. I’d love to just hear you expound on is, and I got this from you guys. I’m pretty sure, but the difference is there a difference between like mental health and like mental illness and if so, Help us kind of weed that out a little bit.

Absolutely. There is a difference between mental health and mental illness. Um, mental illness is considered something that’s diagnosable. And even then there are a lot of different perspectives on diagnoses and whether or not that stigmatizing, or if that’s actually just a tool that helps us better than help people get the treatment they need based off research.

You know, if clinical depression is impacted by this treatment modality, then you know that they should go hand in hand working together. But as a whole. Everyone experiences, mental health challenges and different seasons. Um, I like to explain emotions in and of themselves just as our, uh, the somatic and physical expression of our brains response to a circumstance, and then how we think about it.

And so in that definition, you’ve got, um, you’ve got emotions, you’ve got physical, but you also have the thought aspect and all three of those go into someone’s mental health. So if you’re not thinking very well, but your nervous system’s chilled out, then you’re probably doing okay. But if, if your thoughts are, are fine, but your nervous system’s off, all these things contribute to difficult mental health.

And then you have to figure out how to piece them all together and, and develop coping skills, different ways that you move forward, understanding that this is the way that your body and brain react. Give us some clues zone, red flags, if somebody who’s, you know, like, oh, that that’s leaning towards, not that you would diagnose them, but that’s a little bit more mental illness versus just having some mental health things they need to address.

Like how would you delineate? Yeah. So sometimes is going to be a lot of diagnoses are going to be length of time that you’ve experienced the symptoms. So, you know, we’ve all had, uh, a sad week, right? Uh, if it becomes, if it becomes a sad six months, Consistently, you know, more often than not, that becomes a diagnosis.

Um, but also, you know, there’s different levels of how, you know, how anxious are you, how often are you feeling on edge? How often are you not getting adequate sleep? So a lot of it really has to do with time and severity red flags aren’t talked about as much. Um, I would say are maybe people that are just so busy that they can’t even like, and they start to use that kind of as a coping mechanism.

And we see this a lot with athletes. Sometimes they don’t have another option. Right. Um, they have to get creative about, uh, managing their busy-ness, but busy-ness can be people trying to distract themselves from dealing with a problem. Um, if you notice somebody avoiding things or pushing things away, that can be a problem.

Um, I would also say that when it comes to the real, the red flags for like. Any sort of language around feeling better off dead, um, w uh, increased missing obligations, not showing up isolating from friends, but the ones that we don’t talk about much are selling all their things or giving things away. Um, and, you know, right.

So you’re starting to sort of give parting gifts. There can also be, uh, Another one is, uh, mood swings from if they’re really low, all of a sudden being great. And this is because sometimes if they have made the decision to end their lives, they there’s a piece about it. Um, it’s finally, my suffering is going to end.

And so seeing someone go from really struggling to doing great and like things have switched is either a sign of maybe a chemical shift that’s undiagnosed or really a time to check in and just ask, Hey, this is a drastic change. How are you? Well, that’s tough. Yeah. There’s, there’s some stuff in there. I mean, we definitely, like I said, I personally have battled some depression, so, but just didn’t know, you know, and I think it helps to know some of the, some of the red flags on it.

Um, anything to add to that, Joe? Anything? Yeah, I think, I mean, that’s such a challenge and I’ve. You’ll kind of back to my military crew. We kind of deal with that a lot, the suicide and stuff like that. And you know, every time that happens, everyone is just like, it seems like everyone’s just taken so off guard.

I think that’s the first thing everyone says is like, oh wow. It was him. It was her, you know, they they’re, they’re just kind of taken aback. Like it’s just so out of character sometimes. And, and I guess we don’t think about, I guess those little clues and things like that. And I, you know, I, I kind of wish like people were more aware of like those red flags, which is, I mean, it’s pretty awesome that you mentioned those.

Cause they, they were so obvious, but you have never thought of that before, you know, Kyle, you hit something. That’s good, Joe too. But she hits something I wanted to back up. All them was, um, you said busy-ness cause I’ve noticed through COVID there’s really no off day. It’s like we got zoom. You can work late at night.

You can work weekends. You can work mornings. You can. Mid-day like you’re fully accessible and there’s an, there’s an author. I know, you know, the author is Ryan holiday. He’s got a book called stillness is the key. And so my, my point to your business is solitude. And I feel like we’ve gotten to this world where there’s so much noise that there’s never, cause you’d mentioned it just a second ago of like, we’re always just some stimulating something’s coming at us.

And I just, I have noticed in myself the way I, the way I know for my mental health, I need some, what I call mellow mushroom time. I need some downtime. I need a coffee. I need no music. Nobody pulling on me, no meetings. I like to read, or just even just daydream, funny story, this, this pertain. But we went, I think it’s about three years ago, Joe and Kai, we went to the re.

The Frio river and went off the grid. There was no wifi up there. There was no sales. So you couldn’t call me. It was weird. I never had experienced it. And we were for three days for a weekend, we were up there. We, I love it. Nobody could call or text me or email me. It was kind of a time. It was quiet here at Texas.

