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retirement for elite athletes can create identity issues

LiquidFeet

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This article is thought-provoking. It's about an elite hockey player from Australia who has recently retired from his sport.

"All of a sudden, a huge chunk of your identity, purpose and sense of belonging has been removed. A life that took not moments, not days, not weeks, but years of effort and devotion is gone, with nothing but a set of 'guidelines' and a good luck email left to help you overcome the slippery slopes of the 'transition'.

The worst part of it is navigating the initial few years post-retirement where you attempt to carve out a new life. And not a mediocre life either, one that hopefully resembles the remarkable and extraordinary sporting life you lived only years earlier... The life that teaches you to reach for the stars; to push the boundaries of what you deem possible; to fight and grind your way through numerous ailments and setbacks; to endure the heartache of defeat; appreciate the fruits of victory; and be thankful, not bitter, about the sacrifices you made to get create those moments.

Who am I now?"



https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...real-world-can-take-its-toll-on-mental-health
 

Kneale Brownson

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You don't have to be an elite athlete to face the challenges of significant life changes like retirement from a long-time period of employment.

I know folks who have lived happily knowing themselves as a participant in some sort of work, who then experienced a lot of depression over the fact they no longer were who they had been.

It's important to retire "into the future", kind of like initiating a turn, rather than dwelling on what no longer is.
 

scott43

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You don't have to be an elite athlete to face the challenges of significant life changes like retirement from a long-time period of employment.

I know folks who have lived happily knowing themselves as a participant in some sort of work, who then experienced a lot of depression over the fact they no longer were who they had been.

It's important to retire "into the future", kind of like initiating a turn, rather than dwelling on what no longer is.
Yeah..I was shocked that a former superior, Marine Corps mgmt stylez, was contemplating suicide. Smart enough (lucky enough?) to get some assistance and is doing ok. But yeah..have a plan..don't think sitting around on the porch crushing beers is a good plan..I mean, it might be..but not for everyone, at least not in the near term.
 

Doug Briggs

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I retired from ski racing quite abruptly. One morning I was racing WC DH, in the afternoon I was flat on my back in traction with compressed vertebrae, broken teeth and recovering from a severe concussion. I didn't have paralysis but I realized that I needed a new job. The one I had was just too risky.

Before that day, I had no long term plan other than to ski race as long as possible. I was married so had support from my wife as well as my family. I went back to college, got a degree in CS and was fortunate enough to land a job with Apple prior to graduation. While the transition from ski racer to Apple support tech took a little over 3 years the whole process was a challenge. I enrolled in school the fall following my accident, got grants, loans, scholarships and part time jobs. At no point beyond the 3 months of recovery where I was pretty limited in activity, did I have an opportunity to feel sorry and wonder 'what if'. Even in those first three months, I was planning my new life and was able to maintain a 'can do' attitude with the support of family and new goals. I was fortunate not to fall into a melancholy that held me back from redefining and rebuilding my life.

I didn't stop skiing as it was a core component of my life before my racing ended. It helped carry me through my period of retraining and education as a familiar and comfortable connection to my past yet showed that while I had been damaged I was still capable. In retrospect, I feel that my accident, as strange as it may sound, was a fortuitous life event as I entered a career in PCs during its infancy. If I'd raced another 5 or 10 years, I'd have missed the boat. Although there might have been another boat the one I climbed aboard has treated me well. While being a pro skier could have earned me a satisfying living, there was certainly no guarantee of success and I knew that another fall could have been devastating to my very existence.

Skiing has been a constant in my life. Without it I certainly wouldn't be who I am today. I wouldn't know all the friends here at PugSki, my friends all around the country I raced with and the people I ski with today. While skiing nearly killed me it developed strengths that were not just skiing skills but life skills. My skiing friends mean so much to me because we all share that desire, courage and strength through the trials of improving our skiing that build us into stronger and better people.

771200 Tignes at finish.jpg Val Gardena - on the hill.jpg Val Gardena - in helicopter.jpg Val Gardena - in helicopter view.jpg Val Gardena - traction.jpg hungry-thirsty-pain-urinate-wc.jpg Briggs injured in Italian DH.jpg

My crash story.
 

