Whole Being Athlete Series | Episode 6: Managing Mental Health In Parasports

well hello everyone and welcome I'm so excited to be here with athletes for Hope and some of the athletes for Hope mental health ambassadors my name is Emily schriack I currently work as the Director of the disability Cultural Center at the University of Texas at Austin I am also a para athlete so I have competed in wheelchair rugby nationally and internationally I was one of the first women to represent the United States international competition um as one of the first women because military rugby is a co-ed Sport and I'm currently competing in Para Triathlon which is a swimming biking and running so very excited to be here today and kind of blend my personal and professional experience in moderating this panel and so we'll go ahead and dive into it um and I will turn it over to Jenny um to do your introduction sure thanks Emily um hi everybody my name is Jenny satchell I am a 2016 uh paralympian paralympic silver medalist and the sport of rowing um and then I also switched over to coaching paralympic um rowing for the 2020 2021 games I don't know how you want to say that I'm uh but outside of that I work as a disability Advocate and and work in disability advocacy I should say but um yeah I am one of athletes for Hope's mental health ambassadors so I'm excited to be here and chat with y'all thanks Jenny Isaac you want to go next yes yes my name is Isaac John Paul I am a 2021 paralympian from the Tokyo paralympic games for track and field uh I am a bronze medalist in a long jump from the last paralympic games as well I am currently still an athlete but I'm also coaching at San Diego State University as the Sprints and jumps coach for the Adaptive Athletic program um where else can I go um I just started uh being an ambassador for athletes of hope so this is my first this is my introduction um so I'm happy to be here and um willing and able to spread my knowledge and receive knowledge great well glad to have you on board Isaac and Lacey sweet uh hi everyone my name is Lacey Henderson I am a teammate of Isaac Sean pauld when parent track and field I do long jump I'm Maria paralympian as well and recently just graduated with my Master's in sport and performance psychology I actually do help out with the San Diego State adapted Athletics guys over there as well as uh building my own just professional business trying to make ends meet as it as it is for most athletes you know um and I know I've been doing a slew of things with um athletes for help for a while now and as far as as well as being um a mental health Ambassador so I'm excited to share my experiences and my knowledge just from the accumulation of years well thank you and wow what a great group here we have again not just the athletic experience but also all the professional experiences that I think all of us bring to this conversation um and we're specifically you know gathered here talking about perisport and mental health and kind of what that intersection can look like um obviously in sports we're focusing on you know our athletic performance and our physical um performance but of course physical health and mental health are so closely interconnected and intertwined that you're not going to be able to compete at your best if you're not healthy mentally as well so that's going to be the focus of our conversation today um and just as our our first question um what do you wish people knew about parasport I wish people knew how cool it is oh man how just like like awesome and I'm athletic every single athlete is in Paris War it's like it's just it's not it's I don't know it's Sports yeah I would I would second that I wish people knew how how cool it was in it and it's not like something where you can just Pat it's like a pat on the back type cool it's like wow impressive yeah you know um so yeah I was second that motion um the big fear is about paralympic sport that I feel like people don't understand is like right now we're talk we're seeing like a lot of like the social justice movement of parisport and we're getting the inclusivity of disabilities but from what I've seen the way that it's been developing so far my biggest fear is that it's going to be turning into what I call the privilege Olympics so it's not going to be actually reflective or representative of greater populations in the world like we even see now just the way the disability is viewed in a lot of different Global societies like we don't see those teams at our games like we don't see a lot of African countries we don't see a lot of Latin American countries that have good development so my fear is that while the disability inclusion movement is growing in certain countries that there's gonna be a lot left behind and I think that that like speaks to a greater Hall on like missing ironically representation like within probably the world's largest minority thank you Lacey and I think one thing I would add to that I think some of the barriers for people to get into parasport is is often not as easy you know just to open the door and go for a run around your neighborhood you know there's often for sure equipment that is needed for training um and so that's going to be you know not as accessible or available to folks depending on where they're living in the United States you know across the world um and so I think that is you know a real Challenge and barrier for a lot of folks to get involved in parisport is just the the resources and Equipment um that sometimes makes that barrier to entry um really too high for a lot of folks and while there are a lot of resources available and grants to help with that even you know accessing those can can be potentially challenging so can I add into that really quickly with a quick anecdote yes and so Lacey I like 100 agree with you on that um and I mean I'm actually right now I'm in Europe and I was coaching an international para rowing camp and we actually had two athletes from Nigeria who were supposed to be coming but they started the process in January to get visas to come that's not enough time and yeah it's like not nearly enough time and so they just ended up not coming um and that's a huge access issue and then we had another athlete who wasn't going to be let on the plane because she's a double amputee uses a wheelchair but she didn't have a Handler with her to get on the plane coming from I think she was coming from Kenya um