stress and anxiety

Stress and Anxiety
Stress:
Stress is your body's way of responding to any kind of demand. It can be caused by both good and bad experiences. When people feel stressed by something going on around them, their bodies react by releasing chemicals into the blood. These chemicals give people more energy and strength, which can be a good thing if their stress is caused by physical danger. But this can also be a bad thing, if their stress is in response to something emotional and there is no outlet for this extra energy and strength. Therefore there are two types of stress Eustress (Good) and Distress (Bad).
Stress is a normal physical response to daily events that make you feel unbalanced in some way i.e. work, study, family issues etc…
Types of Stress:
As previously said there are two types of stress. Eustress and Distress.
Eustress:
Eustress is the good stress that motivates you to continue working. This type of Stress can be a motivator and provide incentive to get the job done and. This "good stress" is what eustress can be identified as and some people enjoy it. Everyone needs a little bit of stress in their life in order to continue to be happy, motivated, challenged and productive.
A sporting example where eustress might of occurred is with Andy Murray as he felt the pressure and stress to win Wimbledon 2013, as he will end Britain's 77-year wait for a men`s champion.
He felt the stress because all his fans in Britain were supporting him to win and he also wanted to win himself which gave him even more motivation to win.
He felt the stress to win as he was playing the world number one, which meant his skill level improved rapidly and he kept his focus to win, which resulted in Andy Murray winning his first ever Wimbledon title.
Distress:
Distress is usually the bad type of stress. This is when a situation and pressure gets the best of us, and can lead to `choking` or a poor performance.
Many athletes suffer with this type of stress. It is an extreme form of anxiety, nervousness, apprehension, or worry. When athletes get this type of stress they may struggle to meet their demands in their chosen sport.
A good sporting example where this happened is David Nalbandian who was disqualified because he couldn`t cope with his stress levels.
When Nalbandian was playing in the Aegon Championships 2012 he lost control of his stress and it turned into anger. This resulted in him kicking the box the line judge was sat in and injuring the line judge. He was soon disqualified for unsporting behaviour.
Anxiety:
The definition of anxiety is a 'negative emotional state with feelings of nervousness, worry and apprehension, associated with activation or arousal of the body.' (Weinberg &Gould, 2002)
Therefore it’s a negative reaction of a perform to stress, and an emotional state associated with arousal and accompanied by feelings of nervousness and apprehension. This Extreme anxiety then disrupts and unsettles behavior by lowering the individual's concentration and affecting their muscular control.
Types of Anxiety:
There are two types of anxiety which is state and trait. State is dependent on the environments and situation and the trait which comes from within the performer and it’s unchangeable.
State:
State anxiety is described as emotions that develop in response to a fear or danger on a particular situation. State anxiety can contribute to a range of physical and mental blocks in sport, preventing performance of a task where the performance is affected and they experience chokes or muscular tenseness which prevents the performer to excel or play under a certain level.
A good example of a performer who has experience state anxiety is Usain Bolt who got DQ for a false start in the 2011 World Championships track and field events. This was the semi-finals race and everyone expected Bolt to move into the finals as he was holding the title at that time as the fastest man from the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Clearly Bolt was feeling anxious shortly before the race as he felt the pressure to succeed once again and he was anxious and stressed. Bolts muscles were reactive and they were too anxious and all he wanted to do was just run and win the race but because he was too anxious he false started and he got disqualified for this. Because he was so anxious this meant that he lost his race and didn’t proceed to the finals.Trait:
Trait anxiety is a type of anxiety that describes personality traits and a characteristic of anxiety of a performer rather than a temporary feeling.
Trait anxiety rises in response to a threat or danger, but it differs in its intensity, duration and the range of situations in which it occurs. So a person with trait anxiety is most likely to be anxious from different situations such as: meeting new people, speak to an audience, participate in sport and doing daily activities.
Trait anxiety also refers to the differences between people in terms of their tendency to experience state anxiety in response to the anticipation of a threat. People with a high level of trait anxiety experience more intense degrees of state anxiety to specific situations than most people do and experience anxiety toward a broader range of situations or objects than most people.
A sports example of this would be Robin Deakin, 27, who is told to be Britain’s worst boxer. He has been knocked out 12 times as he racked up 50 defeats. Deakin has performed so badly he had his boxing licence taken away.