And it was pre COVID obviously. And one night, the first night we got out and did like a little bonfire and there was just, there was no lights on, we had the fire on and my, one of my kids starts freaking out because it’s so quiet. And I’m like, what is wrong with you? This is, so this is great. This is repeatable, but she just didn’t like it.

Cause it was just so much quietness, but it’s, I think we’ve become addicted to like busy-ness and I don’t know if there’s any, I’m sure there’s some things you’ve got to prescribe for some of this. Unplug speak to that a little bit. I’m nodding over here, because especially in the athlete population busy-ness is inevitable.

Right. Just packed schedules, even trying to get them in to see us. It’s like, if I can get a half an hour with somebody, all it’s great. Right. Um, so then, uh, I would say when it comes to busy-ness again, sometimes it’s used as a distraction. Sometimes it, you just get to that point, right? High achievers, you get to that point and all of a sudden there’s no, there’s no free time.

And so I will actually prescribe scheduled free time. And I work with different students. We kind of look at their schedule and we decide, when are you going to turn off for the night? You know, when, when are you done with, with schoolwork? When in your day can you schedule. 15 minutes of scheduled free time, but it’s whatever it works for them in certain seasons, it is so important and it feels counter-intuitive to schedule free time.

However, if you don’t make a priority of it, you won’t have time for it. And as a result, it gives them permission to feel like they’re productively resting in that free time. So that, that busy-ness is manageable because they have some recharge. Yeah, that’s good. Is boredom a good thing or a bad thing. Wow.

Is boredom a good thing. I know. I kind of caught you off guard with that one, but I’m just curious. Cause I’ve read like my kids, like they can’t stand being. And I have theirs. I’ve gotten them a season of my life. Like I’m good to be bored for a little bit. Cause there’s, nobody’s pulling on me. Yeah. So, I mean, what do you think?

I think we live in a, a time in our history in which boredom doesn’t have to happen right there. We have so many ways of, of occupying our brain. And so boredom is actually, I don’t think it has to be a good or bad thing. I think it’s, it’s how we look at it and that if we maybe change the boredom from, or like change the verbiage of boredom to just being mindful right.

Or relaxing. Tuning out taking a brain break that can be considered very beneficial because it’s actually allowing yourself to recoup from there’s a book called, uh, essentialism. If either one of you heard this book, Greg McKeown is his name. The book is fascinating because again, I’ll give you the spoiler of this book, but he talks about, I think it was the early 19 hundreds or 18 hundreds sometime the priority used to be singular, but somewhere in the history there, I think it was 19 hundreds.

It be claimed plural. So it used to be just, what’s the one thing you’re going to do. And he uses the analogy to your point of if you take a closet, right? If you take a closet and just pack it full of stuff so that you open it stuff, just falling out. Well, the solution is to create a bigger closet, but what do we do is.

We pack with more stuff. Right. Especially, I’m sure as you’re married, you get that, you get, you go, go pack some more crap in there, right. In the house. One-on-one, we’re going to build up our stuff. We need a bigger house, but in life. Right. I think it’s, it’s better like to create that free time and it doesn’t have to be boredom.

I don’t think, but it’s definitely gotta be something that’s not just stressing you out, you know, always just cause I feel like even my own life some days are just so packed. I don’t ever have time to even just think about what I’m doing or what. So I think there’s a little something there I’ve had to find some balance in there was, is what’s helped me some, yeah.

I always found that like a little bit of boredom is good. You know, it’s just a little bit just that, that, that break. But I’ve also found that in my board, on my, I kind of sit there. I’m like, man, I feel so useless right now. I need it almost like rebuilds that drive to. Do something productive again. And so it’s like, I guess in a way there’s a good boredom, but I know it also comes from being so busy these days.

And I imagine a lot of that, you know, that lack of boredom can create a ton of anxiety, maybe even some depression. So I guess my question for you, Kylie is with, you know, discussing anxiety and depression in athletes and young people, you know, what do you think is often left out of the conversation? I want to add on really quick to the boredom too.

Sometimes I will, uh, when I’ve really high achieving very productive students that I work with, we will figure out how to reframe, uh, you know, making everything into a life lesson. And so. Sitting and watching Netflix for two hours tonight, you are learning what it’s like to be someone who sits and watches Netflix for two hours.

You don’t have to like it, but this is your experiencing, this is what it’s like to be that other person, this is what it’s like to be someone that has a margin in their life. This is what it’s like to be someone that isn’t busy on a Friday night. And it gives them a perspective that says, oh, okay, this is, I’m learning something from this.

This is an experiment. You know, it gives it motivation. So it’s not just super boring, but with that, you’re right. That with people that are overly productive or super driven and especially the population that we work with, you do have anxiety and depression. Um, Yes. They’re buzzwords these days, we hear about it everywhere.

It’s kind of the two big key perspectives. And I think that’s fine that everyone’s aware of those because they’re, they’re pretty manageable to understand. I think what we don’t always discuss in the mainstream about anxiety, depression, you know, we know their symptoms, we know what they look like, but how do we get here?