and so it's like I mean I have Africa like in I'm in my examples but that's not only Africa like some ngb's national governing bodies aren't even recognizing certain para athletes even in developed countries for sure I know I had the I had the pleasure of um doing sport Envoy last year in Peru so we like it was really cool we got to like go into like local municipalities and talk about like why disability visibility is important how like you know you can identify a para identity and again it's like so many cultures and societies don't view disability as something that should be celebrated cultivated like inspiring and to support a lot of people if you would Kim if you acquire a disability later in life like I did or even if you're congenital like they hide it and so I think that like without being careful I think is a greater whole for Paralympics to do a better job I think as far as marketing and like the incentivizing that disability sport is cool because like we like we are fully bonded like this has made my career of course like I think it's like super cool but um but I it's just my fear that like we're gonna only see the countries that have access to the I'm a leg amputee so like the people that are doing really well and like the categories are the ones that get like the highest grade technology the most Cutting Edge things and like you know if other countries are lucky they get donations they get grants they get used equipment and again it's not reflective on the actual ability of the athlete in my opinion so it has an interesting uh conundrum isn't it that as Paris brand has in evolved you know and become kind of this higher level of achievement achievement if we don't kind of bring everybody along with us then it does become something that can exclude instead of you know bring bring people together and provide everyone with those opportunities for sure I think um and another thing and um no and I think I've had this conversation a lot I think like Isaac also like is in a good position to talk about this like with my teammates again like I'm really I'm fortunate in a weird way that like as a like amputee it's very visible it's very cool you know you wear the running blade great for marketing but again it's I call it like I'm like if you don't have a sexy disability that photographs well like you lose a lot of opportunities and like even in that case you see a lot of like at least in track and field like there was event viability issues in Tokyo because there's a number of people there aren't enough people to fill lanes and um yeah I think that like not having like the sexy disability you know the Marquee disability that that they're currently using right now like is potentially more problematic for countries that like could also be developing their their assets with CP or like muscle mobility issues the visual impairment athletes but um yeah and we can also miss that yeah definitely agree with you on that um especially to you know add to it it's like there's so many disabilities out there and the focus is only you know particular disability so all the other disabilities are just like oh okay you have a disability okay but what about this person you know what I'm saying I'd rather see someone with one leg run before I see somebody that's visually impaired where you don't see their disability you probably you probably wouldn't have even known that I had a disability if I didn't tell you so like um yeah thank you for adding that because I was just about to say um the disabilities that you can't see for sure I think like it's a weird it's a weird hierarchy disability in the world for sure I feel like and that's very much like I mean working in disability advocacy like there is that sort of hierarchy in media marketing but I feel like it's also very much like I'm involved in disability sport I'm in Paris sport and like I mean not only in marketing but like even in when you're trying to find athletes or whatever it may be like in rowing we look for specific you don't look for specific disabilities but like if you want to work with an athlete to become a paralympian it's going to be really hard sometimes to have an athlete I mean this is horrible to say Lacy but like with an amputee and if you're a single leg amputee in rowing it's going to be really tough it's gonna be super hard yeah just because you don't have the same thing that like someone with a club foot would have but you're included in that category yeah yeah I think that there's like a weird yeah inequity because again you're never gonna across the board like you're rarely what you find like the same disability so that's like you know the issues with categories and even like the issue of like sport as a business right like if you're on a team sport like I don't know a lot about rowing but I'm assuming you're like we got to fill these thoughts and then you got to qualify a boat yeah not just an individual that's business you can't have all arms like you can't like like have and so again it's like in a weird way it's a social movement for inclusion but at the same time there's like a lot of inequities there's like a lot of stuff that's going on behind the scenes that I don't feel like necessarily is serving the athletes and the Greater Community at large because I think we're they're only seeing one side of disability um and I mean there's a lot more of like the social and emotional experience of being a disabled person in the world than just trying to make a team although that's also very hard thank you I think that's a perfect perfect kind of segue to our next question and I feel like there was so much that was brought up even in in just that first first question that we could have you know explored a lot of different ways um but kind of transitioning to that next question um and thinking about that you know whole the whole body athlete the whole human athlete what what are the social and emotional aspects um I'd love to hear from you kind of what are some of the the mental health aspects that you have experienced through sport is that directed to a particular person or anybody can just jump in that is open for for anybody who wants to know Isaac I think you should go Isaac for sure for sure can you repeat that question one more time so I'll make sure I answer it yeah so what are some of the mental health challenges that you've experienced through sport oh man a lot so where can I start so um to be honest I