An Interview with Certified Mental Performance Coach Lauren Becker Rubin
Lauren Becker Rubin is a Hall of Fame field hockey & lacrosse athlete at Brown University. She is an advisor to Haverford College’s varsity teams to ensure their mental health well-being as competitive athletes.
Jordan Denaver: Thanks for joining us today for this installment of the Seattle Psychiatrist Interview Series. I'm Jordan Denaver, research intern at Seattle Anxiety Specialist. I'd like to welcome Lauren Becker Rubin. Ms. Becker Rubin is a certified mental performance coach who works closely with Haverford College's varsity teams. She also works with collegiate and high school teams as well as individual athletes. Before we get started, can you please tell me a little bit more about yourself, any sports that you may have played that made you interested in studying mental performance?
Lauren Becker Rubin: Absolutely. Good morning and thanks so much for having me. I've been involved in the mental performance space for about 30 plus years, and I think why I'm so passionate about it and why I love it so much is because I was absolutely the athlete that needed it. I was a collegiate athlete at Brown University. I played field hockey and lacrosse. Honestly, if you look at my athletic resume on paper, you would say, "Wow, you had a lot of success, a lot of awards, a lot of accomplishments." But my day-to-day didn't feel that way. I was often frustrated. I had a very hard time dealing with pressure and stress. I didn't feel like I was consistent, I wasn't meeting the big moments and I think mostly I had a really terrible relationship with losing.
I know most athletes don't like to lose, but I really took it personally. I would lock myself in my room after a bad game for hours in the dark and it would take me days to get over things, and it was just a super unhealthy relationship with how much pressure I put on myself, how I never thought I was good enough or never played well enough and just was really unhealthy, so this was 30, 35 years ago when I was in college. One day our lacrosse coach took us to the counseling center and we met with a psychologist who was dabbling in sports psych, which is pretty rare for the 35 years ago - it wasn't as common. A light bulb went on for me and it flipped a switch. I was like, "Wow, this could really help me and it could make me feel a lot better." And it did help me a little bit.
As an athlete, I found it late. That was my junior year, but it really changed my life. I just really got involved in mental health around athletes and mental skills coaching, mental performance as it pertains to athletes in sports just became my life's work.
Jordan Denaver: Nice. All right, so then into our first question. In your experience, what are the mental health challenges that athletes may face during their participation in sports?
Lauren Becker Rubin: Great, so athletes face a lot of the same mental health challenges that everybody does. It just gets ramped up a little bit because we're performing. Athletes are on a public stage, so everything they're doing is out in the open and then there's the pressure of winning or losing or playing. The mental health issues are similar. Stress, anxiety, pressure, worry, a lot of fear - fear of losing, fear of winning, fear of embarrassment, fear of getting injured, fear of losing social status, fear of losing your position - so there's a lot of fear of worry, stress, anxiety about performing.
I would say embarrassment is a big one that affects mental health. There's also injury really plays into mental health issues, not playing, being left out, being isolated plays in. I'd say a big one that really affects mental health is loss of identity. If you get injured or maybe you're not playing or maybe you're not the star anymore, athletes identify as being athletes and for their whole lives that's their number one thing and then all of a sudden it's either over or it's taken away, so struggling with identity really affects what's my next identity? What else do I identify with? Affects mental health as well.
Jordan Denaver: Definitely, I've experienced that too as an athlete. It's definitely tough.
Lauren Becker Rubin: Yes. I think one of the hardest things for athletes, especially the higher you get at collegiate level, pro, Olympian is when you don't play, whether that's somebody else is playing in front of you or you're injured and it's taken away from you, it's very difficult to process those feelings and it definitely weighs on your mental and emotional wellbeing.
Jordan Denaver: Speaking to that, what are some positive mental health benefits that athletes can experience?
