What Happens When the Game Ends? Resilience, Recovery & Redefining Success with Laura HS Collins.

"You don't have to erase your struggles to heal—it's about learning to understand and care for them." - Laura Collins

In this episode, I sit down with Laura Hans-Segundo Collins, a former elite gymnast and diver turned psychotherapist. We explore what happens when the identity you’ve built around a passion, career, or pursuit suddenly shifts, leaving you unmoored. Laura shares her sojourn from high-stakes athletics to navigating depression and ultimately finding purpose in mental health advocacy.

Her story reveals the hidden emotional toll of elite sports, the importance of trauma-informed coaching, and how we can reshape competitive environments to prioritise performance and well-being. Whether you’re an athlete, coach, leader, or someone traversing a major life transition, this episode offers powerful insights into resilience, identity, and healing.

What We Cover in This Episode

• The pressures of high-performance athletics and how they impact mental health
• Why many young athletes struggle with purpose after their sports careers end
• The role of community and storytelling in healing and self-discovery
• The importance of trauma-informed coaching and creating safer sports environments
• How we can balance competition with compassion in both sports and leadership

Key Takeaways

• Identity isn’t defined by a single pursuit—expanding your perspective helps with transitions.
• Healing is about integrating, not erasing, past struggles and learning from them.
• Competitive environments can be high-performance and high-support at the same time.
• Emotional well-being is as critical as physical conditioning in elite sports.
• Having a strong community and trusted mentors can make all the difference in resilience.

Bio

Laura Hahn-Segundo Collins' mission is to: "Cultivate whole-person well-being to develop healthier, more resilient, compassionate and connected athletes, coaches, and community." 

A proud first-generation Korean-Filipina American, Laura's journey as a former elite athlete and two-decade career as a psychotherapist deeply informs her philosophy on personal growth and transformation. Her practice integrates psychoanalytic psychotherapy with trauma-informed care, narrative therapy, mindfulness, and practical tools for comprehensive healing and optimal performance.

As a distinguished mental health professional in New York City, Laura has built an impressive legacy across public, nonprofit, and private sectors. She provides specialized training at institutions including NYU Medicine and Health and Hospitals, while mentoring emerging practitioners from Columbia, NYU, and other leading academic programs.

Connect

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lcollinslcsw/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theathletepsychotherapist/

Website:  https://lcollinslcsw.com/

Chapters

• 0:16 Welcome to It's an Inside Job
• 2:53 Introducing Laura Collins
• 8:14 The Athlete's Journey
• 10:33 Finding Community and Healing
• 18:22 Navigating Mental Health
• 22:28 The Power of Storytelling
• 28:06 Evolving Sports Culture
• 36:19 Building a Healthier Athletic Mindset
• 37:52 Transitioning from Competition
• 39:20 Embracing Compassion in Sports
• 42:56 Walking the Road Together
• 50:24 Turning the Gem
• 1:02:21 The Role of Emotions
• 1:12:39 Wrapping Up with Insights

