ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 พ.ย. 2018
- A panel about how world-class athletes and high-performance individuals connect to their mental health.
Michael Phelps, Brett Rapkin (Director "Weight Of Gold"), Sasha Cohen (US Champion Figure Skater), Barbara Van Dahlen, PhD (Founder, Give An Hour), Katie Uhleander (Skeleton World Champion).
Moderated by Seth Feuerstein (MD, Yale School of Medicine)
"Some people call me a teenage idol, some people say they envy me. I guess they've got no way of knowin' how lonesome I can be." - Rick Nelson, 1962
~26:10 I have to admit, I assumed all the Olympic athletes supported each other, networked, and socialized together, at least some of the time. I'm kind of surprised that they didn't. It seems to me they would have a lot more in common with each other than most other people they would meet.
millions of athletes have these issues...few high school standouts advance..millions of them....same with college standouts....I can't imagine how the best in the world deal with it....added note: Sasha is the last woman from the US to even medal at the Olympics ...and that was in 2006. Man I wish she would have won a gold and she deals with it everyday....what a great forum Mike !!
Introductions: Hi, I'm Michael Phelps - enough said.
Obviously Olympic athletes are under a lot more pressure and stress than most of us. I always figured that just as they were superior athletes, they probably were also better than most of us with dealing with the mental, psychological stress of being a celebrity, Olympic athlete. I just figured they were taught how to deal with it. It's kind of surprising to me that they weren't. I'm glad that they're addressing it now.
Is it that much of a stretch that this is happening???We don't even treat our Veterans with any respect and U.S.Olympians and Military veterans have one thing in common, They both represent The United States of America and they are the best that America has to offer, We love when they make this country proud or when or when they are literally fighting for its freedom but when when its comes to The Games when The Olympic Flame is extinguished at The Closing Ceremony or The last combat operation is over its like either Combat Veterans or U.S. Olympians are forgotten and they both give up a lot to do this.
I agree.
We pay them nothing.
I hate being the first to comment on this. Jeret 'Speedy' Peterson watched a friend commit suicide. A connection with someone who commits suicide increases the risk of those people around them. Holcomb said Speedy was one of his friends. It hurts me to see the expression on Holcum's face in this interview. He had many demons. I had demons myself and went through the worst of the worst too--hiding it from everyone. I'm also hurt to think of all the hardships Katie Ulander's been through. It takes a huge amount of courage to talk about it.
I've recently been wondering if risk-takers have a higher incidence of suicide. I'm talking about someone who faces huge pressure and powers through it. I don't know. I don't have the answers.
What's not being said is that the requirements of being an Olympian is that every one of these athletes have to learn how to communicate with people. They're required to behave in a certain way because they have to face people who are potential donors to their sport. Along that path, they're taught something that's isn't taught in school: how to network. Doors open in ways that any 'normal' person will never have unless they learn how to do it on their own. And that's not an easy thing to learn.
Don't get me wrong. The issues being discussed here are important. I also kind of wonder if the Olympic committee deals with the mental health issues of their athletes, would anyone ever win a medal? Isn't extreme focus forsaking everything else a byproduct of an OCD nature? Fix that and balance an athlete's life could cause the extreme focus to go away.
I also don't like the idea being presented here that a super focused athlete is somehow caught in a bubble where they don't mature. You have relationships right? You interact with others. Your maturity didn't just come to an end. Hell, you're even traveling to other countries and networking with people from different cultures. Sure. A super focus on your sport makes you believe that you didn't have the opportunity to focus on the country and city you're in, but that's not actually true. Olympic and World Cup athletes like to write-off the experience of traveling, but I've got news for you, no college student who works at Starbucks will ever have your experience. Someone who isn't living the athlete's life doesn't have the experiences a traveling athlete gains. Many 'normal' people wash-out of their education and simply fail. So this idolized life only works if you're comparing yourself to the top 20% of people living the 'normal life'. All the rest are struggling in their own way and their stories won't turn-out very well.
Finally, here's the thing. Anyone who quits or gets fired from a job they love suffers from the termination. Let's not isolate the discussion to Olympic athletes. How about an actor who's on a popular TV show who's driving down the highway and hears that the show they're on has been canceled. Someone who isn't famous can lose a job they love. It's still a shock. What do they do now? I don't know. Simply put, having to quit or getting fired from a job you love throws you into trama. Anyone in that position has to reevaluate their life. So what do you do now? You have to find another path and that's frightening.
It's odd to imply that a medal will give you a great future. Athletes know about the peak. That's true outside of athleticism too. No one is guaranteed a great future. Change comes. No one seems to care what you're going through. And then you have to choose a path and there is no guarantee that you'll win or fail.
Honestly, things like OCD hinder more than they help. An obsessive nature is only good if you can learn to channel it, which is incredibly difficult.
@@sydneywest7197 You don't think that doing something over and over again isn't a form of OCD. The ice skater who thinks about practicing the same jump over and over again before they get on the ice and do the same thing they did for the last 4 months? Perfection comes from proper training, muscle memory, and confidence. Put a bobsledder through the same paces. Practice pushing and jumping into the bobsleigh. Do it tomorrow and the next day and the next day... And if their career goes on for years, do it for years. The drive is always to do it better. It can never be good enough. There's always something that can be done better so do it over again.
My son Jack did this since 5 ..its hard to find an identity besides sport you give your all. They pay the gold medalist in this country 37,000. Really? Corporate salaries at the top.
I can relate. Swam since I was 4 and retired 21 years later. Accomplished so many things in the sport and reached levels that not to many athletes get to experience. When It finally came time for me to let it go I had the deep feeling like I had nothing else to contribute to the real world. Even now just a few years later I still have moments of anxiety where I have to remind myself that it’s not all I am anymore and that there’s a lot more to life than just being a competitor.
@@brianmartinez9288 yes what to you do next ...creates pressure to perform all over again. Thank you.
Holcomb's death bothered me from the moment I heard about it. Not much made sense. It was mainly attributed to pulmonary edema (his lungs were full of fluid.) The assumption that this was caused by alcohol and sleeping pills. Two years later COVID-19 appeared which decimates the lungs and fills them with fluids. Can a virus lay low by being not so contagious and then mutate into an ultra contagious strain? Sometimes diseases are not recognized until they are given a name. Could COVID-19 have been at the Pyeongchang world cup event 2 years before it had been given a name? Holcomb could have felt like he had the flu. He could have done the alcohol and the sleeping pills in order to out-rest the illness and didn't realize it was something worse. Please forgive me for wondering. I just haven't been able to believe the suicide assumption and COVID-19 seems to be a better fit.
Well now Olympics is canceled, will it ever come back?
Yes they will because there is something beautiful about a human being attaining to greatness. But what a cost for some.