5 Ways to Cope with Post Athlete Depression

It’s hard to remember my last competition- at an elite level. It’s been over a decade, but I still identify as an athlete. It never leaves you. It’s hard to describe what “it” is, but being an athlete still runs in my veins.

Life after sport, at first, feels freeing. The world is your oyster and all of a sudden you have all of this unstructured time. At the same time, it’s hard to know what to do with it. Get a hobby? You may miss the highs of winning and scoring goals, the comradery of your teammates, pushing yourself, having every second of your day productive, and most of all, knowing that if everything else in your life isn’t going well, you still have your sport to fall back on.

With this life behind you, you might experience post-athletic depression. Many athletes wade through the messy transition into “civilian” life and there’s a fog of who you are, what is meaningful, and in some ways, wishing you could go back to being an athlete again. I especially have a heart for working with athletes going through this transition of life after sport. Here are some tips to help you cope with post athlete depression, or life after sport that was helpful for me, and I hope will be helpful for you too.

1. Go through the grief process.

It’s easy to bypass this step because life is moving on- you now have a job/career outside of sports, you may have moved, and you are keeping up with it all. These grief feelings will come up eventually, trust me, so it’s good to give yourself space to grieve. You can do this by making a list of all the things you miss about playing sports and what you are leaving behind. You can make a quilt of all your jerseys/t-shirts. You can write thank you cards to all your coaches/teammates who made an impact on your life in sports. It’s important that you honor the sports phase of your life and its impact on you, and also its end.

2. It’s one part of your identity.

A lot of athletes tend to believe that being an athlete IS their identity. It’s how you have differentiated from other people in your life, or perhaps it gave you confidence in social settings. For some time now, your life has revolved around sports and everything you did was to make you a better performer. But that’s only a narrow picture of who you are. Although sports were all that you DID, you are so much more than what you do. Are you shy or outgoing? What types of movies do you like? Are you a feeler or a thinker? What is your role in your family? What makes you laugh? What relaxes you more- ocean or forest? Ok, I think you get it. If you want more labels of WHO you are, personality tests can point you in the right direction. By the end, you may describe yourself as an outgoing feeler who likes horror movies, ocean breeze to relax, and used to be a competitive athlete.

3. Experiment.

Your 20s are all about finding out what you don’t like. It’s an experimental phase. This is amplified for the post-athlete. Since your time was filled up so much by sport, you might not know how to spend your time, what you like to eat, what you like to wear, where you like to vacation, how to date- and it’s overwhelming! You may feel behind on this learning process, but give yourself time. You have decades now to figure it out, and a lot more free time.

4. Get in touch with your feelings.

I’m not saying this just because I’m a therapist. J If it’s difficult to figure out your feelings, therapy would be a good place to sort through what you are feeling. Journaling also helps to know what you are feeling. I’m saying this because when you are in competitive sport, your feelings get repressed. Instead of doing what you want to do, you are told what to do. Now as an adult, you have more choice and these feelings of what you want to do need to resurface. Figuring out what you WANT can be a challenge.

5. Be gentle with your body.

So far, your body has been a machine made to perform. Now it doesn’t have to be. Your muscles might get a little softer, and you might not like how your body looks after sport. This is completely normal. As you start to prioritize other areas of your life, you can learn to love your new body for what it can do for you now. You also might have a difficult time with knowing how much or what to eat. I recommend Intuitive Eating- tuning into your body is going to be helpful in this change process.

If you are an athlete or post-athlete, I would love to work with you through this process of life after sport.