Tag Archive for 'Serena Williams'

The depression is suffering Serena Williams joins the one who had many other sport stars including Lindsey Vonn, Ian Thorpe, Gianluigi Buffon. Two aspects must be taken into great consideration when we talk about depression in sport. The first, the neurosis and psychopathology produced by unstable behaviors are unusual among elite athletes, because the sport is already a sort of vaccine against this type of event. Having learned to live very intense emotional situations and sometimes extreme, and their recurrence continuously over the years with positive outcomes, allowed the athletes to develop high level of self-esteem. Next to this the positive side derived from continuous competitive stress and by the discovery of a positive way to cope with, there is another aspect that it may in fact increase the risk of depression, corresponding to the choice of making their lives depend on the achievement of sport successes. So in case of failure, to be questioned is the value as a person. A failure that it can lead to a very severe depression and in extreme cases at the suicide. It’s no coincidence that Serena Williams had already previously suffered from depression when she had to stop playing, because of two health problems. In one case, she cut her foot on a broken glass, undergoing two surgeries and so she described her state of mind at that time: “Especially when I had the second surgery (on my foot), I was definitely depressed. I cried all the time. I was miserable to be around.” In 2011, she also developed a lung problem and she was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the lungs). She then underwent surgery for a large hematoma in her stomach. When she returned theathy she said she did not know what to expect, she did not want to be in a hurry and she hoped she would return to play as she knew. Losing to Roberta Vinci, after a year of triumph, it was the stimulus that it has again subjected to this painful condition. If she won the US Open she would become the first tennis player after almost 30 years to win the Grand Slam again, results previously achieved only by three other tennis players. Serena Williams has brought this boulder of expectations for the duration of the US Open, then she did not do most upright and she collapsed. She kept saying “I do not feel the pressure,” like a mantra that it can erase the truth whereas this mental approach has allowed only to delay her drama. It would do better to accept the fear of not being able to win despite being currently the most good. It’s not easy to think in this way, when the world thinks that you have to win and it does not consider any other outcome. In those moments, you do not have escape routes because others push you with enthusiasm towards the abyss; the only alternative would have been born of her own: to accept that losing was a possible solution, and that it could happen. If you live in the belief that you cannot lose, you must always correspond to the expectations of others and the demands of her enormous ego, whereas the defeat comes, she does not have tools to understand how this event could have happened, and this generates depression for not having been able to deal with the situation successfully. Depression starts at that time to despise herself. I hope Serena Williams relies on a skilled psychotherapist to help her to understand and better confront herself