Transcript

0:00

Music. Welcome to It's an Inside Job, the podcast where we equip you with actual skills to build resilience, enhance communication, foster well-being, and lead and coach with impact. I'm your host, Jason Lim, and every Monday we bring you expert insights and real-world stories to help you thrive and succeed. And with that said, let's slip into the stream. Music. Welcome back to the show thank you for joining me for another week and allowing me to be part of your week now i have a question at the top of this episode have you ever tied your identity so close to something be it a career a passion maybe a lifelong pursuit that losing it left you feeling unmoored, untethered? And how do you rebuild when the foundation you've known suddenly shifts? Well, I want to answer these questions today with my guests, plus maybe some other deeper questions that it may evoke in you. So in this episode, I sit down with Laura Hans-Sagonda Collins, a former elite athlete turned psychotherapist who's sojourned from the high-stakes world of competitive sports to mental health advocacy. Well, it offers insight into resilience, identity, and healing. Her athletic career as a gymnast and diver demanded intense discipline, but when injuries forced her to step away from sports at just 20, well, she found herself grappling with depression and the loss of identity. It was through her own process of healing, for example, living in Bolivia, finding community in New York, and ultimately training as a psychotherapist, that she discovered a new purpose, helping athletes and high-performing individuals navigate their own mental and emotional challenges. Beyond her private practice, Laura is a respected mental health professional in New York City, where she provides specialized training at institutions like NYU Medicine and Health and hospitals and mentors emerging therapists from Columbia and NYU. She's also the co-host of Hanna City, a podcast that explores healing through storytelling. So in today's conversation, Laura shares how she transformed personal adversity into a mission to support others. The hidden emotional toll of elite sports and how we can create a more compassionate, trauma-informed athletic culture. The power of community and storytelling and healing. And why embracing, not erasing our struggles leads to a greater resilience. So whether you're an athlete, a coach, or simply someone looking to figure out life's transitions with more self-awareness and care, Well, I think this episode's for you. Music. To welcome everyone back to the show. Laura, welcome. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here, Jason. And we're connected between Oslo and the brilliant New York City. Could we kick off by you introducing who you are briefly and what you do? Sure. My name is Laura Hans Segundo Collins. I am a former elite athlete, now a psychotherapist here in New York City. I have had all kinds of experiences here from nonprofit, public, um, and private. I'm currently in private practice now, but, um, I really focus now where I'm at in my 20 year career history, um, on working with athletes, coaches, guardians, parents, and high performance communities. What brought you to this current space? Because, you know, where you are, it's a very interesting confluence of experience and knowledge. I was wondering, what were you a professional athlete in and how did you transition over into the sort of the mental health space? Yeah, that's an excellent question and probably too long to really go into detail, but the journey is winding actually. I was an elite gymnast by the time I was 10 and I spent about six years in gymnastics that it was during During a time when gymnastics was maybe infamous and famously known to be on more of the abusive, harsh overtraining side. At the time, we didn't know any different. That was just kind of drinking the Kool-Aid of the time. And where the story actually begins, especially with relation to my mental health journey and becoming a mental health professional, actually goes back to my parents. And we were just talking about this before we hit record, but we're talking about our parents. And my mom is a North Korean refugee. My dad is from the Philippines, both of which lived under colonized environments, really. My last name, Segundo, prior to getting married, we know that our family, that they were islanders, that they had indigenous names, but the Spaniards made them change their names. For my mom's side, it's to have the Japanese colonization followed by communism, and that led to them fleeing North Korea for South Korea. So over time, we also have war. We also have immigration. So the theme for my family actually is loss and survival. So move forward to where my sister and I are, which we were born in Los Angeles area. And then our families sort of clung to each other in this survival mode. And in doing so, adding to having athletic, exceptional talent, then it's sort of a recipe for a very, very obedient child. So when I think of that time of being, having a lot of talent and doing really well as an elite gymnast and sort of being subjected to the Kool-Aid, so to speak, of the times, my career ended because of injuries that were sustained due to that overtraining. But also the mentality continued, that kind of pushing through, I can survive, I've got this. Became my own, but also it was my parents. It was generational trauma. It was generational conditionings as well. So after gymnastics, I went into diving. I did not want to go into diving. It was something that was definitely what a lot of gymnasts did if they were injured and it was sort of easier on the body, so to speak, but my injuries were elbows. Nonetheless, I had a very, very good career in diving. It got me a Division I scholarship to UCLA. I met amazing people. I had awesome coaches. I had a fantastic team. I did well. I went to nationals every year and I was probably miserable the entire time for the most part, except for my community. Diving ended for me also because of my injuries that I incurred through gymnastics. And then once my career in sports kind of came to an end altogether. Then I was just lost, you know, trying to find my way out of, you know, a forest that I had only known practically my entire life. So obedience, survival, loss, high competition. I enjoyed the thrill of being able to master things. I really loved mastering skills and connections and things. So thus began the journey of kind of then figuring out who am I, you know, when your life is so dictated by sports, every summer was a sports camp or nationals or something, to now I have all this time to myself and I have no guidance. No, there's no, you know, athletes spend their entire careers sort of in a very people-pleasing state. Everything is dictated. Did I do that better? You get coach feedback, You get fan feedback, but there's no coaching your way forward. Into retirement, you know, it's sort of you, you get so much guidance during your time as an athlete. And when you retire, it's like, have a good life. And then people are like, I don't, we've never had this guidance before. So that was really my journey into depression. So my depression was, um, it was really dark. It was a really dark space. But during that time, the saving grace was to find this amazing community over the years. So that started with having a couple coaches who, for the first time in my life, said, like, how are you doing? Are you happy? You know, I had spent 15 years doing sports, and no one ever asked me if I was happy or how I was doing. It was just assumed I'm a high-performance person, and I must like this because I'm good at it. So she's fine. but no one ever stopped to ask like how are you doing and during that time there's other intersectional things happening. I'm a woman of color it's in the 90s when the standard of beauty is a very thin white woman and I have lots of curves there's just a lot of things going on so being asked like how are you doing was pivotal that was one of the first. After college I lived in Bolivia for about two and a half years and during that time the Bolivians were amazing. I learned so much. I lived in the Southern part of Bolivia and there I have like a new relationship with food, for instance, just got to see a different way of viewing the world. And then the final one was coming to New York. When I came to New York for a social work school here, I really met my people. I met people of all kinds, you know, New York is one of those beautiful places where you can be surrounded by people or you can be by yourself. And as a person who actually, you know, I'm quite introverted in many ways, it's important for me to have a little bit of both. But I was so lucky. I am so lucky to be surrounded by an incredible community of people, powerful, thoughtful, kind, big hearted people who embrace their bodies and also their minds. And since then now I've found lots of healing. The final chapter in all of this I think for my journey is, Meeting my partner and having kids, adding that sense of parent, and especially being a parent to athletes, has really brought everything full circle. And a lot of this came to light, really, in the last few years when my children became the ages that I was when I experienced my abuse in my