Lauren Becker Rubin: There are a lot of them, and one of the biggest is social connection. I remember reading maybe 10 or 15 years ago an article from the “Happiness Lab” at Harvard that said the number one indicator of wellbeing is social connection. Being part of a team, being with people really bumps up wellbeing and mental health. The other pieces of participating in and benefits of athletics is you're part of something bigger than yourself, you're finding meaning and purpose, you're all working towards a common goal, so there's some shared humanity in that. That shared humanity when you win feels good, but also shared humanity when you lose and you have other people to work through it, and those are all really good health benefits.
The other things that athletics has shown to do is build resilience. It shows us we can do hard things. It makes us more adaptable, and because you never know if you're going to win or lose, you have to start learning how to manage emotions around that, and that's very correlated to life. There's ups and downs, there's good things, there's bad things. You have to learn to be able to manage your emotions around that and athletics really helps you do that.
Jordan Denaver: I think one of my favorite things about working with Haverford College on the lacrosse field is being a part of that team. I love the sport, but on the other hand I love being a part of the team and being with the girls.
Lauren Becker Rubin: That makes a lot of sense. Connection, community is just so huge for wellbeing and mental health.
Jordan Denaver: I think we touched on it a little bit, but then on the other hand, what are some potential negative mental health impacts that athletes may encounter?
Lauren Becker Rubin: They're there for sure. Athletes tend to be very hard driving, type A, on a mission, goal oriented, so with that comes some issues around perfectionism and not feeling good enough, not meeting moments which could lead to some issues with low self-esteem. There is the managing the emotions around stress and pressure and anxiety of games. We did touch on a little bit sometimes when you're injured or maybe you're not playing, you could feel a little bit isolated. That I think some of the other negative things that happened with athletics is maybe some shame around not performing. Then one of the biggest things that could be negative is if it's a toxic culture or toxic coach or toxic teammates and you're in that environment all the time, that really could be negatively impacting your mental health.
Jordan Denaver: Definitely. All right, so what do you think are the mental health differences in competing in sports on a competitive level versus recreationally?
Lauren Becker Rubin: It's a great question, and I'm not an expert on recreational sports, but I have read a ton of research and there's a lot of literature out there that about just the benefits of exercise and movement. If you're doing something recreationally, whether it's walking or yoga or Zumba or playing tennis for fun or running a 5K just to collect the T-shirts and it's something that you're doing for fun, it increases mood, it builds the positive feel good hormones. Again, there's social connection in that, and there's a lot of benefits around fun, having fun and a lot of research these days on just doing play. We play as kids and that's one of the most enjoyable parts of the day, but then as we get older, we start losing that playfulness. Doing things recreationally is play, and play enhances a lot of wellbeing, and on a physical, emotional, mental level, we just feel better.
I do want to say there are a lot of health benefits for competitive sports too, and we touched on a little bit about meeting and purpose and being part of a community, but sometimes people throw around the term like pressure is a privilege, and what's behind that is if you're feeling pressure, it means what you're doing is important to you. If you're involved in something that's important to you, there's going to be some benefits there by seeing it through, so there are health benefits of that pressure and of that competition that add to the movement, the exercise, the fun, the social connection that you get recreationally. There are benefits for both, but I think recreational athletes are enhancing mood, they're connecting, they're feeling good, they're having fun, they're playing. There's a ton of benefits there as well.
Jordan Denaver: Yeah, I agree. I think the pressure of the competitive play definitely works into some of the mental health effects for college athletes.
Lauren Becker Rubin: And I feel we'll talk about it, but it's how you interpret pressure, which really correlates directly to your mental wellbeing and your mental health. If you feel pressure is something that helps you, helps you get ready, helps you get your body activated, helps you focus because this is something that's really important, then it's a positive benefit. If pressure really makes you shrink and it really makes you worry and it really raises your cortisol and all the not so good hormones, then it's a negative. A lot of it comes to how you interpret what's going on.
Jordan Denaver: Then on that note, are there any unique challenges or stressors that elite athletes face in terms of their mental health?
