PERFORMANCE ANXIETY<\/p>\n
Observers emphasised that raising awareness, providing education and implementing resilience programmes are crucial.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin the sport psychology team, we run workshops, we do individual consults,\u201d said Dr Harry Lim, a senior sports psychologist from Sport Singapore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, for instance, (we are) running mental health literacy workshops for athletes (and also) coaches. Because they are an important part of this environment, and they can also do their part to help support our athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both experts and athletes identified performance anxiety \u2014 driven by internal and external pressures \u2014 as the most common psychological challenge.<\/p>\n
Even for some of Singapore\u2019s most successful athletes, the weight of expectations can be overwhelming \u2014 at times leading to sleepless nights.<\/p>\n
Former national swimmer Tao Li said that while athletes may put in a great deal of effort, they might not perform at their best on the day of competition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet some people tend to take that single moment and blow it out of proportion, she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of pressure, if you’re not able to withstand it, you might fall into severe depression,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Singapore pistol shooter Teh Xiu Hong narrowly missed out on the finals at the Paris Olympics last year by just two points.<\/p>\n
She struggled to focus afterwards, but having the right mental support made all the difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving a support group is really very important, because that is really what got me through the dark times for the most part of 2024,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf not for them, I don’t think I’ll be able to recover so fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teh said it was important to have another perspective, as athletes can often get stuck in a single mindset which can become very negative. She shared that talking to others helped her shift that perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will always want to perform at major competitions, so that\u2019s definitely one of the biggest stressors,\u201d said Teh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing is we do not have full control of the results. Sometimes we can do our best but our best may not be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PERFORMANCE ANXIETY Observers emphasised that raising awareness, providing education and implementing resilience programmes are crucial. \u201cWithin the sport…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,119252,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-332437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-national-athletes","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115002995051450182","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}