Doug Briggs

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You don't have to be an elite athlete to face the challenges of significant life changes like retirement from a long-time period of employment.

I know folks who have lived happily knowing themselves as a participant in some sort of work, who then experienced a lot of depression over the fact they no longer were who they had been.

It's important to retire "into the future", kind of like initiating a turn, rather than dwelling on what no longer is.

I couldn't agree more. Lingering in the past is a hard path to recover from. Look forward, plan for and deal with what's coming next.
 

Pequenita

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Anyone who strongly defines themselves based on something that can change and is attached to that identity will have a challenging transition if that identity is taken away, even more so if they did not choose to make that transition. At the risk of going all woo-woo yoga teacher, in most cases, people are more than what they've self-identified. Recognizing that and not being attached to the superficial identity (skier, athlete, writer, chef, brother, sister, parent, child, etc.) is really helpful in coping with transitions that we all undergo through life. :)
 

Primoz

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Ok I have absolutely zero experience in quitting job and getting into retirement (god knows when that will be :D), but I would still say it's not something comparable to top athlete finishing their career. I was far from top athlete, but it doesn't really matter if you are Olympic champion or "just" 20th on EC race. When it comes to end of career and changing life and life style for 300% it's pretty much same, especially as during sport career you do exactly same things and in same amount even if you never end up anywhere close to World championships podium.
In my mind, there's huge difference between sport career and job. On one side, both are jobs, but with one difference. With "normal" job, you go to work from 8 to 4, and you live your life on your own. You need to take care of everything, so once you quit this job, all you need to do is to fill those 8h extra time. I believe it's not so easy as it sounds, but right now, I wouldn't have problems doing that :D
With sport things are different. When you are in training process, you live your "job" 24/7. Everything you do, from morning and afternoon training, to food and rest between those trainings are part of the job and are there only to make training more efficient and your race speed faster. When you are away from home for some 250 days/year, you have pretty much every second of your life taken care of by someone else. You really just wake up, eat something what someone else prepared (and bought), go to training, come back, eat some more stuff that someone else prepared, go to training again, and yet again eat something that just appeared on plate infront of you out of nowhere, and then go to sleep. All hotels are booked by someone else, all equipment is being take care of by someone else. Most of trips to training camps are booked and/or driving route decided by someone else.
And then comes time, when you finish your sport career and (in my case that was when I was 27), you end up in world, you don't even know. All of a sudden you are responsible for fridge being full, your lunch will be made from that what you will buy and cook. When you travel you need to book your own hotel etc.
I'm not saying it's something really bad, but no matter how bad or stupid it sounds, you really start learning most basic things at age of 30. Personally I maybe had some luck, as for next several years I still had job in skiing so life didn't change for 300% but just for 99%, but it was still weird. Not to mention having pretty bad days during first winter when I was standing next to course instead of racing on the course and wondering what the hell I'm doing off the course when all my friends are still racing by. So first winter was pretty damn hard mentally, and I have absolutely no idea how bad it has to be for someone who would go different way and go out of sport completely at once.
 

Jim Kenney

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I went through a lower level of this identity crisis thing when I left competitive distance running in my early 20s back in the 1970s. After seven years of HS and college as a year-round track and cross-country guy it was tough to give it up, but I got burned out. I was not elite, but nonetheless very serious and logged as much as 90 miles per week. I went to college to run - first, getting a degree was a distant - second. When I quit after my junior year, it was depressing. I felt like a failure. I moved out of the "track dorm" and pretty much lost the connections with all my friends on the team. I felt somewhat lost and empty during my senior year. I developed an anxiety disorder. Recreational skiing was something I had done before, during (to a limited degree), and after my track career. Skiing helped bring joy back into my life, including a memorable solo ski trip I made to Colorado over spring break my senior year. Thereafter it took me about a half dozen years to come to grips with if/what meaning all that running had for the rest of my life. The answer was that it taught me that if I applied myself and persevered through successes and failures, then I had the innate abilities to achieve a semblance of success no matter what I tried.
 

scott43

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They say it's extremely tough being an injured player on a playoff team. You're part of the team..but you're not..because you're not going through the war. I imagine that's very hard.
 