Lauren Becker Rubin: Here's really interesting and what I've found in my practice working with youth, high school, college, and even professional athletes, the challenges are similar. Even the youth athletes and working with the 12 year-olds right now, they feel frustration, they feel stressed, they feel pressure, they have anxiety over performance, they worry about things, so many of the challenges are the same. I think for elite athletes, what makes them unique, and this is college, pros, Olympic athletes, is that they need to be “all in”. They need to be solely focused and it's not a balanced life.
One of my favorite people in the mental performance space right now is David Goggins. And in his last book he called it “Savage Mode”. Elite athletes have to be in savage mode all the time, and that means you have to be selfish, you have to prioritize yourself, you have to prioritize your mission or your goal. I think sometimes that puts you at odds with people in your life. Relationships suffer. I think people judge you. I think it's a little bit isolating. People don't understand you, they want to bring you down.
So I think that is a real challenge for somebody who's trying to be elite, where they just have to be all in, solely focused, very selfish. I think the consequences of that is that people don't get them, and people want to judge you and they want to bring you down or tell you what you're doing is not balanced, but I think it's very hard to be balanced and be elite. I think when you're on that path to being elite, you have to have your blinders on and be all in to get what, to accomplish what you want to accomplish.
Jordan Denaver: I think just to tie into the pressure, I think especially on an elite level, maybe higher up college like D1 or pros, the pressure of a fan base too really plays into the pressure that athletes feel.
Lauren Becker Rubin: I think you're absolutely right. I think social media and fans and money and contracts. Imagine an Olympic sprinter who trains for four years and then has 10 seconds to do their craft. I just think that everything we talked about, pressure, stress, anxiety, worry, isolation, just really ramps up the higher you get.
Jordan Denaver: That ties into our next question a bit. How do you think societal expectations, performance pressure, and competition affect an athlete's mental wellbeing?
Lauren Becker Rubin: This is a great question because this is the work, and I'm going to give you a roundabout answer to that and not direct answer only because the answer to that is it depends, it depends on the work behind how you allow that to affect you. How it affects you depends on what your skill set is, what your tools are, what your strategies are, and then this is absolutely the mental skills work or the mental performance work or the sports psychology work. It's about having skills and tools and techniques and strategies to manage societal expectations, the performance pressure, the emotions, the competitions, because at the end of the day or the beginning of the day, all those things are always going to be there. The pressure, the emotions, the adversity, the challenges, the social media, the judgment, all of that is going to be there, but if you have skills and you work on the skills and you practice and you train that part of your life or the game, then you have some techniques and strategies to work through those.
One of the things I really like to say is mental toughness and mental performance, managing the mental part of sports is directly linked to mental wellbeing. The skills translate, the more you train and develop the skills that help you perform, the more skills tool strategy you have for mental wellbeing and mental health. The work is training it and the work is doing and the work is having it be part of your daily protocol, building a platform so that when societal expectations ramp up or when you're preparing, feeling performance pressure and it's always going to be there, the adversity, the challenges, the setbacks, it's always going to be there. You have skills to help you navigate it so that it directly correlates to how it's going to affect you. The more skills you have, the more you work on it, the more it becomes part of your daily protocol, the more you can catch it and work with it. Does that make sense to you?
Jordan Denaver: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I think especially as you gain more experience, you just know how to deal with the mental pressures of playing at elite levels and just the performance pressure in general and societal expectations.
Lauren Becker Rubin: And I think the more you replenish yourself, you bolster yourself up with things like breath mechanics and mindset or visualization and imagery, focus, working on resiliency, working on your belief system or limiting beliefs. All of this skill, all of these skill sets becomes part of your toolkit, so then when you're feeling that performance pressure or you're not feeling your best physically, you don't go down a rabbit hole, you go back to... I know with the team sometimes we use physical things like pound your chest, get your energy up, or maybe some EFT to bring down your stress and your anxiety. There's lots of skills and tools that you know can just proactively set yourself up to be in a better place, show up as your best version of yourself, but be able to reset quickly. All of those things weigh into how does it affect you? It affects you different ways when you have skills to counter it or to proactively set yourself up to be in a better place even before that happens.
