AASP Newsletter - March 2022

Nicole Linen is a clinical and sport psychologist in private practice. She schooled at Wright State University’s School of Professional Psychology and has been practicing since 2016. Originally from El Paso, Texas, Nicole played basketball through college. 

What gives you the juice when it comes to working with athletes and high performance?”

I find it cool how the way I think about things and am trained to think about things tends to differ from most people. I remember a conversation with an athlete, we were talking about how some things he had experienced in his childhood are impacting how he is behaving now. He had never thought about it that way. It is always nice to see when something clicks with somebody and they can use that to be better versions of themselves.

What are some of the concepts or ideas that athletes seem to instantly gravitate towards?

What I hear myself saying a lot is that “You talk to yourself more than you talk to anyone else.” That often leads into the conversation of self-talk. Most people understand to generally say nice things and be positive; but what I am trying to steer them toward is not to just be more positive but be more accurate in the assessment of their performance or the experience that they are having. If I can help them even challenge the unhelpful thoughts, even a little bit, it helps them be more accurate in the way that they talk to themselves, or about themselves, and then that helps their performance.

Is there a go-to analogy or story that you always tell?

If we are sitting down having lunch and I say to you, “Wow, you chew funny,” the next time you pick up your fork and take a bite, you are going to be thinking about how you chew. I didn’t say I don’t like the way you chew; I didn’t say the way you chew was bad; I just made an observation about how you chew and now you’re thinking about it. And you are probably going to change the way you chew because someone has pointed it out. I use that when I am asking players to do a training journal and to just notice the things they are doing in practice that could maybe use a little tweaking. I am not asking them to change anything, I just want them to notice it. That simply can be an intervention because now they are paying attention and thus more likely to change something. 

Having worked with the Denver Broncos as their Behavior Health Specialist, what is one mental skill that a practitioner can offer an NFL player? 

How to solicit useful feedback from the coaches. That’s teaching them how to be coachable, but in a broader perspective, it’s teaching them how to initiate communication about what the expectations for them are, and if they are unclear about certain things, how to be clear, how to get that feedback. Some coaches might have never been explicitly taught how give useful feedback. I am teaching our players to ask, “If you aren’t getting the instruction you need, how can you get your needs met by taking initiative? How can we learn to be better communicators so that we can all reach the goal together?”

Any new specific lessons you’ve learned this past year?

Focus on the things that matter, both personally and professionally. We’re all human and we are all just doing the best we can with what we have; so, really focusing on humanity first. I don’t know if I learned that this year or just more fully realized it. More people are paying attention to mental health and the ability to be their best selves. Also, the added layer of working with professional athletes. They are still human beings. And so, learning how to put humanity first in the context of a global pandemic, and social unrest, and economic downturn, and all of these things that we’ve all been dealing with, they are still expected to perform.

Specific to NFL football, what are some prominent psychological nuances that those athletes must cope with that you don’t usually see in other contexts?

We can’t pretend that we aren’t in the social political moment, and a lot of the players are Black men or men of color. So, there is an added layer of dealing with social unrest and wanting to maybe be vocal or active, but also being afraid that your organization might not support you. And I am thinking of the NFL more broadly, not our specific organization. Players might have plenty of thoughts and feelings about what’s going on and they want to say something, and maybe if they weren’t a football player, they’d be on the front lines, but they can’t. Maybe they want to take a knee, but they are afraid of the repercussions. They are under a microscope but are still the same people as the average person, but with probably more constraints. The average person can go on Twitter and say whatever they want; but if you are the star player on your team, you probably can’t, or if you do, there will probably be consequences.

If a player gets into a heated debate, people might actively tell them that they don’t deserve to be heard, to “Shut up and play." “I don’t care about what you have to say” dehumanizes them every step of the way. Most people don’t go through that. It is like telling these athletes that they should just be grateful that you get to do this, and you owe this to the sport to fall in line. At what point are they allowed to be humans again?

Thank you for sharing, Nicole.