What I work with
What I work with
Three lists. The first is what most people arrive with, the second is work I do alongside a doctor rather than instead of one, and the third is the list almost nobody publishes.
What I work with
- Competition anxietyAble to do it in training, unable to do it on Sunday. The most common presentation there is, and usually the most tractable.
- Attention and refocusingWhat happens in the ninety seconds after a mistake, which is where most matches are actually lost.
- Coming back after an injuryThe body is cleared and the player is not. Reinjury fear predicts return better than most physical tests and almost nobody treats it.
- Confidence that will not survive a bad gameUsually built on outcomes, which is why it collapses. We rebuild it on something that survives losing.
- Deselection, transfers, retirementThe transitions. They are grief, they are treated as sulking, and they are the reason a lot of careers end early.
- Coaches and refereesBoth under the same pressure and neither offered this. Referees in particular are handling abuse as a normal condition of work.
What I work with alongside a doctor
- Disordered eating and weight-makingNever on my own. With a physician and a registered dietitian, and if you do not have both I will help you find them before we start.
- Sleep that has stopped respondingOften behavioural and treatable. Sometimes it is not, and that needs ruling out medically rather than worked around.
- Persistent low mood or anxietyWithin my scope as a registered psychologist, and still worth your doctor knowing. I will ask you to tell them; I will not tell them for you.
What I refer on, usually the same week
- Acute riskImmediately, and I stay with you until you are with someone who can help.
- Substance dependenceSpecialist services. I can hold the sport side of it afterwards.
- Trauma requiring specialist treatmentTo a clinician trained in it. Being a psychologist does not make me competent in everything.
- Anything I am not trained forSaid plainly and quickly. A referral in week one is a good outcome, not a failed sale.
What is not a psychology problem
This is the list nobody publishes, and it is the reason some people leave a first session without booking a second one — which is the correct outcome.
- You are not anxious, you are being humiliatedIf a coach takes people apart in front of the squad, the problem is the coach. Mental skills training here would be me taking your money to make an environment problem look like a personal defect.
- You are not unmotivated, you are exhaustedSometimes the honest answer is that the load is wrong and the conversation belongs with a physical performance staff, not with me.
- You are not fragile, you are nineteen and a long way from homeThat is a housing, language and support problem. It is real, it is solvable, and it is not solvable in this room.
- You do not have a confidence problem, you are not being pickedOccasionally somebody needs to hear that the assessment is accurate and the decision is about their career, not their mindset.
What people arrive with
Published for one reason: almost everybody who books believes their reason is unusual and slightly embarrassing. It is the fourth most common thing I see, and seventeen people out of a hundred could not name it at all when they arrived.