Jordan Denaver: Our team does love the heart tap.
Lauren Becker Rubin: Tap your chest or get big, expand yourself, take up space to feel power. There's just lots of anchors and tools that we can use to help ourselves navigate that, those pressures, because they're always going to be there. It doesn't go away. We just get better, more adaptable and more flexible with working with it and that directly ties into our wellbeing. That's the coolest part of the mental health and mental performances are tied together. We work on skills for helping us play better, but those same skills help us feel better, our overall mental health.
Jordan Denaver: That's very true. All right, so what role does the team environment and social support play in promoting positive mental health among athletes?
Lauren Becker Rubin: If the team culture is good, then we're talking about community. Again, connection, fun, shared experience, being in a group, striving for something bigger than ourselves. There's so many positive environmental and social support benefits of being part of a team. There's also teamwork and leadership opportunities, trust building, all these things are great for mental health. Then the vice versa is also true. If the culture's not good, if there are toxic teammates, then the environment weighs in a negative way, but being part of groups is really a great social support network if it's a positive culture. Do you feel that way on your team? On the field stuff helps off the field stuff. We're striving to win games and win championships, but then your group becomes your social support network off the field as well, I would imagine.
Jordan Denaver: Exactly. My best friends are the girls on my team, and I think we work really hard on building up our team culture, so that takes a lot of time to build that team culture outside of sports and outside of practice and that's why doing a lot of team activities, just like getting to know one another and building that culture and that trust outside of the field, it helps so much. Then you'll see that trust and that support play out onto the field when we're playing games and during practice. I think that's so important.
Lauren Becker Rubin: Yep. It's bidirectional. It really is on the field, off the field. I love that you used the word trust, because trust and confidence go together. In fact, I think the root of the word confidence is an inner or intense trust, so the culture builds trust, trust builds confidence. The more you trust each other, the more confident you are, the better you play. The more you love each other, the better you play. It is really bidirectional, so culture, environmental, social support really is very entwined.
Jordan Denaver: I remember it was a semifinal game of this past year and our coach, Coach Zichelli, she said that you need to play for your teammates. I think that speaks a lot to what we're talking about. She's like, "Play for your teammates, play for your seniors who are leaving." So I think it's a lot for just playing for each other and in that way you tend to play well because you're playing for each other. You want to boost people up, you want to show off your teammates, and I think it just all ties together very well in the field.
Lauren Becker Rubin: I love that concept. Playing for something bigger than yourself, playing for each other really helps us step up into the moment because we don't want to let people down, we care about them, we love and it really brings out the best in us, so I love that concept.
Jordan Denaver: All right. Next, how do you think athletes can take care of their mental health while participating in sports?
Lauren Becker Rubin: I think this is an important question and I'm glad that you're bringing it up to the forefront because it's not always upfront. Sometimes it's in the back in crisis, what do we do? So I feel like having it upfront, making athletes know that they have resources. I think how athletes can take care of themselves is to use their available resources, teammates, coaches, counseling centers, mental performance coach like myself, know that those resources are there and don't be afraid to use them and ask for help. Don't hide it. That's another way that you can take care of yourself. We need to change the stigma around mental health, that it's a weakness and by bringing it up, it's really a strength. That means you're working on something just like we would do a physical skill. In lacrosse, if your non-dominant hand isn't strong enough, you work on it. If your mental health, if you're struggling with mental health, you work on it, you don't hide it, you don't lock it away.
And I would say one of the biggest things, ways an athlete can take care of their mental health is to be proactive. Meaning make this part of your daily protocol. Do things every day that build your foundation and get that foundation as big as possible. What I mean by that is sleep, nutrition, working on recovery, maybe meditation, watching funny movies, doing social things that are fun, having friends, going out in the sun or nature, getting a massage every now and then. Every day as an athlete you're doing a lot of things that are depleting yourself, physical exertion, mental exertion, stress, pressure around your sport. You have everything that's depleting you. Not to mention in a college setting all the academic pressure. You have to balance that out with things that replete you, replenish you, and you have to do that daily, know what those things are.