Anxious boxers like Robin Deakin will often lean too far forward, be clumsy in their leg movements or fight defensively, any of which may result in them getting knocked out. This could be the cause of extreme anxiety and trait anxiety due to the pressure as he steps onto the ring and the bystander crowd.
For some athletes sports anxiety can be a valuable motivator, e.g. contact sports such as rugby, whereas other sports require a very low level of anxiety for successful performances, e.g. archery, pistol shooting.
Athletes can learn to manage anxiety using techniques such as relaxation, hypnotherapy, cognitive behaviour therapy and positive thinking. For state anxiety, therapies focus on the specific situations causing stress to the athlete whereas Trait anxiety requires a broader approach.
Causes of stress:
There are a number of individualised causes of stress.
It is common to have a number of athletes in similar situations yet for them to have entirely different stress responses to those situations. Some of the main causes are discussed below.
Internal:
Internal stress is stress that is generated by your mind and is expressed within thoughts or behaviours that affect yourself.
These thoughts come from psychological or emotional feelings, such as being depressed or worried, or putting pressure on yourself to achieve perfection and success.
It could be triggered by past experiences, present conditions, and future expectations.
Internal causes of stress include nutritional deficiencies, bacterial or viral infections (illnesses), fatigue, fear-based emotional patterns such as negative self-talk, unrealistic expectations and Perfectionism.
External:
External stress is stress that is caused by factors that come from your surroundings or environment and that you can’t control.
Examples could include something like environment and weather, negative social interaction with other people, day-to-day hassles, major life event, pressure to pay off debts, anxiety over public speaking or an upcoming exam.
Personal:
Personal stress is stress that affects us ion the personal term such as People who are significant in our lives – such as friends, family and partners – can be a source of stress. Lifestyle factors like health and finance can also be sources of stress.
Affects to our personal life can severely cause personal stresses which are things like Major life changes, Work, Relationship difficulties, financial worries and Children and family
Occupational:
Occupational causes of stress are related to your job, e.g. lack of job satisfaction or unemployment.
In a sporting situation, having a disagreement with a coach or a manager and subsequently being dropped from the team could cause you to suffer from stress.
Sports environment:
Sports environment consist of the importance of the event and the pressure that is limited to that event. So the more important the event, the more stressful it is.
For example, Johnyy Macaroon who is an amateur footballer who is playing his first season game after a serious injury that occurred to him could show the same symptoms of stress as Usain Bolt who is on the finals off a 100m race in 2012 Olympics.
If you look at it Bolts game has more media coverage and could be important for society but since Volt is doing this for years and is now professional he does not value the importance as much as the coverage but on the other hand Johny Macaroon finds his match very personal and important even if other don’t find its not the importance of the event but it is the importance that the individual attaches to the event that is key.
Causes of anxiety:
Anxiety disorders may be caused by environmental factors, medical factors, genetics, brain chemistry, substance abuse, or a combination of these. It is most commonly triggered by the stress in our lives. Usually anxiety is a response to outside forces, but it is possible that we make ourselves anxious with "negative self-talk" - a habit of always telling ourselves the worst will happen.
Negative effect of stress:
Previous experiences- for example you may have performed poor before and now that you are going to compete you fear the worst again. Anticipation of even of waiting for it to arrive and competing. Unfamiliar situations as you could be competing in a sport that you've only just began to play and this could cause anxiety.
Symptoms:
Sympathetic and parasympathetic:
When you are in a situation you find threatening, your stress response is activated. The way you respond depends on how seriously you view the threat, and the response is controlled by two parts of your nervous system: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the fight or flight response. It gives you the energy you need to confront the threat or run away from it.
In order to do this, the sympathetic nervous system produces these physiological responses:
Blood is diverted to working muscles to provide more oxygen. There is an increase in heart rate, breathing rate, heat production causing you to sweat, increased adrenaline production and increased muscle tension
Once the stress has passed, the parasympathetic nervous system begins to work. The parasympathetic system helps you to relax. It achieves this by producing the following responses:
Makes your muscles relax, decreases body temperature, decreases heart rate and decreases breathing rate.
Cognitive stress and anxiety:
Cognitive stress and anxiety can cause changes in the mind and as stress and anxiety levels increase performance could increase or decrease.
These are things such as fear- If you suffer from anxiety, you may fear a wide variety of outside circumstances; fear that you aren't good enough, fear of something happening to your family, fear that you'll be abandoned. For example in a sporting situation, you may not feel good enough to play a certain position or in a certain team this could lead to performance drop.