And how do you deal with them? I think is not always talked about. That there’s a lot of bonding between people these days. Like, oh, you’re depressed me too. Right. And great. We love empathy. We love understanding one another, but how do we help each other get out from the whole climb up the ladder, you know, um, get back out.

So I think you’re kind of already going in this direction. You like, so let’s dive a little bit deeper and you said people use depression or anxiety is like a buzzword, but like what chemical reactions in the brain actually cause depression, like not, not just using the bus, let’s look a little bit of science behind this, right?

So I like to explain anxiety and depression through this concept of a window of tolerance. It’s discussed a lot in the mental health world and within the window of tolerance, you have, you know, you think back on calculus days and different graphs that you have a sweet spot in where. You’re able to manage daily stressors, um, sort of interact with your environment.

It is when you get above the window of tolerance, certain things either trigger you or you live on edge so much that you, you, when you get above the window of tolerance, is anxiety, panic attacks, overwhelm. Um, could it be some adrenaline in there, right? Absolutely. Yes. Adrenaline, adrenaline cortisol. Um, anything that’s going to it’s the fight or flight response.

So when, you know, when you get to a point where your body has to respond to a threat, it’s going to release those chemicals. And it doesn’t know the difference between running into a mountain lion and you know, the threat of failing your test this afternoon, it’s the same body system. And so when you live at the top of that window of tolerance, we’re not meant to live up there, right?

We’re not supposed to run away from mountain lions all day and aside note, uh, Impalas the animal. After they’re being chased by a predator, they actually will shake and you can like, look it up on line. They shake and they are literally moving the energy, the adrenaline through their bodies to get it out.

It’s really cool. They’re so smart. You know, their, their bodies, uh, serve them well. And then they go on grazing in that little fields. Like it was no big deal, but we sometimes as humans, we are a little more complex. I might want to believe we have trouble shaking out some of that cortisol and adrenaline and everything else.

In addition to living in a world that sometimes keeps us on edge. Sometimes you can be genetically predisposed to being anxious. So when you live at that level for so long, Actually you can, our body kicks into gear and essentially it says we’re tired of living on edge this much and it shuts down and it, it goes to the bottom of the window of tolerance.

And that’s when you start to feel numb, some people sort of zone out, right? You can’t concentrate as well. That’s called dissociation that’s depression. So you’ve got anxiety above the window, depression below the window. And, and these days we’re living significantly more often outside of our window of tolerance because of the things around us, the pressures and our chemical response.

Yeah. I’ve always believed, I think that’s a good life that the, I love that you shared that there’s a good principal of her, that. You know, life is good. As long as you don’t live it in extremes, right? Everything in moderation. I mean, being a typical, I kept getting this picture. You were explaining something earlier, but the term red line, like if you’ve ever worked on engines in whether it’s motorcycles, I used to ride motorcycles when I was younger, but you had a red line.

And that red line was that once the ends, you got to so many RPMs. If you operate in that red line too often, the engine’s going to blow. And I would say it’s kind of similar what you’re saying about our brains and our nervous system and just our emotions. Like you’ve got a range. You probably can operate in that safely.

But if you live it, like you said, above or below, like there’s, that’s going to go out at some point. So coach, that’s a perfect analogy for what people do. So you mentioned the Impala, you know, they go shake out the adrenaline. What do people do? We have to be problem solvers. Now we have to go on Google and figure out how to fix this problem that we’re having.

So we’re revving the engine even harder and we’re redlining. And I mean, that’s, that’s pretty much our reaction to it. We have no idea anymore how to go shake it out. And I think that’s, that’s probably one of the biggest issues we have today. Just with social media, you mentioned early, it’s so fast. You can get it right now, now, now, now.

And, um, and yeah, I mean, yeah, to your point, coach, I mean, it’s just to, um, you know, again, this is this topic we’re on today, so awesome. Because it’s very personal to me. I mean, just, I think it was about three, four days ago. My youngest daughter’s super stressed out, like for days about academics. And I’m like, and I mean, she’s just not herself.

And I’m like, what’s going on with you? Like, and she was stressed over this test that was coming up, you know? Cause she had made, she didn’t do as good as she wants to on the first one and sell the pressure to cause then now, cause she plays sports. So you’ve got to maintain a certain GPA. So coaches, owner, you know, cause they put them in like these like, uh, it’s not punishment, but they have to go to these special classes.

If you don’t have a certain GPA to make sure they’re studying. And I like study hall kind of, but anyway, just the pressures are crazy that they’re putting on these kids to, you know, It’s I it’s, it’s such a wild time to be alive, right? To that point, Donny something I didn’t mention earlier, but especially for anybody that is 25 and under the frontal lobe, which is responsible for ration, like rational thinking logic, decision-making it doesn’t fully develop until 25.

So that’s why the rental car, you can’t get a right. I mean, probably that’s probably probably

but I think that also is so powerful in explaining to the athletes we work with your daughter, anyone around the young adult age, that these longterm perspectives are really difficult to understand because your brain doesn’t have the mechanisms to understand it. Yeah. And so that’s why despair is so much heavier and, and any, you know, any.