sport. And since then it has been an incredible incredible expanded community of athletes providers friends loved ones that in a way that has been it's so healing and it's lovely to have this like expanded healing community across the board so and it can be from youth athletes and people that's like my kids school to you know people I work with CEOs and executive directors coaches athletes and you know we we are in a way creating a community that we've always been waiting for and I'm really proud to be a part of it and so in a nutshell but it's kind of a long-winded answer thank you for thank you for being part of that. I think it's very important to understand the the background sort of the origin story if I may use that term and so through that at what age did you finish your career as a diver as a professional diver or uh right i was a 20 okay you were 20 you're 20 and so after that that you finished then you felt then your sense of purpose kind of it just evaporated per se because the sport was behind you you retired from the sport per se and then you felt into a depression many people can find themselves in a profession where they they give everything they've mastered their domain they are the gurus of what they do but they lose a sense of purpose they they're just kind of just they're in a pattern they're just following the groove right and and they're thinking there's got to be much more than this now i know this is not a direct overlap with your experience but what what do you believe the narrative can you articulate the narrative that was going through your head at that time when you were in this sort of between chapters. Yeah, that's a beautiful question. I think at the time, I would not have an answer for you. Everything was completely unconscious, unaware. And I was holding on to the teachings that my family of origin gave me, which was, go to church, pray about it, just believe that you'll, you know, sort of the self-talk, just be positive. And I clung to that. I tried so hard, but inside everything felt like, it felt like a dark cave. And you could hear the drips of, you know, water and stalactites and stalagmites, but it was just absolutely empty and dark. Um I had no words back then and that's the part that was really difficult was I had a family who loved me and you know looking back then I felt like so alone I knew I felt alone and I didn't know how to express that to people because my family also didn't know how to express that either it's not like you know these war and immigration and colonized survivors had space to express themselves either. So all of us are sort of walking around blind and deaf in many ways. It's only later on in life when I started seeking my own care and, you know, going to therapy, myself becoming a therapist, that I then was empowered with words to be able to share my story with them. And through that, then I noticed, you know, my mom, my dad, my sister, they would also be able to start sharing themselves as well. And instead of only trying to pray about it and pray it away. You know, this idea of like, I need to pray for more patience, or I need to pray that I can just be happier or whatever. Instead, the realization that, you know, the higher power or the universe or God or whatever you believe in is giving you opportunities to be that instead. So... That's where the growth really happened for me personally. I think for people who are in this position, just the awareness, being able to recognize, like, first of all, I'm not feeling good. I don't know what it is, but I don't feel good. And do I have anyone to talk to about this? If you can try and you try it out and if people are responding with care and support, that's your people. That's a good start. If I look back, I did have a few people in there. I did have some college roommates who, one of which she was going through her own mental health journey as well. But she's the one who said, you know, I think you might want to think about seeing the sports psychologist or the therapist at the school, which I tried. I tried a couple sessions. A lot of athletes did anyway for sort of the focusing component of our sport. She would kind of pick lint off herself so I wouldn't really take her seriously and I was like I'm fine I'm fine I can do this and that's what we say like I'm fine I'm strong back then especially emotions were constituted as weak it was you know you're you just have to buck up you have to have grit killer instinct those are the words that come out like if you um if you just push through you're going to get over it and feel better but again without an environment of, coaches and family and friends and community that can say, look, you're going through something, here's a space, let's talk about it, then you won't have it. Because oftentimes, they don't know how to do it either. So it's a lot of people just not knowing what to do, but saying things like just buck up and be strong. I mean, there was so much there in what you just said that was so salient. If I could just if I may, just to rewind and sort of reverse engineer, as you said, you were in a dark place, you were in a loving family, but there was not the expression, what the default was, is to pray to a higher power, that some external force, some locus control outside of us can help us if we pray hard enough. But still that, as I understand it, that didn't help you to the extent that you needed that help and what i hear is once you started reaching out whether it was a coach or a therapist or you found your community per se slowly drip by drip but that. By you gave word you gave tangible word to abstract thoughts and emotion and once you did that that revealed to some level of an insight and by doing that what i also hear it sounds that you took back agency you took back autonomy per se in in that sort of the internal work you did and it wasn't just hoping that a higher power was going to give you the answer the energy but that you had to do the inner work to find that agency in order and slowly brick by brick you built that solid foundation in which you found yourself today by no means was that an easy process because sometimes the bricks would crumble per se forgive the metaphor but hopefully works for you totally works but i think what you said also was was the awareness someone said maybe you need to talk to someone maybe you need to just sort of work this out untangle this ball of string and then what i also it sounds like to some level there was compassion or self-compassion. That what you're going through and that you also found self-efficacy in the sense of finding your own agency to help you i don't know deal with the trauma deal with the history that that is your history but it sounds like you know from your your adventures and your life in bolivia to moving to new york in both cases you found some sense of community some sense of support but what i just wanted to kind of explore just that sort of that transition from that dark cave with the drip drip of the stalactites and stalagmites to where you are now because i think it's an important process that people don't understand it's just from a to b it's a light switch but it's kind of a squiggly line from A to B or it's like a dimmer switch. Sometimes it gets brighter, sometimes it gets darker. 100%. It's a journey and it's an ebb and flow journey. You take a few steps forward and then you're off the path for a while and you get back on. Sometimes you're walking it by yourself, a lot of it walking by yourself. And then every so often there would be someone who walks with you along the way. Bolivia, getting to meet just other perspectives. And it was the first time in my life that anybody ever said, for instance, in a very obvious way that basically they thought I was a lovely person, which is, it's wild to think that. Not that it wasn't happening with loved ones back in California as well, but for people who didn't know me at all and didn't know my past, I didn't have to be, I wasn't Laura the gymnast or Laura the diver. I was just Laura. And it was. For lack of a better phrase, but kind of create myself in front of them. I get to show them what I want them to see. And what I showed them was the things that I was actually interested in. So I, at the time I was like, I really love, I really still love like hiking and being outdoors and reading and just, you know, sitting with people and talking with them. And that's when I really learned that, that stories are powerful. It's the idea of sitting around the fire as a village and just sharing time and stories and connection. That deep connection as human beings really came through in Bolivia for me. We would sit, I would, the family that I lived with, I would sit on the porch with them and just kind of knit and we'd watch, oops, watch the cows go by, you know, at sort of certain hours of the day. And we would just be talking about life. And it was really powerful, really meaningful, and it was very comfortable. I did a lot of growing up, I think, as the person I am today to be at peace where I am and in my body and with my relationship, say, with food or, you know, my ideas of self started sort of forming at that time. When you're with people who could just be like, you know what? Life is simple. It's about loving others