And if it becomes part of your daily protocol, then every day you're having mini wins, mini win, mini win, mini win, mini win. What that does, it adds up to big wins and it builds this great foundation of strength so that when you do have a setback or you might be feeling a little bit off or something really knocks you over the head that you weren't expecting, you're coming at it from a more replenished space. The biggest way I think to help with dealing with mental health is to build up wellbeing and make it part of your daily protocol so that when you do get whammied, you've got some resource already built in.
Jordan Denaver: Yeah, I agree. I think having that framework is so important, so that you can fall back onto what you know and what skills you've built. Are there any strategies or interventions that coaches, trainers or sports organizations can implement to support the mental health of athletes?
Lauren Becker Rubin: I think the biggest strategy is to normalize the conversation around mental health. Just normalize it. Just like we normalize that sports are hard and that it's going to take some effort and we're going to get knocked down and get back up. We normalize that life is hard. I think we have to normalize that there are mental health issues with athletes, and when we normalize it then we aren't afraid to talk about it. I also think that coaches and trainers can bring in resources, they can bring in a mental skills coach like myself. They can bring in counseling, they can bring in speakers, they can bring in resources like books or articles or webinars that normalize that, "Hey, this is mental health issues are part of life of being an athlete and things are going to come up and we can talk about it."
I think the other biggest strategy that coaches, trainers, or organizations can layer in is bringing fun to whatever they're doing. Just because you're training hard and you're trying to be the best version of yourself as an athlete, win games, win championships doesn't mean it can't be fun. I did read a research article about this. The best teams, the most accomplished teams over time combine two things and that is grit. Angela Duckworth from Penn has written a lot about hard work over time, perseverance over time, that's grit. You have to do the gritty work, you have to get in there and you have to do the hard stuff, but when you add it to fun, grit, and fun, that's when teams are most successful. That's when athletes are most successful, so I think in a proactive intervention besides the resources and besides normalizing, just make it fun. Make it fun, make it enjoyable, and that really helps support athletes' mental health.
Jordan Denaver: We talked a lot on our team is bringing the fun back into the sport because I think when you're younger, that's everything that you have really is the fun and the love that you have of the sport you're playing, but as you enter the more competitive level like college, pros, you lose that fun and now you're suddenly just in this space where you're just working to win or you're working in this competitive, this nature and you lose the fun that you used to have as a child and the love that used to have for the sport sometimes. We focus a lot on trying to have fun and bringing back the love that we have for the sport because that's why we play it.
Lauren Becker Rubin: I love that you're talking about it and that it's an emphasis, because I think it gets lost a lot in college sports where it becomes a job and you lose the fun. I think it really not only affects performance and success on the field, but it definitely affects mental health and wellbeing. I love the fact that you talk about it and that it's part of your culture.
Jordan Denaver: All right. Next, are there any specific warning signs or indicators that athletes, coaches or peers should be aware of to identify mental health issues in athletes?
Lauren Becker Rubin: This is a great question and it's a great thing to have some awareness around because sometimes there are no signs. Sometimes, especially for athletes, they want to suffer in silence and they're afraid of the stigma or the shame around mental health issues and the stigma or the idea that athletes have to be tough and strong and show no weakness. Sometimes there are no signs, and that's really tricky when some major mental health crisis happens, everyone says, "How come I didn't see it?" But a lot of times there aren't any signs.
Here are sometimes signs that come up that you could look for: different behavior. Is somebody who's normally social not going out and isolating themselves? Maybe somebody's drinking more or someone who used to drink is not drinking alcohol and drugs. A change in behavior, like someone who is normally loud and social, is being really quiet. Other signs might be someone skipping team functions, maybe sleeping a lot, or maybe you have a teammate that's going home every weekend, that could be a sign that something's going on. Then some of the more obvious signs is someone's just unhappy or they're appearing depressed or somebody is losing a lot of weight or gaining a lot of weight.
