Sports Injuries, Concussions and Surgeries Should be Viewed as Trauma and Treated with Trauma Reprocessing Psychotherapy: Shifting the Injury Recovery Paradigm with Brainspotting to Regain Peak Performance View Digital Media

Workshop Presentation
Paige Roberts LCSW PhD  

When an athlete experiences an injury, concussion or surgery the expectation is they must “shake it off”, “pretend” it didn’t occur and return to play despite their feelings associated with the fear of reinjury. Typically after an athlete’s physical injury symptoms are no longer present they are expected to immediately regain their previously achieved level of sports performance. This philosophy is contradictory to human psychophysiology. When we endure an injury, concussion or have surgery it is traumatic to our nervous system causing us to reset our homeostasis to a more hypervigilant reactive sympathetic state. This shows up psychologically in athletes as performance anxiety, anxiety, insomnia, decreased focus and depression. This shows up physiologically in athletes as hesitancy to compete, uncontrolled movements and muscle guarding, yips, block, balking, plateaus and a decrease in reaction times. Therefore, it is pertinent sports injuries, concussions and surgeries be treated with a trauma reprocessing therapy like Brainspotting. Brainspotting assists athletes in resetting their homeostasis to a calmer and more focused peak performance parasympathetic nervous system state. Various National and Olympian athlete case studies will be presented to display how the endured sports injuries, concussions and surgeries resulted in a sports performance decline and how through Brainspotting the athletes regained and expanded on their sports performance capacity. In closing participants will have the opportunity to participate in a group Brainspotting experiential.