Negative thoughts and negative self-talk - Negative thoughts can be helpful at times, to allow you to sense danger and understand how to protect yourself. But negative thoughts that keep you down make you feel self-destructive or depressed can cause you to feel even more anxiety and distress.
This is bad for sports performers as they will be depressed and feel like their performing bad at the minute causing a fear of failure or a pressure to succeed which is unhealthy and causes performance thresholds.
Somatic stress and anxiety:
Somatic stress and anxiety are types of stress which affect your body.
Examples of somatic anxiety are:
Muscle tension - Muscle tension can affect chronically the gastrocnemius muscle which is located in the back of the lower leg. This is because of the increases in tension due to the body’s negative response to stress.
People under stress sometimes seek massage therapy in order to help them relax.
Another example of somatic anxiety is gastrointestinal Somatic anxiety the brain has been linked to the gastrointestinal tract in experiments that indicate that anxiety and gastrointestinal distress seem to share common biological causes and effects.
A good example of this is Rory McIlroy who before a big major or an open fells very stressed and anxious.
When stressed and anxious before big events and during these events McIlroy’s body responds to pressure as he increases his heart rate, increases his adrenaline levels, increase his breathing rate(minute ventilation) and an increase in muscle tense.
So when hitting the ball you can notice that McIlroy’s hands are shaking and he can’t focus on the ball as much due to the pressure and stress.
Behavioural stress and anxiety:
This theory shows how stress and anxiety can cause you to behave differently often unusually
Examples of behavioural anxiety are:
Sleeping Disturbances- A sports performer with an anxiety disorder can experience a sleeping problem that occurs from the constant worry, and the performer’s inability to control what she worries about. The performer may get a full night of sleep but will not feel well-rested; during sleep, the performer is restless, affecting the quality of sleep. As a result, the patient can feel fatigued during the day.
A good sports example of a performer who has experienced behavioural effects due to stress and anxiety is Eric Cantona.
Cantona is a football player who is now famous for having a bad temper and having bad behavioural stress and anxiety. On 25 January 1995 he was involved in an incident that attracted headlines and controversy worldwide. In an away match against Crystal Palace, Cantona was sent off by the referee for a kick on Palace defender Richard Shaw after Shaw had pulled his shirt. As he was walking towards the tunnel, Cantona launched a 'kung-fu' style kick into the crowd, directed at Crystal Palace fan Matthew Simmons. Simmons was alleged to have used the words "F**k off back to France, you French motherf***r"-(Wikipedia.)
Cantona was then arrested and convicted for assault, resulting in a two-week prison sentence.On top of that Manchester United fined Cantona £20,000 and suspended him for eight months of the 1994–95 season, which ruled him out of first-team action .
Effects on sports performance:
The definition of anxiety suggests that it is a negative mental state characterised by worry and apprehension. It is suggested that if this negative mental state becomes too great (i.e. you worry too much), your performance will suffer.
Constantly worrying about an event can make you think that you are not good enough to succeed (decreased self-confidence). This can make you feel like you are less likely to win (decreased expectations of success).
Heightened cognitive anxiety means there is an increase in nervousness, apprehension or worry.
One of the things athletes worry about is failing.
The problem with this is that once you start to worry about it, you are focusing on it. This increases the likelihood of it happening, i.e. if you worry about losing, you are more likely to lose. Heightened fear of failure could result in negative physiological responses like hyper-elevated muscle tension and lack of movement coordination, which will also negatively affect performance.
A good example of this is Fernando Torres former Chelsea player and current A.C Milan player.
Fernando Torres was a good example as he was always worried and always pressured to succeed but shortly failed to do so.
In football matches Torres didn’t perform to his fulfilment and so he wasn’t “value for money” as he cost Chelsea a record £50 m.
This shows that Torres was pressured and was anxious as he knew that he was underperforming for Chelsea after successful previous seasons playing for Liverpool and for his country (Spain) sand winning both the 2008 UEFA European championship and the 2010 World Cup.
After Torres had his knee surgery and moving to Chelsea his football wasn’t the same and he knew it.This also meant that when performing he was overthinking and he was anxious when he had the ball. Because of his anxiety and fear of failure and possibly fear of having a knee injury again he didn’t play his best football and failed to put the ball in the net as easily.
After this new players started to appear in Chelsea football club and they were performing better than Torres which meant that he was ruled out of starting line-up squad and was eventually forced to make a move to A.C Milan.