The signs are look for differences, somebody's acting, looking, behaving differently. It could be a sign that something is going on behind the scenes that they're not expressing outwardly, but they're trying to deal with inwardly. I would say another thing to look for is if you have a teammate, is it who's injured? I think being injured really plays into mental health and mental wellbeing for athletes because again, you're pulled out of what you identify with and what you love and it's very isolating. If you have a teammate that's injured, I would definitely check in with them and make sure they're okay and make sure they're still feeling included.
Jordan Denaver: I can speak firsthand to that because I've been injured and I've spent time on the sidelines because of an injury, and watching your teammates play and on the field, it's really hard sometimes knowing that you can't be out there to help them or support them and that your role on the team has changed in a way, especially when the injuries are potentially season ending. It's very difficult.
Lauren Becker Rubin: For sure. How did it affect your mental health and how did you work through some of those things?
Jordan Denaver: It was hard. I was out for I think five, six months. I think I recognized that my role on the team was different, that I was on the sidelines and that I had to be more of a cheerleader and less of a contributor on the field, but then I think there was also a lot of hope that I will come back soon, which is also scary too, because coming back from an injury and you haven't played in six months, that's really tough too, but I think the team's very good about it. I think also making sure that you're not isolating yourself. Still maybe attending practices and just watching, still attending those games, still attending other team activities to keep yourself integrated even while injured is super important.
Lauren Becker Rubin: Well, I want to applaud you. You used a lot of great skills and when you're in a difficult time, sometimes it's really hard to find the things that pull you out of it. One of the biggest pieces of working on mental skills, mental health, mental performance is not being stuck, not being either stuck in one place or spiraling backwards. Do we want to keep moving? And part of keeping moving is shifting out of it. I love that you said I needed to find a new role. If we can use our mindset, "Okay, I'm not on the field, but what role can I take? How else can I look at this where I can be the best teammate? Or maybe I could be a good scout or maybe I could watch film." So you're shifting your mindset to find a different role is a great skill.
And you also use the word hope. Having hope, having faith, believing in things that you don't necessarily have all the proof of yet keeps you moving forward and it keeps you on a path of, "Hey, this could work out, this could be good." So those are all great strategies to keep you from staying stuck where you were or spiraling backwards. Great job of keeping yourself working on... Using tools to get you moving in the right direction.
Jordan Denaver: Thank you. Let's see what's next. What steps can be taken to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health in sports? I think we touched on this a little bit.
Lauren Becker Rubin: Some of the things we mentioned about normalizing it and bringing resources I think helps reduce the stigma. I think on a broader level, I know that the NCAA is doing a lot of research and work and education on this topic where they are providing resources to colleges just to make them aware that this is an issue. In fact, I read one of the NCAA research studies they did where they found that for collegiate athletes, 24% of male athletes experienced some mental health issues and 36% of female athletes surveyed expressed mental health issues. I do know that also self-reporting is lower, so it's probably even a little higher than that.
I think education and providing resources by the NCAA would help on the collegiate level, but I really think what helps reduce the stigma is when people step up and talk about what's going on with them. Like Michael Phelps talking about anxiety and other pro athletes like Simone Biles in the Olympics, her anxiety got to her. Kevin Love in the NBA was talking about pressure and stress and some of his issues, and Naomi Osaka from the tennis world. When professional athletes step up and say, "I am working on this, I'm dealing with this. It's not preventing me necessarily from performing, I just have to manage it, influence it, control it, work on it, but it's part, it's there for me." I think it really helps normalize it and it just shows that everybody's human and it's okay not to be okay.
I want to take it into the weeds just a little bit further and say, I think the culture around this could start changing in youth sports. The message just tough it out, run through walls, get up, when someone might be having a mental health crisis is not the right message. We have to do hard things at athletes and we have to push ourselves, and getting out of our comfort zone is one of the most important things that we have to learn how to do, but I think if coaches have an awareness and players have an awareness that there could be something else going on, then there's more language around it, there's more education around it, there's more compassion around it, and it becomes more normalized as part of, this is part of sports, this is part of life, this is part of who we are and let's have some resources to work on it.
