The Toll of Emotional Abuse

Feburary 15th, 2023

Written by: Anonymous, (She/Her)

*The coach’s name has been replaced with the pseudonym “John”.

I am sharing my story to be another voice bringing light to the hidden abuses prevalent in athletics. There is an understanding that certain actions by coaches such as sexual assault cross a threshold and should result in bans from coaching. What is more prevalent but less likely to be addressed, however, are repeated and persistent abuses of power and emotional mistreatment. When these actions are carried out over time, they create an unsafe environment for athletes that can lead to serious harm and lasting damage.

My story begins when I was a high school runner dreaming of running professionally. One coach, John*, reached out and recruited me aggressively to his Division 1 school. He pitched a fairy-tale story of how my dreams would come true and how I needed him to help me achieve them. He spoke to me on the phone for hours and asked questions to really get to know me on a deep, personal level, demonstrating how much he wanted me on his team. He warned of how other coaches have their own best interests in mind and would do things like push their athletes through injuries. He convinced both my parents and me that he was trustworthy and would take care of me.

Most of my teammates attended our school solely to compete for John. They had been sold the same story I was. They, too, wanted to feel important, valued, and cared for as they trained to reach their highest goals. What initially started as athletes wanting to perform well for their coach quickly unraveled to reveal an unhealthy power dynamic that put athletes in a position to be controlled, manipulated, and abused. Most of my teammates craved approval and acceptance from John. My teammates and I joked that getting texts from John was like getting a text from a significant other. John was known for having long, 4+ hour meetings with individual athletes, and it felt like you were being rewarded when he selected you to meet with him. Other times, he would schedule a meeting and just not show up, leaving athletes waiting up to an hour without notice. I felt hurt and confused by how he would switch from being fully invested in me to being completely indifferent. Despite this, I still desperately wanted his approval. To this day, I am not exactly sure why. In some ways, it felt like an addiction.

One of the ways John gained power was by dividing the team against each other. I was considered one of John’s “favorites” for a while. With that favoritism came gossip about my teammates. In my individual meetings, he would share details about others on the team. At then start, his trust in me through the information he divulged made me trust him more. He encouraged me to be vulnerable and open up to him. In an attempt to seek his approval, I obliged. He told me he thought it was only a matter of time before my teammate quit the team and asked me to guess how long I thought she would last. Another time, he remarked to me that a fellow teammate was particularly easy to control and that the wrong coach could really do some harm to her. This type of talk about teammates behind their backs was common. I questioned what was being said about me behind my back. My teammates and I existed in a paranoid state, always feeling as though we were being watched and questioning the lengths to which John would go to know what we were doing in our training and personal lives. It devolved to a point where I felt like all aspects of my life were subject to control and scrutiny by John.

The desperate need for approval from John and the power he held over us were what made the team dynamic unhealthy and harmful. After gaining your trust, he would tell you the ways in which you were inadequate and tear you down, often using your vulnerabilities against you. I remember breaking down and sobbing in public during a meeting with him, an occurrence that was not nearly as uncommon as it should have been for athletes on the team. Our team was structured in a way that kept us dependent on John. We had to wait for individual texts from him to know our training for the day and frequently practiced on our own, further isolating us from each other. He played mind games that left us questioning ourselves and made subtle remarks to flex his power over us. To this day, I still receive the occasional “accidental” text from him, something I am glad to say no longer affects me as it once did. On their own, each instance of control and incitement of fear seemed benign but taken together they resulted in real harm.

As time progressed, my situation got worse. I struggled with injury and began to develop body image issues. John required us all to have our body fat percentages measured and meet with a nutritionist who encouraged many of us to lose weight. He endorsed restrictive diets and told me “some would say that 5 pounds equates to 30 seconds in a 5k” as if putting the statement on someone else somehow made it okay. John discussed with me the idea that maybe I was developing stress reactions due to excess body weight putting additional strain on my bones. I was miserable but afraid of saying the “wrong thing” and getting caught by John. I cried on the plane rides back to school from breaks. I wanted so badly to escape but felt trapped and bound to the program. I feared that no other coaches would want me and that I would have to sacrifice my scholarship and eligibility if I left. I told myself that I just had to make it through the next few years at the school, then I could be happy again. It was when I realized I no longer loved the thing I once loved the most, running, that I finally reached a breaking point and discovered the courage to begin considering a transfer. I was terrified of what would happen to me if anyone found out what I was considering and felt I had to communicate about it in secret.

When I did transfer, I badly wanted to just leave my time on John’s team in the past and move on with my life. Trauma is a strange thing, however, and your body tends to try to protect itself once it has experienced something harmful. Years after I transferred, I experienced a situation that began to resemble elements of what I had experienced while I was running for John. I felt panicked, exposed, out of control, and lost. Nothing made sense to me anymore and I spent countless hours, the majority of each day, just alone in my thoughts trying to find some comprehension of the world around me. I felt like I didn’t know who I was and was questioning my own reality. Even simple, basic concepts about how I experienced the world confused me. If you no longer trust your own perceptions and intuitions, what can you trust? How do you try to fix yourself if you don’t even recognize who you are? It was an extreme state of disorientation and I felt like everything I thought I knew about myself was a lie.

