{"id":4490,"date":"2016-01-04T18:27:17","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T18:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=4490"},"modified":"2016-01-04T18:27:17","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T18:27:17","slug":"for-pro-athletes-on-the-cusp-of-retirement-what-psychological-challenges-lie-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/for-pro-athletes-on-the-cusp-of-retirement-what-psychological-challenges-lie-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"For pro athletes on the cusp of retirement, what psychological challenges lie ahead?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maria Doelger Anderson<\/a>, Boston University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the biggest names in professional sports are facing retirement. David Ortiz and Kobe Bryant recently announced that they\u2019ll be calling it quits in 2016. Meanwhile, Tiger Woods is openly talking about the possibility of retiring from professional golf if his surgically repaired back does not heal. Peyton Manning, sidelined after suffering a debilitating foot injury, has fans and sportswriters wondering if this season could be his last.<\/p>\n

All of us must eventually confront the end of our careers; for professional athletes, the end comes at a younger age, often under intense media scrutiny.<\/p>\n

So how does an athlete make a successful transition? It\u2019s a question I sought to answer in my study<\/a>, which examined the ways former professional baseball and football players successfully \u2013 or unsuccessfully \u2013 navigated the challenges of retirement.<\/p>\n

Nothing like that rush<\/h2>\n

The financial and physical woes of former athletes are well-documented. There have been studies<\/a> on why former professional athletes seem particularly vulnerable to money problems (many are the victims of poor financial advice or unscrupulous business partners). And because professional athletes often forego higher education, many will enter the workforce late, with few relevant business skills.<\/p>\n

Then, of course, there are post-retirement physical ailments \u2013 particularly the scourge of brain injury, with repeated concussions being linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy<\/a> (CTE), depression and suicide. But even less-violent sports can bring physical ailments accumulated over decades of playing that can severely hinder a player\u2019s quality of life in retirement, whether it\u2019s bad knees that prevent them from chasing after their children or chronic pain that can lead to prescription drug abuse.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s missing from the retirement discussion is a different sort of loss, one that\u2019s more psychological than physical or financial.<\/p>\n

Despite the millions of dollars many have earned, despite the grueling (sometimes painful) nature of training, despite travel demands that suck time away from friends and family, many professional athletes find it nearly impossible to walk away.<\/p>\n

After NFL wide receiver Wes Welker suffered a series of concussions, a chorus of former teammates<\/a> and journalists<\/a> pleaded with him to retire.<\/p>\n

He refused.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure I\u2019ll find other things to keep me busy,\u201d Welker told ESPN<\/a> last year. \u201cBut\u2026there\u2019s nothing like that competitiveness. That feeling and that rush \u2013 you can\u2019t really get it anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly something less tangible than health or money is at play.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Wide Receiver Wes Welker (83) is tackled during the 2013 AFC Championship Game.<\/span>
\n USA Today Sports\/Reuters<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Letting go<\/h2>\n

Psychologist Daniel Levinson analyzed the development<\/a> of adult men, finding that many, as boys, had dreamed of becoming professional athletes. The few that did succeed had invested decades of their lives to their sport. Sports were so integral to their sense of self that they found it hard to envision themselves doing anything other than regularly training and competing; their sport became inextricable from their identity.<\/p>\n

For this reason, letting go can be devastating.<\/p>\n

In a 2009 New York Times op-ed, former professional baseball player Doug Glanville recalled<\/a> a mentor telling him to fight retirement: \u201cNever give the uniform back,\u201d the mentor urged. \u201cLet them rip if off your body. Once you give it back\u2026it will never be the same and neither will you.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even the careers of the most successful athletes eventually come to an end. Aware of these very real challenges, I decided to reach out to a number of former professional athletes for my study. I wanted to see which factors may have influenced the subjects’ ability to successfully make the transition into retirement.<\/p>\n

In surveys and interviews, I focused on the former athletes’ level of education, how long they played professionally, how they made the decision to retire (eg, forced out due to injury, cut from the roster or deciding on their own) and whether or not they were pressed for money upon retiring.<\/p>\n

Perhaps surprisingly, money didn\u2019t factor into the success of transition among my study population, even though most weren\u2019t top earners in their sport.<\/p>\n

What many former players in the study did<\/em> value was feeling important and wanted, whether it was as a husband or father, pastor, commentator, corporate employee or charity volunteer. They expressed a need to \u201cbe somebody\u201d; they wanted to \u201cmatter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The men who made the transition into life after sports most easily didn\u2019t abandon their former identities as athletes, but they also didn\u2019t cling to them too fiercely. While they cherished their athletic careers, they sought new meaningful experiences, which worked to help them forge new identities, ones that weren\u2019t so closely intertwined with playing professional sports.<\/p>\n

This is no easy task, especially after spending years on the playing field basking in attention and adulation. The prospect of toiling unappreciated, unrecognized and uncelebrated can seriously derail a smooth transition into retirement.<\/p>\n

As one former baseball player I interviewed put it, \u201cIt took me a while to be satisfied with my new identity as it took me a while to get comfortable with my life. You have to be ready to explain at a local bar what\u2019s going on after I was released and that people should no longer ask me about baseball. They don\u2019t know me as the baseball player anymore; now I am the financial planner.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York Mets outfielder Michael Cuddyer pondered the difficulties of retirement in a recent essay for The Players Tribune<\/a>. (\u201cIt goes against every grain in my body to consider a future without the game.\u201d) Still, he realized the importance of finding new purposes and passions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe beauty of family,\u201d he wrote, was \u201conce a distant idea.\u201d However with retirement looming, he found family becoming \u201can integral part of my identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watching Ortiz, Bryant and the scores of others who will fade from the spotlight this coming year should remind us how difficult it can be to craft a new identity and leave the old one behind.<\/p>\n

Those who have spent decades honing their professional skills don\u2019t necessarily walk away rich and famous. And each must negotiate leaving behind one professional identity in order to create a new one for the future.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Maria Doelger Anderson<\/a>, Senior Associate Dean, Boston University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maria Doelger Anderson, Boston University Some of the biggest names in professional sports are facing retirement. David Ortiz and Kobe Bryant recently announced that they\u2019ll be calling it quits in 2016. Meanwhile, Tiger Woods is openly talking about the possibility of retiring from professional golf if his surgically repaired back does not heal. Peyton Manning, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":4492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[279,42,36,6],"tags":[414,412,228,413,203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4491,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490\/revisions\/4491"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}