and eating well and taking care of your environment. It's the simple things in life that are often really more complex. We make it so complex as human beings. But I would think actually a lot about my mom, too, at the time. I still think a lot about her now when she would say, you know, babies don't take much to take care of, you know, in general. She would say dry diaper, full belly, lots of rest, lots of love, and you can have a happy baby. And we're not much different as adults. But those kinds of conversations would be had. And that started sort of filling me up in a different way, getting away from sports and all the pressures and... The egos and things just to be just myself for a while. And then going from that to New York, then you meet another section of people. It's just like really beautiful, powerful, empowering presence everywhere to get to the next level in many ways. So the complexity and the simplicity of life, but being able to just sort of, it's just really grounded in the most simple things, the simple things that are the most complex to get to. But that's when I realized it was kind of like shining a light on the inside. It wasn't that my darkness ended. It wasn't that my depression was done. And I think there's always a part of me that's probably a little bit blue all the time. But now I find a beloved. I can take care of her and I can take care of that space. It was like a light over the years started shining into my insides, so to speak. So instead of it being like this darkness and you hear the drops, when you light up the inside of a cave, you see that there's all kinds of beautiful things. It's the crystals and the way the light shines. And it's really, caves are absolutely stunning. I don't know if you've ever been in a cave before, but there's one up here in New York, upstate New York, and it's just stunning when you walk inside. And that's kind of what my version of depression turned into is just like that realization that we are all really beautiful and we carry so many wonderful things and hidden treasures that we get to choose who gets to see that, who gets to to bear witness to that. In doing so, we build community. We build that sense of our own village around the fire. And having that village around us... Even if you're not in the same geographic location, like most of my really close friends have moved all over the world at this point, but we are all very, very tight as because that fire can go anywhere with you. But just that sense of security and comfort and connection, unconditional love is just imperative at this point, I think. And especially for leaders, especially for high-performance people where you don't know who to trust. The higher you go up, it's harder to tell. Who can you trust? Who is there because they would like something from you? There's some kind of secondary gain. Or who's actually there because they want to be your friend or they want to be connected with you as a human being? And vice versa. It can't just be one-sided. It has to be the villages that circularly give and take and share and support. Um all taking turns in that so I think that's where I'm at now and that's certainly what I teach my children is that no matter all the tough things that will come your way you have a choice, and my choice at least for me is I just I choose to love and I choose to care, I choose to hear stories because it's in those stories that we are no longer all the categories that the world wants us to be, all the checkboxes that go on every form. We can just be human beings with stories. You know, I remember sitting down and... It was like a first day of class or something. And of course, everybody's kind of sizing each other up. That's what you do. Who's going to be your friend? Who's not going to be your friend? And it's through the stories that we all share it. Like everybody's got a Vicks Vapor Rub story. Everybody has like this, the, you know, the remedies that their loved ones would give them when they're sick story. And they're all kind of the soup and rest and garbage television and things like that, that really make us human. And that's where I am now. That's where my healing is. And that depressive side that's in me, always a little bit, just a little bit, she is cared for. She is not pushed away. It's not like, oh, it's gone. It's over. She is honored and she's cared for on the inside of me as and in doing so I can do the same for other people too can hold that space for somebody else because I will never know what it's like to be another person but I can bear witness and support them as a person who has gone through it myself I think it's a sublime description of your evolution from athlete to post-athlete to where you are presently Laura you know and and narratives I think narratives drive everything are as you and I both know you know the brain is an evaluation machine it's it's constantly scribing a narrative with the world around us constantly but sometimes we are not aware of the writer we just let the brain go on its negative negative bias the survival mechanism the threat mechanism to write the story and unfortunately it's about looking for threats and dangers but what i hear about someone who's stopped up through self-awareness has kind of pushed away that sort of evolutionary writer and she took over the desk and started writing her own story you know moving it from the over complex things down to the the more simple profound. Foundational things that that life is and that has come from your experiences from your knowledge living two and a half years in Bolivia finding your your community in New York and every other space that has contributed to who you are from where you are now in 2025 do you could you describe has there been a sort of an evolution in the athletes mentality or a sports culture, Yes and no. I would say yes and no. You know, the history of sports is like human evolution in general, but I think in particular with sports, that sort of not having awareness, not having emotions and just sort of kind of being robotic almost. But especially for the history of sports, it's so much rooted in warfare. You know, if you think of like the ancient Olympics and ancient gymnastics, for instance, it was, you know, mainly men, young men in particular, who were practicing their skills that they needed for warfare. And then they would turn into games. They use games for unification and fun and relaxation. But it's also to continue their skills and make sure that they're ready for battle. And that's kind of like where sports is sports as we know it today is certainly rooted in that so it is natural for human beings to be in competition it's darwinian as we would say survival of the fittest but you take that and you add layers of the expectation to beat somebody else or to outmaneuver or essentially historically kill somebody else because what starts off from you know ancient olympics and then moves into the roman times and you have gladiators now we have. Consumerism we have the sort of exhibition and and sort of the performance and what's the word it's like really really violent reality tv back in the day and then we move into what's what's considered today of modern sports where we still use the same vernacular of like you know kill or killing spirit or we still use these sort of warfare like, wording to things because that's kind of where our origin is. So the things that you don't hear though are things like future orientation or healing or injury prevention. You don't hear those things. You hear a lot of just getting out there and putting out your all. I often think with this example of Curt Schilling on the mound when the Red Sox, and I think it was 2004, And he was, he had just had surgery and they kind of like stapled his tendon and his ankle together. And you see this bloody sock as he's in his last throws, the last innings. And that's what we think of sports. We think of complete sacrifice and like the athlete almost as like a non-human entity. But we've seen also the evolution of people through time, especially with regards to psychology. I like to credit Grandpa Freud. I know there's things that we've come a long way since him, but the Me Too movement. We've done the research that created the diagnosis, post-traumatic stress disorder. We credit to Vietnam veterans, World War II survivors. All of the research that goes into the realization that trauma is... Is impacting people worldwide, but that it certainly has an impact on human beings, period. So I think of recent times, as we've seen with the survivors of the Larry Nassar case, of the Corollies, we see all kinds of, now we see more. That was the coach for the gymnastics, right? Just to... Yes, correct. Right. Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah. The sexual abuse or the abuse in general. Yeah, yeah. Okay, just to put a... For gymnasts. For those who don't know them, for gymnasts, yes. Yes. And then we've heard other things too. There's more cases that have come up of all kinds of things. It's actually interesting because some years ago, I think it was a group of reporters out of Illinois. They actually, they helped support the whistleblower for the beginnings of the Larry Nassar case. But they had an article that had said something about us well over 300 cases of abuse that had gone to court, and it was quiet. No one heard of it. No one says anything. We allowed that sort of empire of thought, that sort of, quote-unquote, harsh coaching to continue for a long period of time. Anyway to now we have the incredible survivors and and we have people who are absolutely advocating for mental health in a very public way Naomi Osaka Simone Biles Michael Phelps I mean these are incredible people but to date it's really you have to be that level a professional or um slash Olympian level to be heard in that way and they take a lot of hits there's still people i remember when naomi osaka opted to not compete the backlash that that poor woman got um you know she's not tough enough it's all the things that we've been trained and conditioned and just for those who don't know she's the tennis player right she's the tennis player yes okay. Yep um so has it gotten better yes there is like a little bit more awareness of mental health i think the creation of safe sport at least here on the u.s side is it perfect no absolutely but at least it's around um there's a little bit more awareness on the front line though if you see sort of in the local level you'll still see the the culture of this old school traditional, mentality sports culture mentality when you know i'm sitting at a basketball game and i see sometimes the way coaches will yell or parents or guardians will yell at these like 10 year old kids it's like I'm it's not my place and it's I'm not going to be convincing anybody and especially in a moment like that but I just hope that they can find another way to support their young athlete because at this point statistics will show by 14 years old most kids will drop out of sports, Most kids. And I think some of it has to do with just the fact that they're in teenage years. So especially for female athletes at that time, the body image, there's all kinds of those things can come up. But secondly, I think that's when sports gets really, really, really serious. It's either, you know, especially now, it's either you're recreational and having fun. But then when you turn 14, suddenly everybody wants to be a Division I, Division II, you know, collegiate athlete in their future. And there's nothing that's sort of kind of in between, or at least I haven't quite found it yet. Maybe someone can reach out to me and tell me wrong. But that's, I would love, I would love for there to be more variety. But that means there has to be more acceptance of the various levels of sports and to see sports in different ways. Because right now it's either fitness, wellness, fun, or it's, you know, professional, I want to be in the NBA. And that's something in between like can't we be competitive but just have fun competition that is something that still has sort of needs to be nurtured and grown so has it gotten better yeah it's gotten better has it gotten better enough fast enough no I don't think um but that's okay at this point in my life I am no longer interested in sort of trying to dismantle the sports world as it used to be I mean there's lots of people who fight and advocate and they should on the legislative level and using their professional persona to be able to support that. I'm 1000% for that. But I think for me as a provider and as a parent to athletes, I'm more interested in just continuing to create a community that we've been waiting for. I, you know, trying to dismantle something that's been there for like millennia is what I like to say, it's kind of like scraping an iceberg with a tablespoon. So instead, I'd rather just create another iceberg that's going to be maybe healthier and more loving. And we're seeing that. It does exist. There's lots of, There's lots of places that are starting to really pop up with this ideology. Music. Growing up, Laura was deeply immersed in competitive sports, excelling as a gymnast and as a diver. However, the intense training culture combined with the physical demands of elite athletics took a toll. After a series of injuries forced her to retire at the age of 20 years old, while she found herself struggling with a profound loss of identity and purpose, This transition led to a difficult period of depression, where she initially relied on the faith and positive thinking instilled by her family. However, as she explored different avenues of healing, including living in Bolivia, where she gained new perspectives and later moving to New York, well, she began to find a sense of self beyond her athletic achievements. Through therapy, both as a client and eventually as a trained psychotherapist, well, Laura discovered the language to express her emotions and the importance of seeking support. Now as a mental health professional specializing in athletics and high-performing individuals, Laura draws on her experiences to help others navigate identity shifts, emotional struggles, and the pressures of elite performance. She emphasizes that healing isn't about erasing pain, but learning to understand and care for it. Laura's experiences, her sojourn, well, it's a reminder to the power of resilience, the power of self-awareness. And the power of communities that can help us find our way. So now let's slip back into the stream with my fascinating conversation with Laura Collins. Music. Maybe there are moms and there's dads listening right now where their kids are maybe in that transition between having fun to much more competitive. What do you think from your experience laura is needed in order to still stay competitive because sports are competitive and there there's there's i think there's healthy things about competition of course but it's i agree with everything else you've articulated where if it's just driven then there's there's a lack of compassion there's a lack of caring and it's it's almost machine like Like it could be almost abusive, like per se, as you've described it. What do you think is needed to infuse that transition where we can create a much more healthier athletic mentality or sports culture? Yeah. I think that's a golden nugget question of all time. Yeah, I guess I'm not asking you as a panacea, but from your own experience and knowledge, what could parents or coaches at that level sort of infuse or try to encourage? Yeah, I think for now what we can control is ourselves and we can model and be that presence for others. So my whole background as a psychotherapist is, even though I've been trained in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, over the course of 20 years, I have integrated a number of different other thoughts and modalities into my repertoire, so to speak. And one of which that I am really connected to is trauma-informed care. So trauma-informed care kind of has been around for some time, has really birthed in health care following the Vietnam War when veterans returned and they just, you know, people started studying their reactions to war and seeing that, hence the creation of the PTSD diagnosis. But now it's a movement. It doesn't have to just be in health care. It can be everywhere. And basically, the tendency is just recognizing that everybody is experiencing something. Everybody has had trauma. In the U.S. alone, 70% of adults has experienced at least one traumatic event. And that's in the U.S. alone. 70% is a lot of people. So if we can just be a little bit more kind and aware of that, then the goals are things like, What can we do to not re-traumatize or create new experiences of trauma as best as we can? We can't control if there's a car accident or someone gets injured. Lots of things happen out of our control, but how can we support people in that? How can we create an environment as best as possible that is about security, trust, safety? How can we empower and how can we give information but not dictatorship? Leadership you know and how can we do this for everybody it's not just for an athlete it it needs to be for coaches poor coaches are often athletes of the past who have now entered into the world they want to give back in some way so many coaches i know are grappling with this this bit right here is where is the line i don't want to replicate what happened to me i would love for my athletes to win at life and not just at the sport. And also they want to be, say, they want to be like a division one athlete that you're going to have to sometimes buck up in certain things. You won't be able, you can't just like sit back. There's going to be bits about you that you have to bring out of you. They'll say like, Laura, where's that line? What do I do? I don't want to be abusive. And yet I know what it takes for this person to get to level up. So I think lots of people are, I think, to begin with is grappling. And I think that's really, really, really important. Because the fact that we're actually even asking ourselves, like, is this okay if I do this, already breaks the traumas of the past and helps us machete our new way and trailblaze a new path for sports across the board. And that's not going to be for everybody. Like I tell people that by the time people come to me, they've tried a number of different things. And they come and they're kind of like at a last bit. I've tried, you know, putting nodes on my head and, you know, trying to regulate my breath or I'm trying this