Divorce

When I was 11, my parents divorced. My mother moved 2,000 kmaway and my father plunged into an intense affair with his new girlfriend. For the first nine months after the divorce, I did not cry. In fact, I did not think about the divorce at all until my sister said, "Dad thinks you hate him."

Her words shocked me. As far as I was concerned, I wasn't upset at all. I even prided myself on my stoic nature.
See, I thought I could outsmart emotional pain by stuffing it down. No, I wasn't feeling intense pain. But I wasn't feeling confident either. My trademark as an athlete - my unstoppable confidence - was gone almost overnight. Plus I was overwhelmed with negative thoughts about myself, including my skills as an athlete. These thoughts really alarmed me.

I was a great athlete and a nice chap. Why was I filled with negative self-talk?

Simple.

Because confidence is not a quality. It is not a character trait. It is an emotion. And if you want to keep your confidence strong, you need to be able to FEEL. You can’t be depressed, shut down, or numb - for any reason.

But this is exactly what happens when we have trauma, loss, disappointment, and failure - in sport or life. When we are traumatized, our instinctive response is to shut down.

Negative self-talk a symptom that we've stuffed down fear and failure from sport or life. Maybe you lost a big event or maybe you had your personal life turned upside down.

If you watch yourself carefully, you'll see that your negative self-talk happens when you're agitated about a failure or disappointment of some kind.
But you are denying the depth of your emotional reaction. So instead of healing yourself, you're plugging along, hoping your negative self-talk and low confidence goes away on its own.

Your mind is your basic tool for survival. Betray it by stuffing down your fear and disappointment - and doing nothing - and your self-esteem always suffers.
My story has a happy ending. I made an appointment for counseling. There I finally touched my true feelings about the divorce. When the tears finally came, my sadness was so great I feared my chest would split open.

I didn't run away though. Running from myself made no sense. I stayed the course and healed my heart. Little my little my confidence and self-esteem were restored. The wins came back too.

Negative self-talk is a typical stressor or distraction we face in sport. It's easy to defeat IF you know how.