I didn’t sleep much as I was so wrapped up in a world I couldn’t escape. I had recurring, violent nightmares where I was attacked and killed. I couldn’t journal because writing down the thoughts in my head felt way too threatening. At no point during that time frame did I ever feel safe or at ease. I felt like I was under constant threat. Although it wasn’t logical, I truly felt afraid for my life. I was both terrified of being harmed by others and of people finding out the truth about me- that I was a bad person who deserved all the pain and suffering I was experiencing. I was physically shaking from anxiety daily. I felt disconnected from everyone around me and struggled to have simple conversations. I lost a significant amount of weight as I just didn’t want to eat anymore. I began self-harming as a way to deal with the intense emotions and pain I was feeling. As an athlete, I know how to handle physical pain, but I could not figure out how to escape the suffocating mental pain I was experiencing. I knew something was wrong but I had no idea how to get help as my previous attempts to reach out to people I had trusted left me feeling more ashamed and isolated. I couldn’t tell if I was fucked up or if the world was fucked up, but either way I really didn’t want any part of it anymore. I called the suicide hotline a few times and began meeting with a psychologist. It took me a long time to develop trust and believe that I could be understood and helped, but that connection was the first step in starting to heal. I also began working with a female coach who was supportive and helped me begin to feel comfortable at practices again. Over the course of a long couple of years and countless meetings, diagnoses, and medications, I finally began to gain stability and control of my life back.

For the longest time, I believed that I was a broken individual and if I had just been more resilient or more adaptable or more perfect, everything would have been fine. I now know that it was not just me and have come to accept that I was harmed by a system that hurt many others like me. One former staff member of the school’s athletic department noted that he regretted not reporting John and knew what John was doing was wrong but didn’t know what to say. When I transferred, a number of old teammates who also quit the team or transferred reached out to me. We never really knew what to say to each other, but in each case, there was a mutual understanding of each other’s experiences. It broke my heart to see my friends hurt by the same system that broke me and that my teammates suffered in similar ways as I did. Every time I hear about other athletes suffering from abuse and mistreatment in athletics, I want to take their stories and shake them in the face of the world. “Look at the effects of these broken systems! Look at how badly these athletes are hurting! I can’t take away their pain. It has been years and I still can’t even take away my own pain. This is so not okay!” Their stories aren’t mine to tell, but they do remind me that I am not alone.

For most of my life, I identified as someone who is confident and self-reliant, so I never expected to feel controlled and desperate for external approval. I have learned the importance of having balance in my life and advocating for myself, but I also have become aware of the deeper issues that are widespread in athletics. Just as I have resonated with the stories other athletes have shared, I know there are others out there who will see themselves in these words. To those who read this and have the level of understanding that can only come from having experienced something similar, I am sorry. I hear you, I see you, and you are not alone. Together through education and awareness, I am hopeful that sports become safer for all and fewer athletes will find themselves in these types of situations.

Below I have listed some advice I have for both coaches and athletes based on my experience in athletics.

Advice for coaches:

Your first and foremost job as a coach should be to ensure a safe team environment for all.
Recognize the power you hold and the impact of your words.
Care about your athletes as people first and athletes second. Healthy, happy athletes will compete the best and for the longest.
Treat all athletes equally, regardless of talent. Do not show favoritism.
Check in on your athletes in crisis. Listen, don’t judge or pry, and refer them to resources if necessary.
Do not make comments about an athlete’s weight. Athletes often feel pressure from themselves, their sport, and society to be lighter and thinner already. Amplifying that pressure risks a lifetime of an unhealthy relationship with food for the potential of short-term gains in performance. Everyone’s body is different and encouraging your athletes to try to fit a mold causes more harm than good. Encourage a healthy approach to fueling for performance instead.
Educate yourself about the signs of abuse and mistreatment by coaches.
Hire more female and LGBTQIA2S+ coaches and encourage athletes who identify as such to pursue coaching.

Advice for athletes:

Take care of yourself. You will have your body for the rest of your life, treat it well. You are the person you spend the most time with, so instead of being critical, speak to yourself the way you would speak to a friend. Working harder and pushing yourself further isn’t always the answer.
If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Don’t be afraid to speak up and use your voice. Advocate for yourself and remember you are not alone.
Compete for yourself first, not your coach. Stay true to yourself and surround yourself with people who care about you and help bring out the best in you.
Watch out for your teammates. Provide support, help advocate for them, and direct them to resources if you witness mistreatment/abuse of any kind.
Don’t go to the coach who appears to want you the most. Go to the team that is the best fit for you overall.
Don’t be afraid to transfer if you realize that a school isn’t the right fit for you.
Educate yourself about the signs of abuse and mistreatment by coaches.
You are more than just an athlete of your sport. Remember who you are and why you do what you do.