Experience of a first-time of anything is very vulnerable, good or bad. So when they’re going through first breakups, first injury, first failure, the, the ability to see it term and zoom out is impossible in some senses with, so they end up there’s no capacity. No, there’s literally not. And there’s no script for it and there’s no capacity yet.

So it feels really helpless. Yeah. I have to remember some times I’ve I have a little brother in high school right now and, um, he’s getting toward the end of his high school days and he’s got college around the corner and, um, he wants to pursue kind of a military career. And every time I talked to him about it though, I, I have to remember like, you know, I kind of just given what I know, uh, you know, I try not to pressure him too much or, you know, making one decision or another what he wants to do, but I have to think like, okay, he wants to talk about his future, but he’s got a wrestling match on Saturday, two days from now, and he’s got to cut weight for it.

He’s got to, you know, think about all these things going model. We model with some other guy who wants to. Take them down and stuff. I mean, that’s, that’s a ton of stress and we’re talking about something two years down the road in two days, he’s going to have a pretty serious physical altercation with a guy.

So, I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, you’re right code. I mean, with a lot of kids, I mean, if you could just keep things perspective two days out. I mean, some of it, we’re thinking 10 years down the road, you’re like, do you even know what major you want in college? Or you might change your major twice in college?

I mean, yeah, it’s insane. That’s good. Yeah. Both Kelly Jo. That makes sense. So what you’re saying, um, because you know, obviously they’re living life long, long as a half. You can see the benefits of what you’re going through it. Yeah. It’s horrible right now. But if you could just make it through that and not make a crazy decision, it’s going to benefit you down the road significantly.

So it was good. Good stuff. Okay. I’m curious, you know, with all this, I mean, w what role has Colby play or has, has it played with a lot of depression, anxiety, and. I guess, you know, we’ll, we’ll use the collegiate athlete as a good example, cause I don’t want to get too broad with it, but I mean, you know, 18 to 22 year old athletes, what role have you seen it play?

You know, over the last couple of years, the age group that we work with is so resilient, right? They, I am so impressed by them and all that they had to experience and go through with this pandemic and the biggest contributors to difficult mental health circumstances like anxiety and depression over the pandemic were definitely the social connection.

Um, you know, the isolation that came as a result of. Having to be so distant from everyone in addition to so much uncertainty and living on edge again for so long, um, w without answers as to when it was going to end, or really what’s going to happen, if you, if you do get sick, it’s so individualized. And so the combination of a time of life, where you are really for any of us, I don’t mean to just make it about this age group, but they’re trying to make new friends, you know, build relationships.

The freshmen, just, uh, I guess during that year, now they’re sophomores and close to juniors, but the freshmen I was working with during the peak of a pandemic, they couldn’t make friends in classes. Right. So they know their teammates, but even then they can’t, they don’t even know the upper-class. Team because they, they live in the dorms and the other ones, the upperclassmen don’t.

And so you had not been able to make friends your first year of college. So now they’re in a second year of college and things are different, but even at the beginning of this semester, they had two weeks online. And then in person, gosh, you would have thought that we were living in 2020, again with how much of an adjustment.

It took to go from break to online class for two weeks to in-person and I empathize completely with it, but just the reality that nothing is stable. Everything can change, you know, with a drop of a hat that’s that’s, what’s contributing to the chemical overwhelm and response that we’re living in right now.

I worked with Sheeran Palm and I had a couple of girls come up to me during a lift and they said, Joe, this is the first time I’ll go to a lecture hall in college. And I’m a. And, um, and, and they looked at me like, I’m nervous. I haven’t been in an in-person class since high school and I’m nervous. I mean, what do I do?

Like, what do I, I’m like, you just interact with people. What are you talking about? It’s going to be great. And so there’s like this level of excitement and gayness, I mean was like, oh my gosh, like I get to finally have a college experience here. And it’s, it’s crazy how much it, stuff like that has changed their, their, their mood and everything.

We’re, you know, we’re wired for human connection. We have mirror neurons in our brains that help us even co-regulate in stressful moments. So that’s why, if someone’s overwhelmed, you can, if you bring a calm presence, you know, I always teach coaches that if you bring a calm presence to someone being overwhelmed, you actually help their nervous system reset during the pandemic.

We didn’t have a lot of that. You know, you can’t, uh, you couldn’t see somebody’s face. There’s no one there with you for this, that, and the other. That’s even in class getting the energy of other people. Like, am I the only one not understanding this right now? I don’t know. I can’t see anybody’s face on zoom.

What is the one? What’s it the one Kim neurochemical that’s released from like human interactions, the oxytocin thing. So just that alone kind of lifts, morale and boost energy and kind of can, I mean, there’s days. I mean, I mean, I’ve been coaching now 27 years. If I’m having a tough day and see Joe, when he’s in a good mood, it kind of just kind of picks my spirit up a little bit, you know?

Oh yeah. And, uh, I mean, but do you think kids today are more, you know, going through that pandemic isolated screen time, they said was up 200%. So it was ramped up obviously because we’re all at home and you just lose that human connection. And I’m sure that just doesn’t help any of this. If you’re already predisposed that way.