Steve

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You can’t be a has been if you’ve never been anybody.
 

Tricia

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To an extent, most retirees who've spend a majority of their life doing something will experience an identity crisis during the transition.
Heck, look at empty nest syndrome for stay at home moms.

The reason we see so many elite athletes develop strong social media presence is to stay relevant long after they are no longer participating in the sport at a high level.
 

bbinder

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To an extent, most retirees who've spend a majority of their life doing something will experience an identity crisis during the transition..

The big existential question for me: am I still a veterinarian when I retire from practice and no longer see patients?
 

Tricia

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The big existential question for me: am I still a veterinarian when I retire from practice and no longer see patients?
Perhaps you'll hang out with a bunch of old dogs ;)
 

Pequenita

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They say it's extremely tough being an injured player on a playoff team. You're part of the team..but you're not..because you're not going through the war. I imagine that's very hard.

Yeah, we had a situation like this on one of my teams. There is a specific number of people who can be on the roster, and someone who had been on the roster the entire season was sick on the day of the competition and not on the roster the day of. And we medaled.
 

Tony S

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The big existential question for me: am I still a veterinarian when I retire from practice and no longer see patients?

Yes.
 

Monique

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Who am I now?

This question can arise in many situations. Personally, two recent ones - Blowing out my ACL, and then having my husband die unexpectedly at the age of 43. I am sure there are particulars that differ for professional athletes, but everyone who lives long enough will experience at least one change that explodes their lives and leaves them with this question. "Who am I?" "What now?"

I read somewhere or another that neither great fortune, nor great misfortune, greatly alter a person's basic attitude after something like a year or two. Happy people return to a baseline of happy. Morose people return to a baseline of morose. I'll venture that @Doug Briggs was always someone who hustled and made things work, and that was true after what seemed like a catastrophic accident, just as before. You say that you had no opportunity to wonder or feel sorry, but I think there is more to it - a basic trait of your personality, or perhaps a choice, I'm not sure. When Eric died, people were shocked that I almost immediately began to deal with paperwork, finances, utilities, memberships .... people said they could never do all of that, that they'd be destroyed and non-functional - but nobody knows what they're capable of until their lives are blown up. Some people are fortunate enough to have the personality traits necessary to carry on. But some people truly will fall apart in the same situation. I'm not sure I'd frame it as a choice - maybe it's a choice, but I do think it's heavily influenced by personality traits that are perhaps beyond our control. Being able to frame it, at least in retrospect, as a positive (you were able to begin a software career right at the beginning ) is no doubt part of it.

Something I've been mulling a lot.
 

Doug Briggs

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...

I read somewhere or another that neither great fortune, nor great misfortune, greatly alter a person's basic attitude after something like a year or two. Happy people return to a baseline of happy. Morose people return to a baseline of morose. I'll venture that @Doug Briggs was always someone who hustled and made things work, and that was true after what seemed like a catastrophic accident, just as before. You say that you had no opportunity to wonder or feel sorry, but I think there is more to it - a basic trait of your personality, or perhaps a choice, I'm not sure.

...
Before my crash in 1977 I had anger management issues. I was also a hard worker. After the accident my anger and temper tantrums were unexpectedly gone. I was still a hard worker. ogsmile I don't know if I knocked something loose with my concussion that made my anger issues disappear or if it was just a new outlook on life. We'll never know.

At present I work hard, roll with the punches and if I want something I am ready to work for it and allow time to takes its course. I had a 'patience pays off' moment recently that took over 5 years to come to fruition. During that time I changed some bad habits and my attitude towards others (some people at least) has improved.

I've never been one to take things lying down but face the things that matter head on. I'm also a thinker and will contemplate solutions until the right one comes along. Then I attack!
 

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