Calgary Herald

FLAMES WORKING THROUGH ‘GROUNDHOG DAY OF GRIEF’

Athletes may be feeling blue right now because of what they’ve lost

- WES GILBERTSON wgilbertso­n@postmedia.com Twitter.com/wesgilbert­son

This conversati­on starts, like they almost all do, with the standard exchange of Hellos and How-are-yous?

“I’m pretty good,” Matt Brown replies. “And I keep telling people, ‘Pretty good is the new great.’”

That’s an uplifting assessment, especially when you consider the source — Brown is one of Calgary ’s leading sports psychologi­sts as mental performanc­e coach for the NHL’S Flames.

As Mental Health Week wraps up, it has been nearly two months since the Flames last hit the ice at the Saddledome, with the NHL pushing pause on March 12 due to the COVID-19 health crisis.

Around that time, many companies ordered employees to work from home. Schools and university campuses were closed soon after, switching to online learning.

Whether you’re an elite-level athlete or an average joe, you’ve likely been dealing with many of the same feelings during this worldwide pandemic.

Sadness. Frustratio­n. Boredom. Fatigue.

“I think probably the most universal theme is that everyone, almost every day, goes through some sort of low-grade grief, and the reason is just that the emotion of sadness is always in response to loss,” Brown explained. “If you look at our Flames players, for instance, the two things that they love the most are playing hockey and being together. So both those things are taken away. Every day that you wake up, it’s another day that you’ve lost those things, so it’s a bit of a Groundhog Day of grief right now.

“As a result, what sadness does is it causes a drop-off in energy. And it’s by design. When we lose a loved one, for instance, our brain takes away our energy, slows everything down and makes it impossible to think about anything other than what we’ve lost, and it does that so we can process loss, so we can wrap our head around it. But that happens every day right now. So what people find unnerving is that you get high-functionin­g, very motivated people that suddenly have no energy. They know what they want to be doing. The conditions aren’t great to train, but they know they should. So they’re trying to stay focused on those things. But again, that grief response, it disrupts our focus. It puts our sights on what’s been taken away. So people find themselves less productive.

“There are all these posts and things with people saying, ‘Well, you’ve been given a gift of time — you should have learned a new language by the end of this, or a new skill,’” Brown continued, chuckling at that idea. “People may have time, but they don’t have energy. So the day will end and they weren’t that productive and they were distracted and then they start to shame themselves for accomplish­ing less than they think would be their normal. That’s sort of the gopher hole that everyone is stuck in right now.

“If you start a conversati­on with an athlete with, ‘Are you feeling sad?’ Well, the response will be, ‘Browny, c’mon!’ But if you ask ‘How has your energy been?’ Right away, it’s, ‘Low. Every day, low. Some days, less low, but always pretty low.’ That’s the indicator — people just dealing with this sadness piece.”

Frank van den Berg has been having similar conversati­ons.

As the mental performanc­e lead for the Canadian Sport Institute Calgary, he works with a lot of athletes who were priming to peak at Tokyo 2020. Both the Olympic and Paralympic competitio­ns have been postponed to 2021.

“Some report a little bit of, ‘You know, I’m doing well generally, but sometimes I have these days that I don’t feel it, don’t have the motivation, don’t know what I’m going to do, don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing,’” van den Berg said. “This is all very normal, because there is just so much uncertaint­y right now. How long is this going to last? What is going to happen next? What happens to our sport and training and competitio­n? All these questions are running through all the time.”

There are, in these strange and unsettling times, more questions than answers.

As Brown pointed out, COVID -19 has people constantly thinking about the health and well-being of family and friends, about the economy, about what their ‘new normal’ might look like.

“There’s just this perpetual stressor, so what we call our sympatheti­c nervous system is switched on all the time,” said Brown, who also works as a sports psychologi­st consultant at Edge School. “Basically, if I go out in the woods and I see a bear, my sympatheti­c nervous system — in response to that stress — is going to switch on. So it’ll make me just very focused on the bear and it will cause a physiologi­cal response so that my energy goes up in order to respond to that. But then when I get safely away from the bear and it walks off into the woods and the stressor is gone, then my system kind of comes back down.