For some of these kids, it just kind of pushes you even harder in that direction. So I think it, it contributed to. Our sense of connectivity is over screens over social media, over text messages, so that when we’re in person actually experiencing that, that chemical response, it’s so overwhelming and it’s almost too much, right.

It promotes anxiety because it’s, it’s very intimidating now to see and look someone in the eye instead of just leaving a comment on their, you know, on their post or sending them a quick email. Yeah. So speaking of human reaction, you know, when, when, when athletes started coming back, you know, we, we weren’t even sure, you know, at what level or how we are going to compete right now, how does, how does competing look like coming back from COVID?

I mean, it takes a lot of motivation, but without, you know, something on the horizon, you know, you know, what do you get motivated for me, you know, in your experience. How our thoughts and mood, you know, how does, how does that affect performance, you know, in life functioning? Um, when it is a lack of motivation or almost nothing get motivated for, you know, thoughts, like I said earlier, with the interconnectivity of mental health thoughts, impact our mood significantly.

And therefore what you think about will impact your performance and your, if you care a lot about performance and it will impact your daily life functioning, uh, the, I like to talk about motivation in regards to dopamine. Um, and just this idea that our dopamine levels are at the root of not only our like human addictive tendencies, but motivation, um, dopamine was thought of as, as a pleasure chemical for a long time, but it’s actually a desire chemical.

So that’s what keeps us dreaming and working towards accomplishment. In behavioral health, we like to set small goals with students so that they get that dopamine. Every time they achieve a goal. Well, uh, if you can’t get to that goal then, and you’re not hungry for it anymore, we don’t get dopamine anymore.

And then we feel lost because if you’re not motivated for swimming and releasing dopamine, you don’t, there’s no reason to go to go for it anymore. Yeah. I mean, it’s just, um, I coach, I remember when we came back for the first time, uh, working with volleyball together and, um, cause we had to split the group up to keep social distancing and everything.

And you know, we, we had a lot of time, you know, after you get, you know, talk to the athletes and catch up and, um, I remember one of the biggest pieces of conversation was what is a season you in look like? I mean, other conferences, weren’t sure if they’re going to play a lot, uncertainty, no idea what a tournament look like.

I mean, it was, it was pretty insane, you know, and I think too, you know, this topic of motivation, um, yeah, from a coach’s perspective, I’ve seen them up close when athletes seem to be experiencing burnout. In prime example, I work with our volleyball team and we were the one, one of the conferences that we had a fall season of 20, took a little break, had a spring season of 20, and then right back into a fall season of 21.

So we did three, basically three seasons in a row, 18 months, roughly. Well, no off season definitely saw signs of what you, I guess you would label it, maybe burn out or just hitting the wall. So to speak for lack of better term. Can you speak into that for a moment? What are you seeing in, what are some possible ways to, how would they get that kind of competitive edge or that desire, hunger back.

Talk to that. When addressing burnout, I like to check on two things, the chemical and the cognitive. So, um, you know, if, uh, if an athlete isn’t chemically balanced, so there’s, you know, improper sleep, nutrition, stretching, you know, treatment, you name it, then their training is going to be harder than it.

Isn’t it. Contribute to over-training syndrome, which looks a lot like depression. And so that’s, you know, that’s sort of one perspective of burnout, but the other side of it is that, which I think is really important. We don’t talk about enough is figuring out your, your, why, your motivation for what you do, especially at these elite levels with so much sacrifice.

So good right there. Right. What’s what’s the point. And in. Actually in my experience as an eating disorder therapist, a lot of the time that’s coupled in with addiction. And I remember learning that when trying to help somebody change, right. Make it, uh, make a change in their behavior. You want to get to really the heart behind why the change would be important.

So for I’ll, I’ll use an example. Um, let’s say, uh, a football student is low on motivation halfway through the season, right? Um, their body is just shot. School is picking up and, uh, you know, winter break isn’t for two months still, each weekend is really emotional. I’ll ask, you know, why did you start playing football?

And just get a little back background and then I’ll say, why, why do you want to go to the NFL? They might say, oh, because I want to get money. I’m like, well, what do you want to do with the money? Oh, you want to pay off your parents’ mortgage? So you really want to play football to care about your parents, the way they sacked, right.

Sacrifice for you growing up. That’s the heart, right? That’s what their values, that’s it really what they care about. So motivation comes from your why your values, what you care about obligation will never be a sustainable motivator. So just doing it just because our dopamine needs a reason to do it needs a reason to release.

So if we don’t have a reason to do something, we’re not going to want to do it. Yeah. The book, uh, I think the book’s called peak performance is it’s in there. And to your point, they’re, they’re, they’re starting to see the research on these athletes that are having. Again, some of their best seasons, they have a bigger purpose.

That’s tied to whatever their event or race or sport. And they’re there. They’re putting that into their sport of why they’re doing what they’re doing. And I, I remember, uh, Ken just real recent with volleyball, 2020, there was a lot of social injustice kind of things in there for our team that really, I mean, it’s just, it gives you like a, just the inspiration of like I’m doing this to, to help and not hurt, you know?

