Fictional Case Study of Pre-Competition Anxiety and Psychological Interventions
Case study of pre-competition anxiety and psychological interventions
The Problem Approximately 12 months ago I was contacted by Alice, a 17-year-old elite swimmer, who thought that she might benefit from some psychological help with regards to her pre-competition anxiety. She said that recently she has not been able to achieve her personal best times in high level competition, in which she is a favourite to win. We agreed to meet to discuss possibilities. At the first meeting I confirmed that it was psychological, rather than a technical problem, and that it was anxiety related to pre competition. Alice assured me that her strokes technique was as good as ever, but she often has bad starts off the block due to her ‘inability to get in the zone’. She identified that this generally only occurs in larger, more important competitions like nationals rather than local or state competitions. At the end of the first meeting we discussed both of our goals. I wanted to ensure that I did not promise too much and to understand Alice’s expectations of the help she might get out of this. Alice was happy to work with me on the basis that I had limited consultancy in sport but was willing to apply my knowledge and skills to that sport. The potential benefit for Alice was that she could learn something about sports psychology and hopefully resolve some if not all of her pre competition anxiety. Before the second meeting I located many published articles on anxiety in swimmers and went armed with ideas and work sheets for Alice to complete and reflect upon in relation to pre-competition anxiety, in competition coping and mental skills training. I showed her some information on techniques that might be useful to us for example Harmison (2011) Peak Performance in Sport: Identifying Ideal Performance States and Developing Athletes’ Psychological Skills. At the end of the session Alice took home a number of questionnaires for completion and
The Problem Approximately 12 months ago I was contacted by Alice, a 17-year-old elite swimmer, who thought that she might benefit from some psychological help with regards to her pre-competition anxiety. She said that recently she has not been able to achieve her personal best times in high level competition, in which she is a favourite to win. We agreed to meet to discuss possibilities. At the first meeting I confirmed that it was psychological, rather than a technical problem, and that it was anxiety related to pre competition. Alice assured me that her strokes technique was as good as ever, but she often has bad starts off the block due to her ‘inability to get in the zone’. She identified that this generally only occurs in larger, more important competitions like nationals rather than local or state competitions. At the end of the first meeting we discussed both of our goals. I wanted to ensure that I did not promise too much and to understand Alice’s expectations of the help she might get out of this. Alice was happy to work with me on the basis that I had limited consultancy in sport but was willing to apply my knowledge and skills to that sport. The potential benefit for Alice was that she could learn something about sports psychology and hopefully resolve some if not all of her pre competition anxiety. Before the second meeting I located many published articles on anxiety in swimmers and went armed with ideas and work sheets for Alice to complete and reflect upon in relation to pre-competition anxiety, in competition coping and mental skills training. I showed her some information on techniques that might be useful to us for example Harmison (2011) Peak Performance in Sport: Identifying Ideal Performance States and Developing Athletes’ Psychological Skills. At the end of the session Alice took home a number of questionnaires for completion and