just started the Paralympics probably six years ago that was my first introduction to the Paralympics was in 2017. prior to that point I was involved in able-bodied sports went to college competed at the highest level um within track and field went to usas and I had aspirations of making it the Olympic team in 2016. but I got hurt and then I found out that I have a possibility to be part of the Paralympics based off of my disability so I got involved through connections through other athletes athletes that's currently running now and uh that's when I was introduced to my disability like face first you know what I'm saying like I use Sports uh to run away from my disability now my disability is like right in my face it's the very thing that I have to like face every time I step on the track now I'm no longer the raw athlete I'm the blind athlete or the disabled athlete so having to understand that kind of weight heavy on my confidence because I didn't want to be known as someone with a disability I just wanted to be like everybody else like I wanted my athlete athleticism to Define who I was not my disability and uh when I moved to the training center it was like oh you're visually impaired you're a t13 you're not the aspiring Olympian anymore every time I would tell somebody oh I'm trying for the Olympics too you know they'll look at me be like okay but they didn't know that I was a national champion in college um I'm three inches off the Olympic standard you know what I'm saying for the high jump they know they don't know how close I am because I wasn't there to train for the Olympics I was there to train to be a paralympian um so I kind of battled that because I wanted people to recognize me as an Olympian and I was kind of in denial you know I you know I don't want to be a paralympian I always that was nothing that I looked forward to it was I want to be the best in the world and the only way I could do that is by winning the Olympic Games and so as I started to train more and more at the training center you know um my disability would be more in the Forefront especially when it came down to my event so I'm a long jumper well by trade I'm a high jumper like that's my baby like you can't tell me nothing I don't know about the high gym um that's that's my thing and so in the high jump in the long jump it's two different jumps my high jump I'm like a power jumper I gotta reach and explode up vertically for the long jump it's more so of a run off the board like you're running an air so two different concepts so when I would transfer over into the long jump I would take my high jump into play I'm a good long jumper but by trade like I I know how to jump by reaching and so every time I would reach I would foul in the long jump and every time I would file the one thing that my coaches and the athletes around me would say is like hey you're blind why are you looking at the board stop looking at the board you're blind anyway and so I never said anything about it like I never really try to say hey that's not cool because in my mind you know that's what you're supposed to do as an athlete you're supposed to take that verbal abuse and at the same time I'm trying to feel accepted I'm trying to find acceptance and if I speak up like they gonna look at me like you think you is like y'all you know what I'm saying like I just didn't know what to do all I did was allow it to keep happening and then it took like one joke where you know that was that one straw that broke the camel's back and they made a comment about we were talking about basketball or something right and I made a comment about a team beating another team and one of the coaches said oh you know why Isaac thinks that team is going to win oh it's because he's blind he can't see the game and so all of this stuff that was being said about my vision even though it may have not been in a malicious way but I'm pretty sure in your workspaces if a male wants to make an inappropriate comment about a female you know I'm saying that wouldn't be acceptable so why is it acceptable to make fun of somebody with a disability so um I understand that it probably wasn't malicious it wasn't meant to hurt me and maybe I should have uh spoken up sooner um but at the end of the day these things happen and I think it happened because of the lack of empathy for those with disabilities um and a lack of Education um and how to work with people with disabilities because if you knew me as an athlete I'm a tactile learner so if you were to teach me how to feel my way in the long jump maybe I wouldn't reach instead of making remarks about my vision or this what or that try helping me understand how I can accomplish this knowing that I have a challenge in front of me that may be in it enabling me to do so but long story short all those things that was said about my vision I start to believe that so my origins of sport came from playing basketball and I was amazing basketball player and when I would play sports I felt like a superhero like you couldn't tell me anything and my my vision didn't matter as a kid but now As I Grew Older and these jokes were made it was just like I start to become paralyzed I felt like I couldn't play basketball anymore I couldn't because I was blind I felt like I couldn't see certain things I started to believe these things and made excuses to why I couldn't do things that I normally can do and used to do and so to get out of that little like Funk that I was in I took up another uh event and I started to Sprint and when I started to Sprint I realized how good I was in Sprints I had never sprinted before I was always a jumper and I started to grow my confidence back in my ability to just be an athlete thank you Isaac I love how you kind of shared some you know experiences that contributed to positive mental health and then also you know some of the the challenges that you faced and how that you know impacted you as a as a person and also as as an athlete and I know we're getting close on time here but just want to see Jenny and Lacey if there's anything that you want to share about your experiences with mental health and Sport yeah I guess I can go and just because I have a little bit different story than you guys when it comes to sports and and specifically parasaur but um so I myself do not have a classifiable disability for paralympic sport and I have a mental health disability um and so that has literally played such a major