Jordan Denaver: I agree. I think it does start younger because those messages start a little bit less, so when you're younger and they really build as you get older. I think too, having more public figures, spread awareness on it too helps people like college athletes, high school athletes recognize that they're not alone in their anxiety. That these people performing at super high levels also feel it too. I think that's really helpful. I think just spreading awareness of it will help reduce the stigma for sure.
Lauren Becker Rubin: Right. I agree with you. Kristin Neff, who's a psychologist that specializes in self-compassion is out there with her method, which is breathing and mindfulness, but a piece of that is shared humanity. “Other people are going through this, I'm not alone.” I think as athletes, one of the most difficult things that we struggle with is being compassionate to ourselves because we're so used to being tough and strong and do hard things, but the research that doesn't support that is that when we're more compassionate to ourselves, when we don't play well, when we make a mistake, when we lose, when we're having a mental health crisis, the quicker we actually rebound and reset. That compassion piece is really important. I think the more we normalize it and the more education is out there and the more the culture changes around it, the more compassionate we are to ourselves, actually, the better we can cope with the setbacks and the struggles, because like I said, they're going to be there. That's part of life, that's part of sports. The more we normalize it and then the more we can manage it.
Jordan Denaver: I agree. All right. Are there any notable research findings or studies that have explored the mental health impacts of participating in sports? I know you mentioned a couple.
Lauren Becker Rubin: Yep. I mentioned the NCAA one. In fact, I went to that lecture and heard the psychologist that works with the NCAA delivered just how prevalent their mental health issues are with collegiate athletes because of the pressure and there's money and scholarship and losing your college education tied into it, so that's really high. I did read a research article from the American College of Sports Medicine recently that said 35% of elite athletes struggle with mental health issues including eating disorders, burnout, depression, anxiety, social anxiety. At the elite level there is also a lot of mental health issues. There are pros too. I've read plenty of research on what participating in sports, the positive parts, it improves psychological well being, it can improve self-esteem, it can lower depression, anxiety and stress. I read articles where participating in athletics decreases suicidal behavior and substance abuse and reckless behavior, and that piece is maybe being accountable to teammates and to the team.
There's definitely a lot of research on increasing resilience, confidence, empowerment, empathy, just because you're going through shared things. A big thing about participating is increasing healthy habits. When you are active and you're participating in sports, it bubbles over into other parts of your life. You're eating better, you're not doing substance things that you just get on a path. There is a lot of research both ways and I think the research is still developing here, and also the research around how to deal with the pros and the cons is developing as well. It's a rapidly changing space around research and interventions, both positive and negative.
Jordan Denaver: I think having you speak to our team, I think it's almost biweekly at this point, is so helpful. I know it helps the girls and me too so much, and I think that's a big thing too. Bringing in people to speak to the team and to speak to these issues that are a little bit more stigmatized helps normalize it, because it brings you into a space where you can talk about it, where you have resources to air mental health issues.
Lauren Becker Rubin: I agree. I think the more you talk about it, the more resources, the more... What's really cool about this space and why I think I'm so passionate about it, as you can tell I love it, is it's ancient wisdom and modern science. The people I've been talking about, a lot of these things, the ancient stoics and Buddha and a lot for years, and now modern science is catching up and the research is backing. Breathing, compassion, visualization, self-talk. All of the tools that we're using are now research-backed, so the ancient wisdom is being supported by the modern science, and I love marrying the two. Giving a concept about manifestation, put it out there the way you want it to happen, and then having research back it up. It's a lot of fun to have the two worlds combined together.
Jordan Denaver: Actually I've used a lot of the breathing techniques just completely outside of sports. Just any anxiety or stress I'm feeling like, "Okay, I'm going to do a box breath right now." And it's so helpful. It really is.