“But the stressor we’re all faced with right now, it doesn’t walk back into the woods. It’s just there all the time. So we have this peaked sympatheti­c nervous system or stress response that doesn’t ever fully shut off, so now we’re seeing significan­t disruption in people’s sleep. So people that were really good sleepers, all of a sudden they’re like, ‘Why can’t I fall asleep or why can’t I stay asleep?’ And then you have others saying, ‘Well, I’m sleeping 12-14 hours a night, and still waking up tired,’ which takes us back to that grief response. Over-sleeping is a common thing when people are grieving.

“That’s why I say, if you’re doing pretty well right now, that’s great.”

The Flames, anxious to help Calgarians cope, launched the United by Community site, an online resource centre that features everything from at-home workouts to kids’ activities, messages from the stars and links to mental-health supports.

You can make fresh-squeezed orange juice — via video — with Milan Lucic and his family or find a list of charities and organizati­ons that you might be able to access or aid.

The Flames Foundation announced Friday another $265,000 in funding to its COVID-19 Community Support Program, boosting the total to $1.38 million. Included in the latest donation is $100,000 earmarked for the Calgary Health Trust for the purchase of ipads to accommodat­e virtual visits for hospitals and seniors homes.

“We see ourselves as leaders in the community,” said Candice Goudie, executive director of the Calgary Flames Foundation. “We have a broad number of stakeholde­rs and fans and people who engage with us, and I think that when something bad happens like this or our community is in need, that we feel a real role in contributi­ng to a significan­t improvemen­t. Whether that’s through trying to help on the front lines, whether that’s through our $1.38 million in COVID-19 Community Support Program donations or whether that’s through the creation of United by Community and the content that lives on there, we feel an inherent need to ensure that we’re improving the lives of Calgarians.”

Olympians, too, are trying to lead by example.

Through the ‘We Are All Team Canada’ campaign, they’ve been encouragin­g everyone to do their part to stop the spread of the deadly virus that has put their gold-medal pursuits on hold.

“Athletes, obviously they feel — and this is normal — that sport is the most important thing in their lives,” said van den Berg, who is participat­ing in a mental-health task force created by the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic committees, Own the Podium and other major sports organizati­ons. “But under these circumstan­ces, everyone realizes that it’s not the most important thing at the moment, and that is a bit of a shift from their normal mindset or their normal engagement, really. Everyone understand­s that everyone has to contribute to get through this crisis, and everyone needs to take part. Therefore, some of the messaging has been, ‘Maybe park your identity as an athlete for a little while as you’re taking care of yourself, your family and friends and the community. And maybe emphasize your role as a citizen much more now than ever before.’

“You know, usually athletes are role models for the community or citizens, but now you’re part of it.”

While you may never score a goal at the Saddledome or stand atop an Olympic podium, this is one experience we all share.

Sunshine helps.

Exercise can provide a boost. As Brown put it, “lower the bar a little bit” so you don’t feel like a failure as you measure your productivi­ty against what you might be accustomed to getting done in a day.

“The first part is just to respect the fact that those emotions you’re feeling, they’re not you coming apart. They’re you having what is a really natural response to a global pandemic,” Brown said. “That’s a big deal, so of course there’s going to be an emotional reaction to it. And once you give yourself permission to feel it, it loses its power over you.” Van den Berg echoed that. “There is a lot of concern and anxiety and uncertaint­y happening throughout,” he said. “That’s important to realize and acknowledg­e, and therefore we do not have to necessaril­y be the victim of this experience. We can manage these types of feelings and experience­s, and that’s something really important to stress at the moment. We’re talking about, ‘How do you take care of yourself? What’s the psychologi­cal hygiene that you’re making part of your daily routine?’

“It’s really important to acknowledg­e that we do have those feelings and that they are very normal, albeit in a very abnormal situation.”

Everyone understand­s that everyone has to contribute to get through this crisis, and everyone needs to take part.

 ?? USA TODAY ?? The team’s mental performanc­e coach says the two of the things the Calgary Flames players love the most is playing hockey and being together, both of which are currently impossible because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has put the NHL season on hold.
USA TODAY The team’s mental performanc­e coach says the two of the things the Calgary Flames players love the most is playing hockey and being together, both of which are currently impossible because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has put the NHL season on hold.
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