or trying that and it's not working. And often it's, we haven't dealt with our past yet. You know, it's that, that idea of your past is not your fault, but your present and your future is your responsibility once we have awareness about it. So the more that we know thyself, so to speak, I think the more that we can be available and create that space where there has not been space before for others in particular. And this is honestly, Jason, this is new. This is kind of like a new frontier, I think, for sports to be able to think this way and to adopt it. There's a lot of pushback to this. You know, there's a lot of the old guard club. They want to protect their ways. I get it. To visit their past and to know that, you know, I probably hurt some people along the way. There can be a lot of feelings of shame and guilt and regret. But it doesn't make you a bad person if you try to work on it. and do your best. There's a coach that I absolutely adore and I have so much respect for. She was a collegiate coach for some time and she does mental health work today. She's a mental health performance coach today. Absolutely fantastic. But she does share that once upon a time she was doing something on social media and she shared something about mental health. And one of her old athletes reached out to her and said, or made some comment that basically said, like, you were not this kind of person for me when I was your athlete. And she was like, it was a sobering moment. And she, what did she do? She did exactly what I think any athlete would hope that their coach that they had an experience like this with. She contacted the athlete and they had a really big heart to heart. And she gave that athlete space and they shared stories. They sat around the fire and shared stories with each other. And does that athlete still carry stuff? Yeah. She's like, she's still going to carry that forever. And I have to live with that. But that's okay, because she heard me say sorry. She heard where I was at life, in my life at that time as well. But we could just be human together for a moment, especially since she's an adult, could have more awareness about it. As a teenager, maybe less so. As a person later on, there could be a little bit more understanding. But I found that exceptionally powerful. The power of forgiveness. And, you know, you don't have to forget. We don't want to forget. Because if we forget, then we run the risk of replicating, you know, but if we forgive and we just do better, then we have a chance of changing sports culture altogether, or at least developing a new iceberg. When you're talking about this, I think that I was never a professional athlete, but I was in Taekwondo and such. And we went to competitions, sparring competitions, right? And it was full contact with protective gear. But I remember the drive as a 15, 16 year old, right? It was very warlike because I mean, you were there to score points. And sometimes people got injured because it was a well placed kick with power and such. When you're speaking to this, I'm kind of relating to your story that you're telling me right now. And then there's another side of me saying, okay, in high performance areas such as athletics, such as sports, you need a level of motivation. You need to be hungry. There needs to be a level of drive and motivation, engagement, and that wanting to achieve, to succeed, to win. I think those are very healthy drivers. But what I hear also is that it needs to be balanced with compassion. There has to be, in the business world, we call it psychological safety per se, right? But psychological safety doesn't mean creating an environment where there's no conflict, where there is no tension, right? It's about creating a safe environment in which people can perform, take risks, move forward, make mistakes, learn from them. Don't repeat the mistakes, but learn from them, move forward, right? We don't have to constantly worry about your head getting ripped off or blow back. But at the same time, there needs to be drive. There needs to be hard conversations. There needs to be transactional communication as well as transformational or relationship type of communication, right? And each of it has its place and its space. But I think the drive for competition is just inherent to who we are as individuals, as tribes, as teams, as groups, as organizations. And I think that's a healthy thing. But what I hear, it goes way too far. As you were describing your past is like okay you know that that's so far on one polarized end but i think there is this this medium which we can pull it back still have that drive of competition but i don't know if compassion is the right word or caring or whatever it is but there i think that we need to find some sort of harmony i don't want to say balance because i think that's a misnomer but i think some sort of harmony between those where you can still take care of the people and but still drive them you can be hard on them per se as a coach or as a parent. I don't know if I'm articulating myself. I'm trying to get this. Yeah, I think I think what I'm hearing is you're talking about the empowerment piece. You know, I do have a I have a young athlete who is kind of at that space right now who they are. They're wondering, is this something that's still for me? Like, how far do I want to go? And the parents are incredible, absolutely incredible. Talk about trauma informed, understands where their athlete is coming from and wants the best for them. They will have these conversations, but they will be realistic. Being realistic is really important. Listen, if you want to achieve this goal, this is what it's going to take. You are going to end up missing out on certain things that, you know, young people your age are going through because you're probably going to have to go to a competition or you're going to have to sacrifice something. It takes sacrifice in that way. What do you think? You want to think about it. You want to, and then to leave it and let the athlete choose for themselves. Now, sometimes there's like this back and forth about when, when the athlete is quite young and especially according to the, the laws of the country, like when they're, they're known to be an adult and can make a choice from themselves. When do the guardians or parents step in and make the choice versus the kid makes the choice too. And oftentimes I will say it has to still be collaboration. You want there to be collaboration. Even if a kid loves the sport, loves the sport, morning practices, 6 o'clock in the morning is going to be rough to get any kid up at that time. But it helps when they want to do this. My own kid, he has practices Mondays and Wednesdays at 7 o'clock in the morning. And once in a while, he'll still say, like on a Thursday, Mom, can we go in the morning so I can shoot at the school before school starts? I didn't ask him to do that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to get up at six o'clock in the morning to take him when it's 45 degrees outside. But the kid wants to do it. He wants to do it. And it's coming from him. That's what's really, really important. He's only 10. I will support that if that's what he wants. But if at the time that he at some point he doesn't want to do it, then we have a conversation. And then all kinds of other factors coming. You just kind of want to continue to empower and collaborate. So the only thing I tell, for instance, to my kids as a parent of athletes, like if you're halfway through your season and you're like, you know what, this isn't for me anymore. Just finish the season. Finish the season because you made the choice and the commitment to do so. And you have a team and a coach that's like, you know, relying upon you to be there. So if the best that you can do is show up and support your team, that's a really great teammate as well. You don't have to be star player and your heart does not have to be in it when you're on the court or whatever. But if your heart is in it, at least for cheerleading your team and being the best that you can, that's a great teammate still. So you're learning more things that are just than are just like, you know, three point shots or something like that. No, I really like that. So if I could just segue, you know, in your work with clients, you wrote that you describe your work and your philosophy as walking along the road together. What does that mean in practice. Yeah, that's a great question. I, I am a very visual person. So even when someone's sitting in front of me, sometimes sort of words will float over their head, or I see those moments when I'm sitting with them in the space as like, we're walking a road together. And I think that's kind of how life is all the time. You know, you and I right now, we are, we were doing other things before this moment, doing other with walking with other people. And then we kind of veered over and Now we are walking together at this point in time and having a conversation. And that's what we do. We're just sort of bearing witness and supporting each other and having conversations and listening. And that's the same as how I work with clients. So I tell clients, like, you know, we have this time together, but you're going to go off and do this on your own. You're going to live