Developing Athletes’ Self-Compassion: The Role of the Coach

by Lori Gano-Overway, PhD, CMPC

Sport participation is filled with a variety of physical and emotional challenges requiring athletes to be resilient in the face of these challenges. To build this resilience and get through difficult situations, coaches can help athletes can engage in self-compassion. Self-compassion means stepping into one’s own suffering with nonjudgmental awareness (i.e., mindfulness) while recognizing suffering as a common human experience (i.e., common humanity) and employing self-kindness to move with and through the suffering (self-kindness; Neff & Germer, 2017).

Let’s consider an example of an athlete who made several critical errors in a big game which the team ends up losing.  The athlete could wallow in negative emotions, blame themselves, question their capabilities, and continually worry that their future mistakes will result in more losses for the team.  An athlete who engages in self-compassion would recognize and sit with their feelings of frustration, sadness, fear, and disappointment surrounding the critical errors (being mindful and nonjudgmental) yet would acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes and experiences these feelings (common humanity). The athlete would then remind themselves that they are a worthy member of the team and give themselves credit for the positive contribution made during the same game (self-kindness).  

Previous research examining athletes’ responses to emotionally difficult sport situations has revealed that athletes with higher levels of self-compassion report more positive reactions (i.e., having a positive outlook, not giving up, and taking responsibility to move forward) and fewer negative reactions (ruminating on the struggle, giving up, and being overly critical; Ferguson et al., 2015; Reis et al., 2019).  Given these findings, scholars have identified several ways that athletes can build self-compassion.  

What role can coaches play in developing and supporting athletes’ self-compassion?  Recent survey findings from 224 former high school athletes provides insight (Gano-Overway et al., 2022).  First, athletes who perceived that their coaches created a caring climate reported higher levels of self-compassion.  Second, when athletes were asked to recollect on how their coaches helped or hindered their self-compassion, they revealed many ways that coaches did or did not support their development of self-compassion. The table below outlines those strategies along with example quotes from athletes (place cursor on strategy and quote will appear). 

Ways Coaches Helped and Hindered Athletes’ Self-Compassion

Helped Self-Compassion Hindered Self-Compassion
Emotional Support: Cared for others and/or created a sense of comfort and security as part of the team
Being Present, Listening & Understanding Not Being Present or Mean-Spirited
Got to Know Me Ignored or Ostracized Me
Created a Welcoming, Accepting, & Friendly Environment Focused More on Games or Winning than Me as a Person
Demonstrated Concern for Mental Health Discounted Feelings & mental Health
Esteem support: Bolstered self-esteem and/or sense of competence and reinforced positive
Encouraged Me Critical of My Mistakes / Poor Performance
Engaged in Blaming Behavior
Belittled Me
Believed in Me or Boosted Confidence Undermined My Confidence
Engaged in Positive Reinforcement Used Punishment
Emboldened Me to Reach Potential Noted Disapproval
Informational support: Gave advice, constructive criticism, and guidance
Provided General Support Pointed Out My Flaws
Helped Me Learn from Failure & Mistakes Little Opportunity to Learn from Mistakes & Failure
Guided Me Toward Improvement Set Unreasonable Expectations
Instructed on Use Mental Strategies
Helped Me Gain Perspective on Struggles
Tangible support: Used concrete instrumental assistance to build self-compassion
Used Game Strategies Pushed Me Past Physical Limits

