A podcast episode explored why women and girls in sport self-sabotage. An equally important question is: Who taught them that they need to?
From a young age, girls receive conflicting messages about how they are supposed to think, look, and behave. Be confident, but not cocky. Be strong, but not too muscular. Be competitive, but still likeable.
But being an athlete inherently challenges many stereotypes about women.
Think of how young girls play. They play with the boys, run fast, get dirty, fall down, get back up, and care far less about how they look. Sports are a space where girls get to be fierce and strong without wondering whether it makes them less desirable. Somewhere around adolescence, we start to see a shift.
It’s almost like watching young girls start to shrink themselves, both in sport and in life, to fit everyone else’s expectations.
Around this time is also when we start to see young women in sport become increasingly concerned about mistakes, appearance, and whether they are “good enough.” Pressures are also felt externally, as perfectionistic pressure from coaches and parents is associated with greater perfectionistic concerns among youth athletes (Fleming et al., 2023).
In the most extreme but exceptionally common scenarios, women take a sideline from sport altogether.
Girls disengage from sport earlier and at higher rates than boys, with body image concerns, gender stereotypes, and sport environments among the top reasons (Matheson et al., 2023; Slater & Tiggemann, 2011).
We are Not Going to Banish Self-Sabotage
During the podcast, we also explored whether women can learn to banish self-sabotage.
While that sure sounds nice, it’s just another unrealistic standard that we’d be setting female athletes up to fail at.
We have tried getting rid of critical/self-sabotaging thoughts, and it does not work particularly well. In fact, it just promotes more self-criticism, judgment, and shame when those thoughts inevitably show up.
Instead, we can recognize the difference between self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors.
While we may not be able to stop women and girls in sport from wondering if they’ll ever be good enough, we can encourage them to do the hard things anyway, rather than not try at all.
In the end, it would help us all to banish the idea that we always have to act on self-sabotaging thoughts. Instead, we should see them for what they are:
- Not always true
- Almost never helpful
- Almost always informed by external messages about what it truly means to be “good enough”
When Self-Sabotage Is Self-Protection
Self-sabotage often serves as self-protection.
This explains why some athletes never maximize their full potential, end their careers disappointed, or even quit sport altogether.
If I don’t try my best, then my best wasn’t what failed. If I don’t train as hard as I can, commit myself entirely, recover properly, or fuel myself adequately, I have an explanation if things don’t work out.
Most athletes are not doing this consciously. In fact, it’s often the opposite.
As I explain in the podcast episode, one of my favorite quotes comes from Theodore Roosevelt: “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”
What I think athletes can take from this quote is one simple fact: You’re in the arena.
You’ve already shown up. You’ve worked hard, you’re uncomfortable, and you’re taking a risk. You’ve already done the hardest thing. In many ways, you’ve already won.
So why not be as brave as you can possibly be now that you’re already there?
Comparison Is a Terrible Scoreboard
I’d be remiss not to talk about how much of a role comparison culture plays in all of this.
It’s tricky, because sport drives comparison culture. There is always a ranking, score, record, or opponent. Somebody wins and somebody loses, every single time.
I have to remind people that most athletes lose.
Take it from Roger Federer’s famous commencement address. He shares that while he is celebrated as one of the best tennis players of all time, he won exactly 54% of the individual points in his career. He lost 46% of them.
Is Roger a failure? Is he not good enough?
In the end, only one person or one team wins, and most of us lose. If being perfect (aka winning) becomes the requirement for being “good enough”, we’re all going to be left very disappointed.
Self-Compassion Is Not Soft
Mindfulness and self-compassion in sport are increasing in popularity.
I’ll admit that while I spent a lot of time apprehensive about these tools, viewing them as “soft,” I’ve changed my mind.
These tools are active as heck.
Research increasingly suggests that self-compassion can help athletes respond more adaptively to failure, reduce self-criticism, and support psychological well-being without requiring them to abandon achievement (Kuchar et al., 2023; Stamatis et al., 2020).
Self-compassion requires us to remain strong in our worth in the face of failure.
In fact, I’d argue that there is nothing stronger than showing up for yourself with self-compassion and grace after losing a close match.
Just look at how many athletes can’t do it.
Maybe the Athlete isn’t the Problem
While this conversation focused primarily on women and girls in sport, these topics transcend gender.
Athletes of all genders struggle with perfectionism, comparison, and fear of failure.
It’s also no secret that gender occupies a complicated place in sport right now. So not only are concerns about perfectionism and self-sabotage present for all athletes, they are especially heightened for athletes who have complicated relationships with their gender.
It’s even more complicated for athletes navigating racism, ableism, xenophobia, economic inequity, and other forms of scrutiny and exclusion.
So instead of asking why athletes keep getting in their own way, we should ask what they learned would happen if they became too powerful, too visible, too muscular, too competitive, too confident, too different, or simply fell short of perfect.
Then we can help them recognize those messages for what they really are and commit to doing the thing anyway.
For more on this conversation, check out How to Defeat Self-Sabotage + Bolster Self-Confidence with Drs. Tess Kilwein & Erin Ayala.