Lauren Becker Rubin: I love hearing that. Obviously I want you to be the best lacrosse player that you can be and be the best version of yourself as an athlete, but I really want you to be the best version of yourself as a human being. That's why mental performance and mental health directly intersect. What's so amazing about what I do and why I'm so in love with the mental performance world is because these skills translate to life. The fact that you're using it for anxiety off the field or stress or pressure or in relationships is just really satisfying. What I hope I'm doing is creating opportunities for the athletes and the teams that I work with to reach their full potential, to be their best versions of themselves on the field and off the field.
Jordan Denaver: And as you said before, a lot of the negative mental health issues that athletes face or a lot of just normal issues that non-athletes face and it just ties more into playing sports. Those are still stressors that people feel outside and breathing techniques and even the heart tap, that helps a lot. It's completely outside of lacrosse and sports.
Lauren Becker Rubin: Yes, for sure.
Jordan Denaver: All right, then I think it's our last question. Do you have any final words of advice or anything else you'd like to share with our listeners today?
Lauren Becker Rubin: The biggest piece of advice, and ironically when I'm first working with an individual athlete or a team, I often lead with this because I feel it's so important. The advice is that mental toughness, mental strength, mental mastery, mental health is not about making it all go away. It's not about making the stress, the anxiety, the pressure, the challenges, depression, fear, worry. It's not about making it go away. It's really about hanging in there long enough so that you can shift, that you can shift out of it, that you can create enough space and awareness that, "Hey, this is going on." And then start using your tools and your strategies.
If you can recognize that these things are normal, start with the premise that life is hard, sports is hard, these things are going to happen. Hang out in it long enough that you can start using your tools, your strategies, your techniques to shift out of it, to move a little bit to get on a different path. I think that's my biggest advice is hang in there long enough that you can shift. Part of that shift though is building the resources on your own with other people, using support so that you have tools and strategies to help you shift out of it, but just to summarize, the advice is don't think that it's good feel... Feelings and emotions are not good or bad, they're just information. Use all the information, hang out long enough, shift out of it. Use your tools, your resources so that you can keep moving down another path.
I think most of us want to close the gap to where we are now and where we want to be, and the work that around the skills, around mental performance, around mental health helps us keep moving towards where we want to be, but where we're now is part of it and it's normal and sometimes it's difficult. When we go in with that mindset, then we're more adaptable, we're more anti-fragile, more flexible, and having that mindset that, "Hey, we could get knocked down, but we're going to get back up. We're going to learn, we're going to grow." Like a growth mindset that we talk about a lot with the team. It keeps us moving, so my advice is build up your resources, have tools, have strategies, know that it's going to be hard, that there's going to be setbacks. Hang out long enough that you can shift out of it and just try to keep moving.
And then my last piece of advice is don't suffer in silence. Get help, reach out, use your support, use your networks. Don't think you have to do it alone. My last piece of advice, sorry, I'll wrap it up, but growth happens when we get outside of our comfort zone and that's called adaptability. Sometimes people call it anti-fragility, but when we stress ourselves, we grow, but our body and our mind, our emotions, our thoughts, all of that stuff, we don't like to be outside of our comfort zone. When we get out of our comfort zone, what happens is we adapt and that adaption keeps us on the path of wellbeing and positive mental health. Getting stretched and getting out of our comfort zone, getting knocked back, initially it's not going to feel good, but with resources and with skills, we'll adapt to it and we'll grow. Adaption and growth is mental health and mental wellbeing, so stay in the fight long enough to grow and to adapt, and that's how we can build our mental health and our overall mental wellbeing.
Jordan Denaver: I completely agree. I think that's some great advice. Thank you so much for doing this and for joining the Seattle Interview Series.
Lauren Becker Rubin: You bet. Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.
Please note: The views expressed by the interviewee are for educational and informational purposes only, are not meant to diagnose or treat any condition, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Seattle Anxiety Specialists, PLLC.
Editor: Jennifer (Ghahari) Smith, Ph.D.