Ways Coaches Helped or Hindered Althetes’ Self-Compassion

Helped Self-Compassion Hindered Self-Compassion
Emotional Support: Cared for others and/or created a sense of comfort and security as part of the team
Being Present, Listening & Understanding I got injured a lot during my season of cross country and my coach would sit there with me while I was crying in frustration. Nor Being Present or Mean-Spirited My coach was pretty inconsiderate about how people felt and made people who had asthma or other conditions feel like they were lesser of an athlete.
Got to Know Me My coach always asked about my family and how school was going. He always made the effort to get to know you personally. Ignored of Ostracized Me When he would congratulate everyone for time drops when I didn’t drop time, I would feel embarrassed and excluded from the praise.
Created a Welcoming, Accepting, & Friendly Environment My coach cared about the team a lot, so we had a lot of sit-down talks, team bonding activities, and practiced kindness with our teammates. Focused More on Games or Winning than Me as a Person My coach did not care about us as people, but instead looked at us as players who could make her a winning coach.
Demonstrated Concern for Mental Health My coaches were always understanding and as much as they wanted us to strive in the team and on the field, they took time to assess our mental state too. Discounted Feelings & Mental Health When I was down low about things that weren’t that important but were to me, she always made me feel lesser for having those feelings and made me feel invalid.
Esteem support: Bolstered self-esteem and/or sense of competence and reinforced positive
Encouraged Me She always was encouraging and told me that no one is perfect, and not to be hard on yourself. Critical of My Mistakes or Poor Performance  My coach tended to ignore anyone who did something wrong, and openly showed his frustration when a player messed up.
Engaged in Blaming Behavior She made my self-comparison worse by blaming specific plays on me instead of encouraging the team as a whole to do better.
Belittled Me My coach had the tendency to make my self-compassion go down a lot by yelling at me in front of everyone and making me feel as if I wasn’t good enough to even be on the team.
Believed in Me or Boosted My Confidence My coach was very encouraging, and instead of yelling at us, he was very positive, which was helpful, because it felt like he believed in us, even when we didn’t believe in ourselves.  Undermined My Confidence My coach was overly complimentary of me, but it only fueled my doubts as I couldn’t take compliments as real when they sometimes didn’t feel deserved. I think I would have had more self-compassion if I had only heard praise when deserved and had received more ‘tough love’.
Engaged in Positive Reinforcement My coach was a very compassionate man who wanted the best for his athletes. He would praise and complement us for things that weren’t even all that impressive in retrospect. Used Punishment At one point of our cheer season, my coaches scared me by almost kicking me off the team due to serious pain I couldn’t control.
Emboldened Me to Reach Potential My coaches were very strict yet compassionate. They saw me and my teammates as what we could become. This boosted my self-compassion because I was able to realize my self-worth and my full potential as an athlete. He was very shallow, never encouraged anyone, and was always shaking his head.
Informational support: Gave advice, constructive criticism, and guidance
Provided General Support My coaches were all always supportive of us on both our best and workdays and treated all athletes (regardless of skill level) the same. Pointed Out My Flaws Sometimes she could be over harsh after we lost or hadn’t been doing well and would point out lists of flaws and mistakes.
Helped Me Learn from Failure & Mistakes My coach always focused on how to take our flaws and learn and grow from them. There was a strong emphasis on growing as individuals, but more importantly, as a team. Did Not Provide Opportunity to Learn from Mistakes / Failure Our head coach was also very nice and always caring, telling us that one mistake didn’t define us, but his actions of sitting us and not giving us another chance to prove ourselves was very contradictory of what he was preaching, and definitely made me feel worse when I made a mistake despite what he was saying to us.
Guided Me Toward Improvement Part of being a coach is being able to notice when an athlete is not doing something well. If there is something that can be improved, they will never hesitate to point it out and make it apparent to the athlete. At the end of the day, coaches want athletes to be the best versions of themselves possible, both in and out of their sport.  Set Unreasonable Expectations He sometimes pushed me too hard, and it was hard and difficult to feel good about my progress.
Instructed on Use Mental Strategies She taught me how to deal with my nerves and know when to stop and slow down.
Helped Me Gain Perspective on Struggles My coaches reminded me that just as we are struggling within ourselves, others are too. We are not alone and need to show the same compassion and respect to ourselves as if we were dealing with a friend’s emotions.
Tangible support: Used concrete instrumental assistance to build self-compassion
Used Game Strategies  My coach would always tell us we could do it . . . Making us do something again when we are tired so it’s easier when we aren’t as tired. Pushed Me Past Physical Limits He would definitely test our limits and emotions by trying to pull anger out of us to play better in practice which would end up in one of us injuring each other and would take morale down so much.

References

Ferguson, L. J., Kowalski, K. C., Mack, D. E., Sabiston, C. (2015). Self-compassion and eudaimonic well-being during emotionally difficult times in sport. Journal of Happiness Studies, 16, 1263–1280. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-014-9558-8

Gano-Overway, L. A., Peterson, M., & McCall, H. (2022, October). Interrelationships between caring, self-compassion, self-pity, emotional regulation, and reactions to an emotionally difficult sport-specific scenario. Poster presented at 2022 Association for Applied Sport Psychology Conference.

Neff, K. D. & Germer, C. (2017). Self-compassion and psychological well-being. In J. Doty (Ed.) Oxford handbook of compassion science, (pp. 371-386). Oxford University Press.

Reis, N. A., Kowalski, K. C., Mosewich, A. D., & Ferguson, L. J. (2019). Exploring self-compassion and versions of masculinity in men athletes. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 41, 368-379. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsep.2019-0061

Lori Gano-Overway, PhD, CMPC is an Associate Professor and Director of the Coaching Education Minor at James Madison University. Lori is a National Advisory Board Member, who’s research interests consist of understanding how the coaching or teaching climate can be structured to provide positive experiences for young people and foster positive youth development.