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"When I step onto the carpet it's me and my head. I deal with the demons in my head. After the performance I did, I didn't want to continue. I have to focus on my mental health. I think

mental health is more present in sports right now

. We have to protect our minds and bodies and not just do what the world wants us to do. " These are the words of Simone Biles at the press conference after withdrawing from the team final. What the hell was the gymnast referring to? How can someone who won four golds and a bronze in Rio have confidence issues?

Perhaps for that very reason. It is not easy to be in the sports elite, it requires a lot of sacrifice and sometimes many other extra-sports burdens are borne. In the case of Biles, to all that work and the wear that this sport produces on a physical level, it is added that

he has become the face of gymnastics and the girlfriend of the United States

, a title that he won after his performance in Rio. She has been speculating for weeks about the number of golds - five or six - that she could win in Tokyo and she was the great hope of the American team not to lose against Russia.

When you are the most awarded gymnast in history and all hopes are placed on you, the strange thing would be not to have demons, doubts, negative thoughts, pressure, anxiety ... You are not the first athlete to suffer from it. Already at the end of May,

tennis player Naomi Osaka withdrew from Roland Garros, citing anxiety

every time she had to appear before the media and indicating that she had suffered long bouts of depression since her first Grand Slam. Shortly before Osaka,

Michael Phelps

, considered the greatest swimmer of all time and Olympic athlete with the most medals, spoke publicly about his history of depression and anxiety

.

"Because people dare to speak more about their problem, because it

is a problem that we all have, we all have anxiety

. To a greater or lesser extent, in a different way because each one values ​​these situations in a different way, each one of us has an experience different with that situation, an experience that can be for better or for worse, that is to say, that in those previous times you have done well or that on some occasion you have felt bad and you learn to have more insecurity ", points out Antonio R. Cano- Vindel, Professor of Psychology at the Complutense University and president of the Spanish Society for the Study of Anxiety and Stress (SEAS).

The professor explains that this phenomenon is called

evaluation anxiety

. "Test anxiety, exam anxiety and that's what happens to all of us when you're doing, for example, the driver's license exam. In a normal class you have the threat of doing it well, stopping on time even though the teacher can do it for you. , learn, etc. But on the day of the exam, in addition to that, you have another extra pressure and that is that you can fail and if you fail it has unwanted consequences, such as money and time, among other things. Some people more than others, but all we increase our anxiety on days like this.

For athletes, the Olympics are the number one exam

and, therefore, the more important it is, the more likely that anxiety before the test is greater ".

All people can suffer anxiety when we feel evaluated

, but an elite athlete is exposed to more situations than, for example, a butcher. "Sure, but note that some butchers will feel good about cutting the meat in front of their client because they are doing it well and others will have more anxiety just because of that, for cutting the meat in front of the client and being watched," argues Cano- Vindel.

The professor adds that

the experience goes a long way

. "I am a teacher and I have been teaching for 35 years, that is not the same as teaching the first day. It is another situation, by the way, in which one feels evaluated,

anxiety about speaking in public

. It is something common, an anxiety that evaluates the ISRA (Inventory of Anxiety Situations and Responses), a test in whose design I collaborated 35 years ago. The first situation that it includes is before an exam or a job interview and the next is if I have to speak in public, and there are other similar ones that they have in common that it may or may not be a threat to me. "

Being on television for the first time also affects many people

, according to the SEAS president. "It affects because you can be wrong, because someone who is an expert may be watching you ... everyone has their threats. But what is evident is that the first time you go on television is an anxious situation because they will see you a lot people and they will see your performance, that they see your performance is another kind of exam, not only that you pass or not, but that

half the world is watching you

. The pressure is on all of us, but some have more evaluation anxiety and others less " .

Beat a record, be the medal hope of a whole country, that half the world has its eyes on you, speak in public in the press room ... Until relatively recently, all this pressure was not talked about, nor did their own Athletes openly manifested these problems, probably because to the taboo that the subject of mental health already supposes in our society, it is added that an athlete cannot demonstrate 'weakness'.

But Cano-Vindel prefers not to call him that. "We should exclude it from the subject of mental health. Of course emotions are health and the problems that emotions such as anxiety can create are within mental health, but it

is learning, we must remove the stigma of madness, the lack of control

... One of the things that adds stigma to anxiety is that you can lose control. That means that anxiety increases so much our physiological responses, our physiological activation -which is also controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which is automatic-, which can give us the feeling that we are not in control. Yes we do, but an area of ​​our functioning called

the autonomic nervous system has it, which is not voluntary, but we do have control.

".

The professor gives an example with digestion.

"It is done automatically, but one day you learn that you can vomit and that you do not have control over digestions ... you still have it because you have the same autonomous system that takes care of it, but now you worry that a The best thing is not and you vomit, as you are worried about not having control, you try to change your normal functioning -in your normal functioning you would not take care of digestion- because as once you vomited and now you fear vomiting in public, because now you fear eating That

is a learned fear. Is it a mental health problem?

We call it that, but in reality I would speak of

emotional disturbances.

, problems that can be learned, and you can learn to re-control those emotional reactions. "

Emotions are not all seen in the same way. "

Anxiety has a stigma and is worse than joy, sadness or anger

. Athletes have no problem standing on a podium and crying when the national anthem of their country sounds, that is emotion, it is considered normal. Not even most people have a problem getting angry and it's good, because you tell the other that it hurts you and to change. But with anxiety it's' oh, I'm going to take an exam and if I have a lot of anxiety and I can't stand it. I just suspend anxiety and also

what are people going to think if I don't have control of myself and my anxiety?

'Then there we enter a dead end ", Cano-Vindel emphasizes.

In that losing control, losing security, the expert indicates that there are signs.

"There are

thoughts of anticipation of a possible threat

(a negative result, I will not be up to the task), then there are

physiological changes

and then the

behavior

begins to see that it is not what you wanted to start".

It was already seen in qualifying that the gymnast made unusual mistakes.

"Sometimes I really feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders," he said on his Instagram after that.

And this Tuesday before leaving the team competition he made a first defective colt jump.

Behaviors that Biles would not want to initiate at all, signs of that evaluation anxiety.

How to avoid evaluation anxiety

The professor emphasizes that it is necessary to train with a specialist. "Why do elite athletes have to have a psychologist? Well, for him to train them, not only to train them to run when he is a runner, to jump when he is a jumper, but

to train them in this, in managing their thoughts. , their emotions and their behavior

. "

What does a sports psychologist have to do in a situation like this that we intuit from Simone Biles?

Cano-Vindel is clear about it: "Don't worry,

you are very young and have many Olympics ahead of you

. And if you reinterpret this in another way, even if you have failed a test or two, you still have many tests left, but if not now you are capable of making the change because nothing happens either. And you also have to think that you are more important as a person than as an athlete. As an athlete you will last 20 years in the best of cases and as a person, then 80 or 90. This is important to you because you've spent your whole life preparing to be a good athlete and to perform at your best in an Olympic Games, but you have to know that

there are even more important things, such as your well-being

and many other things in life. "

The professor emphasizes that in this way what is being done is "to

take pressure off that situation, reinterpret and talk a lot with her

to see what she thinks and correct thoughts. And use relaxation strategies: 'Breathe deeply so you don't accelerate, for example, and we are going to do an exercise here you and I so you can see that you can do it like you did at home recently. 'That is what you can do,

a training to try to better manage your thoughts, your emotions and your conduct

".

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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