role in my sporting career um because it it it's just like every second of every day I work through my mental health and disability and live with it and cope with it um and so I mean in sports there's so many different Avenues where it affects me but I think the one thing that well two things that are really interesting since we don't have a ton of time but the first thing that is really interesting when it comes to my mental health disability is when I'm on the water and my anxiety goes away I am and my OCD goes away um and it's just kind of a pure I don't want to say Bliss because it's not but it's just like a relief almost and it just sort of stops happening because I can't think about anything but what's going on in my boat or what's going on in the boat that I'm coaching um and so that's just kind of a really interesting tidbit um not really about mental health issues but it's just kind of an interesting thing that happens because I've trained so hard in rowing and I know so much about it and I feel so good about it that it just comes so naturally at this point to me and that I enjoy it's like downhill ski racing I do that too and it's the same type of thing um and then the other aspect that's really interesting um with mental health issues specifically is I didn't disclose to anyone that I had a mental health disability in sport because I was so afraid of stigma and I was so afraid of that even unconsciously having the coach be like oh Jenny has mental health disability Jenny has mental health issues like she's not going to be able to perform um where in all of our yards it's the complete opposite like I have so much self-awareness that I'm probably able to perform even better than a lot of athletes um but it's just that stigma is there and people don't quite understand or grasp even yet um what goes on and when you do have mental health challenges but it is so integrated into Sport and like especially when you have mental health challenges and they get treated you become or Coke you learn cop control whatever it might be and you become such a better athlete and there's no doubt to that and so there's absolutely no reason that any coach or any athlete should feel that they can't say something I'm or can't speak up because you're only going to become better and so that's that's my two cents that's all I got I know I'm like trying to like organize my brain I'm like you guys had such good stuff um I do think like as far as like mental health issues like overall I would say that like mine also really came from like this idea I think Isaac even said the word too I used to call it my disability denial so like I grew up I had cancer at nine and I had my like amputated from failed chemotherapy trials and um I come from like a very Italian family so like Latin like machismo on the guys like all this so like the idea of me being disabled was just something we didn't talk about and so my dad actually went to Olympic trials and he was a two-time national as a Catholic Champion he was a pole vaulter for trials and that like just like sports was always in our family so even after my imputation like I didn't know about adaptive Sports I didn't know about any of that because my family was like we don't want you to do special stuff you know I have old parents too they're like my dad's almost 80. so again it's like we have cultural stuff as well as like age so I think we carry a lot of like this internalized ableism with us the way that we're raised the way that we like our our inner cultures look at disability and like you don't realize that that becomes a part of your DNA so when inevitably you either join the club at a later time or like you find yourself that like you have a qualifiable disability it changes your perspective about yourself and it challenges like your ideas of your abilities and you start believing all the terrible things that people and Society have already said about disability but it takes like it takes a lot to break that I think as far as your identity and like for me I know that I like started seeing a sports psychologist because I just like could not I was like getting rattled in competitions like the officials would be mean which like they're always mean but I was like I was just like couldn't cope and um from there my sports side who's also clinical was like Hey do you think that you have experience like do you have PTSD and I was like you have PTSD like immediately really defensive like I was like no like I'm doing fine I was not doing fine and I ended up doing like clinical work like getting through like working through a lot of like the baggage that we accumulate along the way nobody comes as far in life without a little bit of damage like so it changed the way that like I viewed people who also like have experienced trauma and like also like the trauma of being a disabled person in a world that has not been designed or accepting of disability and like how do you build like better systems in your life like I always think about disabled people like athletes in general or Master compensators like we have to learn how to achieve a task and a goal physically and like most athletes regardless of ability status like deal with injuries deal with like unequal parts of your body like it's just like a part of being an athlete but like when you have a disability I always think about like the excess cognitive load that that takes you on like understanding like the variables that you're working with with your body with the way that your brain works trying to like apply it to a new task or a new goal like physically and it's just like it's a it's a lot like it's a lot it's a lot on the brain and it's a lot motion emotionally and I think like when you're also on a support system that doesn't necessarily like uplift you or have patience for you because not everybody even in parasport not everybody's on the same page in their own disability Journey like there's a lot of unlearning that has to happen and um I'm really like that really sucks that Isaac had to deal with that with his coaching system because like your coaches should be the people that you trust like like I am a long jumper and I'm like you are my eyes like like I'm like I'm blind on that Runway too because because I do have failed a lot like you can't look at but when you're constantly trying to compensate and carry things like it becomes a lot and I think that's not unique to disabled people but like