this. You're going to live your life. So in particular, if people say, like, what's therapy like or what is it like to work with you? Or say there's, you know, I'm doing trainings and people are asking like, what do I get out of it? I always tell people what we do together, it's great. It's wonderful. But it's what you do on your own that matters. I can't tell you whether or not you're going to take this in for yourself or, that's on you to take and like reflect upon it on your own time. And the more that you do that work for yourself, honestly, the faster the progress goes, you know, and it doesn't have to be, And some people come because they're like, I have a mental block and I can't do the skill anymore. And if the goal is to do the skill, great. But oftentimes it becomes other things like maybe I've mastered being able to develop my community. Maybe I'm just, maybe the realization is I don't want to do my sport anymore. And I actually want to have the bravery to tell the people I love that I'm ready for a new chapter in life. You know, whatever it is, progression doesn't have to look like, oh, I'm going to the Olympics next week, you know. You also wrote, I was wondering, you have a term called turning the gem that you work with your clients. Could you kind of elaborate and maybe describe a little more about what you mean by turning the gem? Yeah, I think of everybody as gems. Um, and oftentimes, or at least for a long time of our lives, we are only looking at ourselves in one way or a few ways, depending upon who is telling us how to look at us that way. So parents, teachers, coaches, or whatever, when we're young folks, we see ourselves through their eyes often how the world is responding to us is how we're going to feel about ourselves. But again to that point of the you know your past is not your fault but your present and future is your responsibility once you have awareness that you are you can look at yourself and think about yourself reflect upon yourself in psychology it's called an observing ego when we can sort of observe ourselves to me that's like you're looking at your gem and once you start turning it you'll see that you have so many other facets to yourself maybe facets that you know your loved ones didn't even know you had and that's okay because that makes you uniquely and beautifully you and so you know depending upon where you're at in life and you turn the gem you have all these new sparkles and all these new shapes and colors in there and that makes you uniquely you and that's what is really really wonderful when people start to see that they're whole people that their whole gems um and that way they don't they don't have to just see themselves as whatever was conditioned into them to think i think that's so important what you're talking about is the sense you know before you know you could be defined as a gymnast or a diver and you know yes you were that or you are that right now but that is just one label so what i hear is through sharing narratives talking about our stories or talking about different perspectives, that increases the context in which we can see our lives. That point of view expands and we can see, I guess, a more holistic side of ourselves that we are much more than that one particular label. Yes, I may dedicate a large portion of my life to that discipline, but above and beyond that, there's maybe, as you said, different angles of that gem that reflect a different part of myself. Just a segue, if someone's listening right now and Laura, they're feeling kind of stuck, maybe they're struggling with motivation, anxiety, weight of expectations, what would you want them to know? I think first and foremost is that recognizing that they are feeling like that is okay. You know, I think people feel that way that I'm not motivated around this. And there's an immediate self-judgment about it. I am, we are conditioned to say like, I'm lazy or I'm, something's wrong with me. I'm, there's something wrong with me. And instead, maybe we can use that as a sign. Like maybe something is, I'm telling myself something. My body is saying something. My mind, my heart is saying something to myself. And then we make a choice and I encourage people to make the choice to listen to it. So, you know, whether it's telling someone that, you know, I'm struggling with this and And maybe, you know, kind of opening up to the possibility of exploring it. Maybe it's in therapy. Maybe it's reaching out to your community. Maybe it's if you have a mentor or a supervisor or, you know, whoever, coach, loved one who you trust to be able to start the process of, it's like letting out what's inside. My dad used to always say, better out than in. And so, you know, just letting out begins the process of change, to be honest, because the first you have to admit that something is not right, that something's not feeling good on the inside. If we continue to say like, oh, I can get past it, I can get past it, and we just keep pushing off, it just grows bigger. You know, when we don't say things out loud, we just give more power to it, honestly. So I think first and foremost is just let yourself know that it's okay. And it's a sign that something is going on on the inside. And you are a human being. So... Listen to it and know that you are not alone. You are, there's so many people who are also going through something as well. So there are, there is a community out there. There are resources out there. And if people need help and support, they can, I always tell people, feel free to reach out. Maybe if I can't see you myself, I will absolutely support people in trying to find that care and space to be able to share what they need to share. After that, once they kind of know what's going on, motivation comes on its own. You know, I always say, like, I spent almost nine years in diving being pretty much miserable most of the time, except for my friends and family, like, they were great. But I can, high performance is easy. That, being able to perform, even when miserable, you can do that. I can teach people that. It's easy. Being able to perform with heart, being able to perform with true passion and care and connection, that's a whole other thing. And passion, care, connection does not, you can't, there's no skills. There's no amount of like, you know, just do a meditation and you're going to suddenly have purpose in your life. That takes work. So it's kind of what people want. And in the meantime, because there will be a space and time where we're going to be feeling kind of still not great, but also slogging through, you know, if it's a workplace, it's just paying the bills for now. You just kind of do the minimum that you need to keep going while you are trying to figure out what your purpose is or what your focus is or whatever is going to ignite some of those sparks on the inside. No, I agree. I mean, I've worked with scores and scores of people over the years and finding a sense of purpose. That's like trying to figure out what's behind a door that is locked and the lights are out. And the only way you can do is look under the door jamb to see what's there with your little iPhone lights, right? It takes time. And I think that portion of the emotions is very important because I've talked about this ad nauseum on the show. But for me, emotions are not good or bad. There's a valence of uncomfortable to very comfortable and intensity. And all emotions, they are physiological messages in the form of hormones and transmitters or modulators to our brain. Because our bodies don't have syntax or grammar. But all emotions are valid. Listen to it. Yes, sometimes the brain will take those emotions and take a tiger or make a, sorry, a paper tiger into a tiger or take a perceived that make into a real threat. But I think feel the emotion. But I think you said it so well. Sit with it. Create space in which to list the emotion and figure out where is it coming from? What's it trying to communicate? And what do I want to do with it? Because I think if we take all emotions as valid. You know, we can't stop emotions, but what we can do is address what we want to do with those emotions. And if we take the paradigm or the point of view of seeing emotions just as messages, right? But what is the quality of that communication? And then figure out what it's saying. And maybe it is to talk to a professional such as yourself or a good friend or what have you to try to, again, give tangible words to abstract feelings. And maybe then and there, insight starts coming right and then we can start focusing on what we can do to control it what we can do to find confidence to move forward in the uncertainty i just really like that part you said about emotions because i think it's so important because a lot of us kind of just push it down and as you said so well you push it away it'll go away for a while but it will come back even more ferocious yeah and to that point i also say if saying emotions is too scary or it feels too weak because we're still conditioned right now if i say that i feel sad or i feel abandoned or i feel betrayed or i feel exuberant or i feel bored whatever the emotion is going to be still feels too stigmatized and still too quote-unquote weak then i tell people start where your body is. Because it's