And I think that that gets you to that next level that maybe you couldn’t get them to, you know, just whether it’s a pep talk or trying to get on them because it’s more intrinsic. They’re wanting to do it versus being obligate, having to do it. So it’s good stuff. Yeah. It’s funny. You mentioned that that author, coach Brad Stohlberg, he wrote the practice of groundedness and he, he gets in that whole book is basically about burnout.

And now, you know, he wrote the two. Peak performance and a passionate, passionate paradox. I’m a book junkie. This is the third one. So he wrote, he also wrote passion paradox. He talks about in these first two books, how he had burnout and things like that. And one method he used was, um, it’s, I don’t know, it’s not autobody, but he, he says he looks at it like imagine yourself in 20 years.

So on 32, when I’m 52, what? My 52 year old self, I say to my 32 year old self, when I’m starting to feel burnout or I want to get something done. Like what advice would 52 year old Joe give 32 year old Joe and I don’t know. Kelly, do you ever try anything like that were, you know, you, you kind of try to reverse yourself and look at it from a different perspective and have them think back on their younger self, you know, um, in, in a shorter timeframe, for sure.

But, or even this day and age it’s what would you tell a teammate that was struggling? What would you tell a sibling that was struggling? Um, being able to. Yeah, we talk to ourselves so differently in the present moment than we would someone younger that we care about someone older that we respect or people that are lateral to us, um, that we wouldn’t treat the way we treat ourselves.

So that’s a great tactic. Yeah. Yeah. I just thought it was interesting coach you’re you’re definitely. Okay. What advice would you give a coach listening to this or, uh, a trainer or sports to kind of, what can they do to, if they see an athlete that seems maybe they’re kind of teetering on burnout or, I mean, obviously you spoke to your wise or anything like practically speaking, you could do.

I think. Again, checking in that things are done with purpose and explaining that. I think for, for me personally, one of my values in helping athletes as well. Right. Cause if they come in and I don’t really help them have any new insight, then I’m not doing my job either. So same thing. If we give them insight into why are we doing what we’re doing, not just for their heart, but how is this contributing to your goals, which then impact your heart?

So I know for me, when I was at. I had a coach at one point in time, who was, he had never swam in his life, but he knew the physics so well around how sprinting and stroke technique worked, that it actually helped me to improve because I understood why, why things work together the way they did so same when it comes to trying to manage the burnout or, um, uh, motivation is breaking things down into smaller goals again, so that small things add up.

So it’s day to day, not looking too far ahead, but also not too zoomed in on today, just keeping some perspective. Um, but I also think that coaches can, uh, help. By avoiding shame. So there’s a lot of research and Bernay brown is like the leading researcher in shame and shame actually alters our brain chemistry and literally shuts us down, especially from a young age.

It’s in, it’s the root of a lot of trauma. When you say shame, like give me a little bit more like context. Yep. So shame is, uh, there’s there’s shame and guilt. Guilt is I did something wrong. Shame is I like, I am bad. So I, I did something bad. I am bad. And so shame is this idea that at our core we’re unworthy, and sometimes there’s a long history of people being shamed and that, you know, promoting your work ethic essentially.

So if, if you know, Hey, you’re worthless. Like, you know, they’re like, oh, I want to prove I’m not worthless. Well, All that does is perpetuate negative brain chemistry, set you on fight or flight and survival mode for awhile. And it works for a bit, but not forever. And, um, and a lot of what I even do in my role is helping students that came from a shame-based high school program that maybe encounter a totally different experience here.

And, but they, they still carry that shame-based perspective in how they motivate themselves. So, oh yeah, totally. You got she’s hit a nerve. Okay. So you’re getting a little bit into identity, a little bit, right? Of like I’m worthy if I play a sport and I’m successful, but if I practice bad or play bad, now I’m not worthy kind of 100%.

Yes. That idea. Right. And, and it’s, it is a tricky line. Like I’m not trying to shame coaches about shaming. Hey, if someone’s playing better than someone. The person who’s playing the best is gonna get to play. Right. And it should not equate to a worthlessness of someone else. And that’s, again, sometimes that’s the self-talk we developed sometimes that’s parents from a young age.

Um, but, but the shaming perspective, instead of an empowering and feeling believed in, um, you know, get back up when you get knocked down perspective, those are night and day, as far as the long-term sustainability of motivation and keeping at it when things are hard, right? If you believe in yourself to get back up to keep going, you will, you will.

So I’m glad you bring that up because you know, obviously work at the university of taxes. There’s a lot of pressure to succeed and win here. And I’d say even most recently it’s more of an expectation. I mean, the majority of our teams are doing very well right now. So not only do you have this pressure to succeed and when like all the other schools, but we’ve established an expectation, a hold that.

You know, now as a coach, you know, what advice would you give someone like me, like a string coach, someone behind the scenes, a little bit more to help counsel or, you know, assist in less than performance anxieties in athletes. When my time is basically limited to like the weight room. And in that time.