it's something that I think we all carry and I do think there's also like a weird Trend at least in my experience like coming from I was a competitive cheerleader in high school and in college um so like I came from like non-disabled team sports and I remember like when I started repair track and field I started after my undergrad and like I would love to know like Jenny's perspective because when I was doing track and field like and maybe just also like being like a woman and parent track and field like there was this weird undertone of like super competitiveness too because like there are limited resources in Para track and field there's limited sponsorships there's limited this there's limited that so like you come into a sport and like immediately like in the way that our team selection is it's like all women all categories all events against each other to make a team and you're like wow that really builds for team camaraderie and so there's like there's not a huge fostering in my opinion of like Community like it's weird because like we have a community but it's not fostered by like the systems that we participate in because we have to compete against each other and um and I think that that like made it really difficult for me and like I'm really grateful that I had an amazing sports psychologist he was like not coddly not friendly like I'm very charismatic and like he did not buy my like Charisma for one second which I needed I needed somebody that was just like all right let's handle work stop with the parents Lacy and um you know that influenced me to like get my masters and now like work with my athletes I have I have like my client load is a mix of non-disabled and disabled athletes because the athlete experience I think is essential for like helping with mental performance and just life in general and also like what the experience of being disabled and like the experience of like classification systems one of my like irbs one of my like dissertations for school was what are motivating factors for athletes who have to compete against people that are less disabled than them because that happens all the time in Paris so like what are we doing here you know like what is your motivator for that so I think like it's messy but like life's messy you know but I think that there's I being conscious in 2023 is hard because it's very depressing and sometimes I think like optimism is like a mental health issue I'm like is this a mental illness being optimistic but I am cautiously optimistic that there's community that will grow from this and that there will be like more people uniting more athletes uniting in the para movement to make it better for other athletes and to make the sport better as a whole Lacey can I just say I think it's hilarious that you're like optimization or oh my god wow guys it's been a long journey um being optimistic is like okay really my motto is I'm a viewer of the gold lining I've won way too many Silvers in my life and so I only go for gold at this point um because and this may be way too optimistic but I think that there's always going to be negatives there's always going to be you know downturns and it's what you do coming out of the downturn it's how you look at it and if you look at it in a certain way you're always going to find something good from something that for sure um I have yet to have that disproven in my life um so if anybody wants to come at me go for it well plus I think that there's also like even looking at this panel like there's also something to be said for athletes that like start giving back to the sport like I think we haven't even recognized it like all three of us like have had our time you know as athletes and like me and Isaac are still competing I don't know why I'm still here but here I am like the idea but like the fact that like you like you see that there's been like that void and it's missing and like you want to give back because it is because there's so much potential and it has been really good for our lives and I think that it can be greater and I think that like having people who've had the paralympic experience like giving back for the futures that's why I went into coaching yep part of the reason um because I have had so many different coaches and and I know what I like and what I don't like and what's good and what's bad and I want to be able to bring that to the next generation of athletes and para athletes specifically so that's so cool yeah oh thank you all for sharing those personal stories and experiences I think you know being a mental health Ambassador through athletes for Hope having these types of conversations you know in more public spaces I think that that is a way like you said give give back kind of illustrate and highlight some of the the challenges um and some of the ways that we deal with those challenges you know Lacey I resonated with when you said you know as athletes were you know if you have an injury of course you're going to get treatment for that you're not just going to kind of push through that and be like Oh I'm sure it'll be fine it'll heal by itself you know and that's you know I don't think we're quite there yet you know with mental health of recognizing you know this is something that's having an impact on me or you know I feel like I could be stronger in this area I'm going to seek seek help for that I'm going to you know find Community around that and so I think we're we're still working on on that but from an athlete's perspective you know we're so much ingrained in our physical bodies and training that hopefully that's you know a way that kind of translates to helping mental health be more talked about more accepted more normalized that is something that we all deal with and there are supports and resources out there to to thrive and succeed um through that and be as strong mentally as we are physically as athletes agreed well this has been a wonderful conversation I wish we had time to dive into more of our questions but before we wrap up I'll just see if anybody has any kind of closing thoughts or statements that they want to share today superhero I love it I was going to say a parasports are cool mental health is cool you know think about it I agree I'm like co-sign yes well thank you so much it was wonderful good to get to have a time to have this conversation today and hopefully um we'll be able to connect and continue having these conversations moving forward