Game Speed and Psychotherapy

I am a big fan of professional football, and one theme we hear frequently from analysts, players and coaches is how much faster the professional game is when compared with the college game. New players must adjust to this speed, through practice and game play, so that when their senses perceive a situation on the field their body will react quickly enough to make the necessary play. There is no time for thinking.

My wife is a psychotherapist. Many people have never availed themselves of psychotherapy, and the practice is still wrapped in a sort of taboo blanket. What is it like? What is the purpose? Why can't these people fix themselves?

If you were to throw most college football players, even the top draft picks, directly into an NFL game without the hours and hours and hours of practice they would normally undertake, those college football players would perform poorly. Furthermore, and I cannot prove this (nor can anyone disprove it), I would guess that additional game play would not help. The yelling from the coaches, the disgusted looks from teammates, and the mocking from opposing players would direct most not-ready-for-prime-time players into maladaptive behaviors. They would not get better.

Psychotherapy is practice for those who think their emotional skills are not as good as they could be for the prime-time game (real-life). The client (player) can discuss game-day (real-life) situations with the therapist (coach): what the client is thinking and feeling during those moments, and what the best responses might be. After repeated practice, and the confidence that comes with the mastery of a concept or situation, the client can better handle life's difficulties.

Another metaphor that comes to mind is psychotherapy as tool. If your problem is a nail, you will want a hammer, not a wrench. Life presents certain challenges for which psychotherapy is the most helpful tool.

This discussion causes me to think of Viktor Frankl, who said, "between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." He was speaking of his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, where all of his freedoms had been taken by the SS guards, with the exception that he could always choose his own feelings in response to the world around him, even as desperate as that world was for him at the time.