Yeah. It’s that, that’s your time to shine, right? Um, we see performance anxiety all the time, and it’s always rooted in a negative belief about yourself. So somewhere along the way, the athlete started to believe they couldn’t do something. They couldn’t trust themselves. And as a result, The associated emotions or behaviors that they use to manage that negative thought.

So I can’t trust myself to, you know, execute the activity. Um, then as a result, they are going to feel a certain way about it and perpetuate that perspective. When we work with them to address that performance anxiety, we want to reflect on what did go well. Right. Okay. If you couldn’t trust yourself that one time, tell me about seven times that you could, um, or figuring out how to dig out that negative belief about themselves, because that’s, what’s going to feed into performance anxiety.

So coaches can help. Sort of asking what, what negative belief are you thinking about yourself right now? What is, what do you think this inability to jump over the hurdle? It says about you. Then also helping them set small goals in practice and competition to feel like they’re more moving towards their goals.

So that there’s actually something tangible that says, you know what, no matter how fast you go today, if your streamlines were, you know, tight and I, I can’t shake you loose, then you had a good race trying to figure out other, other sort of subjective goals alongside the objective. Cause they both have a place, but it can help decrease.

Like you were saying, Donnie, that attention to, if I don’t do this, then I am worthless. It zooms out a little bit and says, okay, this part didn’t go well, but you are still, uh, you’re when we zoom out holistically, you’re still yourself. You’re still talented, et cetera, et cetera. Does that make sense? Man to.

Shame is powerful than him. Like any kid I could see if an athlete gets into a rut that that’s kinda, that’s the driving force behind it, especially if you can’t shake it out of your head, you know, that probably brings a lot of emotion, I would assume too, depending on the person. Yeah. So now I hear you’re in a horrible mood.

Well, it’s shamed shuts your brain down to, right. So it, it sort of looks a lot like. The depressive symptoms that people have. And we in actually here at Texas, both my supervisor, Ashley Harmon, and I are EMDR trained. And it’s a therapy technique that is used in significant trauma cases. But the more research that’s out, the more it actually, uh, helps with performance to its eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing.

So long story short, it helps realign the thoughts and emotions in the brain so that you can actually, uh, shake some of those negative thoughts. And there’s a lot of research about its performance and it helps with the brain healing from when it gets, when a certain thought gets stuck, we can help the body and all of its glorious brain mechanisms to start believing in hope again.

So important, just listening to you, being a dad, so important as a parent to really lay that foundation of know. You guys are beauty. My girls are beautiful and amazing before they play sport or whether they get a good grade or not. Now we’re going to deal with any issues like that in a positive, direct way, but just not associating, like you said now, because you’ve done that you’ve embarrassed the family and we’re not worthy or whatever, you know, it’s so it’s so important to that’s a foundation.

Uh, you see kids, I mean, seen all my years of coaching kids that, you know, if they were always kind of raised, if they don’t kind of performance oriented, like love, right. If you do really well, like, I love you, but if you don’t, I don’t, I mean, that’s a tough burden to carry into sport and you’ll see it. I mean, some, some kids, they, they thrive under that somehow and they perform and do crazy feats, you know, but at some point you kind of crash, you know, totally good earning, earning your worth was not sustainable.

Yeah. There’s no way you could ever do it. Yeah. I’ve definitely seen it just as a kid. I mean, Playing hockey. And for whatever reason, hockey parents, maybe it’s the money and how much the sport costs to play. But, you know, parents want to stand there and you could just tell as a kid, if, you know, if you didn’t do on a game or practice, their parents are just losing the stands and you know, you’re getting off the ice.

And, um, I was so thankful that was never my folks, but I’m, I’m going off the ice and I’m looking at their parents and then them and like, whoa, man, that, that steaks, you know, and, and so, and you almost feel it as another player. You’re not even their kid. You’re like, Hey, we’re out here. You know, why don’t you get some skates on and have someone run at you?

You know, all this, you know, it’s, it’s a funny story. Both you guys appreciate, I was sitting in, but it’s staying. Watching my daughters play volleyball years ago. And thankfully I had a dad that he never embarrassed me. If I’ve had a bad day in sport, like a game, he would always just give me feedback, uh, privately in the car, but it was never like shameful or like mad.

It was more reflective typically. So I appreciate that. He did that with me and saw like that was my girls and these parents. And I’m sitting next to these parents one time and they’re just going off about how their kids playing. And I just can’t take it. You know, I was nice and polite. I find, I looked over at him.

I said, and I was nice about, I was like, you know what? I think that would help. So I think we should get the parents down there and let people hit balls at you. What did you see? How you do the look on this person’s face was hysterical. Like I could, and then from that point on, I didn’t hear nothing the rest of the day, but it’s like, yeah, to your point, like, let’s see you how you wouldn’t do any better than your kid.

If you were down there and, and balls coming at you at 30, 40 miles an hour, you know, but anyway, Let’s get a little bit crazy with it, but yeah, but Renee brown always talks about the idea of being in the arena and that, you know, the people in the cheap seats up, you know, the top row that are yelling all the comments and they have opinions.

They’re not the ones in the vulnerable position with the courage and the bravery to, you know, to hit the ball across the net. So they, you know, they don’t get, they didn’t pay, they didn’t invest in the way that you did down on the court. They don’t earn the right to be heard in that same way. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, cool. Well, we’re getting close here to the end. Um, it’s been a great episode, kind of maybe one more question for you. Uh, Kylie, where’s the first place you start when working with an athlete on improving the mental aspect of their perform. I always want to know athletic history first. So any traumatic events, injuries, or a particular particularly memorable coach or team competitor experience good or bad.

Um, and then I want to know their self-talk and what they focus on, because I would say 90%, this is my arbitrary number of athletes that I’ve talked to that have performance anxiety are focusing on their fear in their self-talk. So I, I will often ask them, they’ll be talking about, they’ll be explaining their history to me, whatever I’ll say, what are you afraid of?

And when we start to talk about that fear, I bring up this difference between what language we use and how important that is. And so. We’ll look at, are you speaking in action terms or avoidance terms? And for example, it could be, you know, I’m afraid of hitting a hurdle and it’s okay. Well, tell me, how do you actually successfully go over a hurdle, right?

Because if you’re in the middle of a race and you’re thinking don’t hit the hurdle, don’t hit the hurdle, you’re hitting the hurdle, you’re hitting, the hurdle is going to hurt. Right. And so, but instead if it’s, you know, uh, you know, five steps launch, lift land, so we’ll go through and kind of talk about what are the verbs you got to remember, and that’s what goes through your brain.

And we start to talk about switching from fear, right? Cause fear, fear. Isn’t helpful in these situations. You’re not in danger. Um, it’s fear of failure and we don’t want you to be avoiding things out of fear. So instead, we’re gonna focus on the action item. What do you need to do? And more often than not, they have been thinking.

In a fear-based mindset and not in an action-based and then it makes my job look easy. Yeah. That’s so funny. That was, that was a, that verbiage use about, you know, what the hurdle, I mean, it makes sense. We used to use that when training with, uh, uh, explosives, you know, you never just say don’t blow myself up, don’t blow myself up, you know?

And so with a grenade, he say, pull thump, clip, twist, pull pin Turkey peak, which means you make sure, you know, what you’re throwing at. Then you say frag out, but you never say don’t pull myself out on myself. That’d be catastrophic, you know, but, but I mean, even to this day, I haven’t said that I haven’t said those instructions in maybe five years.

And I just think Greg was just ingrained. I just, I mean, just came to me and I was like, you know, but, but I mean, any range I’ve been on where we had live frags, you know, we, we never had an issue. And so, uh, so yeah, that’s a little trick of the trade there, I guess. Yeah. But yeah, that’s a great perspective.

Well, Kylie’s been great. Uh, if people want to connect with you, find more information, what’s the best way for them to reach out and follow up. Probably to email me, um, at Kylie K Y L I E dot humans, Y O U M a N S. Um, I haven’t gotten my new email yet@athleticsdotutexas.edu. And you can just email me and I will follow up as I’m available.

And Joe, we’ll put that in the show notes. The female wants to follow up too, if you didn’t catch that. So it’s been an awesome, last fun question though. You ever met Bernay brown? Oh, no, we have not met Bernay brown. And again, my supervisor, Ashley and I are honestly kind of bummed about it because you know, she’s a professor here.

She loves athletics. She’s a Longhorn. Um, she kinda, she, I think she lives in Houston, but she is a professor here, like has a class, so I’ll get her on the podcast. That’s what I’m saying. And I was like, why haven’t we met her yet? Um, is she avoiding us? But, um, yeah, she, we did go watch her speak when she came pre pandemic and we’re just super big fans of hers.

Cause we I’ve read some of her books and watched her videos. She’s amazing. And life-changing not only work, but, uh, information. So Kylie, this has been awesome. Have you owned talking all things, mental health, Joe, any closing thoughts as we get out of here, this is the second podcast in a row. We’ve come at social media and cell phones.

So the social media and cell phones we’re coming for you. That’s right. I love it. I love it. Got it. Careful. Two different respectives, physical performance and mental performance. But, um, yeah, actually it was awesome the way we went kind of back to back with it. So, um, I’m excited to get this out to everybody.

Yeah. I will say there are positive tools on cell phones for mental health, right? Positive apps. All of our athletes have access to Headspace. Um, the mindfulness app. Yep. It’s what we choose to do with our time and how much so I’m totally with ya. Exactly. Awesome. Well, good. Thank you so much again, Kylie, Joe, it has been real appreciate you guys being on this episode of the team behind the team.

I’m Donnie and we are out of here. We’ll catch you on the flip side, hook them. Welcome. Welcome. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the team behind the team podcast for future episodes, go to iTunes, Spotify, Google podcast, or Stitcher. We definitely want to keep having great guests on the show and great content.

So if you have a moment, please go to iTunes, leave a rating and review and let us know how we’re doing. I’m Donnie Mae. And thanks so much for tuning in.