going to come out in some way, shape, or form. Emotions just don't go away. We all say it. We shove them down. They get shoved down and they go somewhere. So whether it's my neck is tense, I exploded at my partner. My stomach is churning with butterflies. I have chronic back pain. My head hurts. It is going to come out in a physical way. So for those who are like not quite ready to say those words emotions I do have people say I'll say like where do you feel that in your body. And they'll say, you know, I kind of feel tightness in my chest. Well, can you tell me more about that? It feels dark or it feels tight and it feels burning. Somebody said once, I feel like there's barbed wire in my throat. Like some people will have visual, physical descriptions. Some people will have feeling descriptions in that way. I feel like I have lightning in my fingertips. And then I'll say, if you could put an emotion word to it. What kind of emotion words would you find connected there? And if they need help, I'll say. So one prop that I do have people try to use is that feeling, that emotion wheel, wheels of emotion, feelings wheel, just to give them some vocabulary. Yeah, for sure. Because we are not fitted also to say a variety of emotion words. And that feelings wheel is very helpful because the center is the quote unquote more common words. but I still even think that they're even more detailed. At least where I'm growing up here, you're fitted with, I am fine, I am okay, and depending on how you said that might mean a right of things. So I'm fine or I'm fine could be two completely different emotions. I'm pissed off, even I'm mad, or I'm angry. They're all sort of like umbrellas or if you call them masks. If you take them off, under it, there will be much more detailed words. So if I'm pissed off, might mean under it is I actually feel really hurt and I feel really abandoned. So I have people use that. I have people use those emotion wheels or whatever to try to find some emotion words to put with the physical spots where they're feeling something. And then I'll say, what comes to mind when you think of that? Especially if they have like a descriptor like the barbed wire. When you think of barbed wire and you think of the word hurt, what comes to mind? And usually they'll bring up a memory or they'll bring up an age. I remember being eight and I got in trouble a story that I always share with people is that I one of my favorite clients of all time we I know we're not supposed to have favorites but he's one of my favorites because it was if I stood next to him I was like the the tiniest it was like being next to a giant human being he's probably like six six or something and I'm not even five feet. I'm like four 11 and close to five, five with shoes. Um, and he was this just very gentle giant and he'd come every week on the dot. And he was saying that every time he got into the subway and especially if the subway train got caught in between stations, he would start sweating. He'd start shaking. And as a big person that would scare people. So there had been times that people would he would have gotten into an argument on the subway because someone got scared when he started kind of panicking in between the stations if the train was stuck and so take him through the body i feel you know electricity and this and that he walks through all the physical stuff the big one was sweating i think that's why it made people kind of scared because he would just instantaneously look like he took a shower um and the emotion words was like frightened scared. There was one more I can't remember but mainly of the frightened scared nature and then I asked him like what, When you think of that, what's what comes to mind is like, well, I'm afraid that if I'm late for work, I'm going to get in trouble. And I said, well, tell me about that. Would you get in trouble? And he goes, no, I wouldn't because my boss loves me. I'm a really good worker. And he can you see them then pull out his shoulders go down, his chin goes up. I'm a good worker. He's proud of his job. He loves his boss. He loves his family. Like he's such a great human. And I said, so what's this about? And he goes, well, all I can think about is I came home from school late one day and my tells about this like really terrible story with his father. His father was going through something and to get out on him as a young as a young boy. And there it is. Yeah, there it is. So. It is having our reactions is normal. Having emotions is normal. And so I cannot stress this enough that it's not weak, it's a sign. I like what you said, Jason. It's like these are signs that our younger selves, our insides, we're talking to ourself in that moment. And I'm so proud of him. He chose to listen. So he didn't just stop, for people that are wondering, he didn't just stop not sweating in between stations. He would just make a plan. He could breathe through it now. He started bringing pictures of his loved ones. He could then tell himself, like, okay, my eight-year-old self is back, but I am, you know, at the time, I think he was like 40-something. I am my 40-something-year-old self is here, and I'm hugging my inside, you know, kid. I'm okay. Sometimes he could make it to the station. Sometimes he would get out and just walk the rest of the way. But the point is, is that he could, he then had agency, like you said, he knew he could figure out what to do with it in a way that felt important for him and caring to himself and to honor that little kid on the inside, which I thought was incredible. I think what you said there, you know, because emotions can be, especially the weights or the gravitas of certain emotions may be too scary for people to deal with. And that's A-OK, but I like the window in which you create, does it physically manifest itself somehow in the body, stiff shoulders, aching chest. Lightning, you know, I think you said lightning at the tips of the fingers or something or other. I think that's a great way. And just asking someone some neutral question, can you describe more about that? Can you tell me a little more about that? And then all of a sudden they're operationally defining or maybe they're describing the narrative, right? They've moved from some sort of position, which is that physical manifestation, or if they want to articulate the emotion, but it's in the description, right? That's just the headline. But understanding the article that makes up that headline is where a lot of the exploration and insights can come. And as you said, at the end of the day, you know, your clients, your patients, they do 98% of the heavy lifting. You're just the catalyst, 2%. But at the end of the day, when you've moved from the foreground of their life to the background, and they are on their own, they can take confidence that they did 98%, 99% of the work themselves. And then there's that confidence. I did it. Laura helped me. She was a catalyst, and she was needed at the time. But I did the work. I've built myself up to where I want. I just really like that. Just the physical manifestation part of it, it was a beautiful, sublime way to look into a window into trying to address what the message is. Yeah. Thanks. Laura, we are coming to the top of the hour. I was wondering, are there any last thoughts you'd like to share with our listeners today? First of all, thank you for the space. talk about community and sitting around the fire. I really hope that you all are taking care of yourselves and using this time to reflect and honor yourselves in a way that is absolutely loving and caring because life is complicated. It's hard. And it's what we've gone through with COVID and all the things that have happened in the past some years. It's been a lot for the world and. I just hope that people are surrounded in loving communities and at the very least starting to listening to their starting to listen into themselves and recognizing that they can give themselves space. It's OK. Giving permission to oneself is really big, but it does mean that there has to be a mind shift and mind shifts are a little bit harder when you're doing it by yourself rather than when it with a community of people. So I am sitting at the at the fire with everybody and with you, Jason, thank you for the space as well, because I think these spaces are so important, especially during these times when it's very easy to be distracted by so much pain and so much frustrations and complexities of life. To be more simple takes the first step of just kind of slowing down and being willing to sit at the fire. Thanks for that. Laura, if someone wanted to reach out to you for a conversation, for help, for advice, for what have you, what would be the best place for them to get in touch with you? I'm on Instagram at theathletepsychotherapist. I can also be found on Blue Sky and LinkedIn. Most people tend to reach me through LinkedIn or Instagram or my website, which is lcollinslcsw.com. Brilliant. I'll make sure I leave all of those links in the show notes. Laura, it was a brilliant conversation. I've learned a lot. And yes, I found it very enriching. So thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and experience today. Thank you so much. And thank you again, Jason, for creating this powerful, powerful and communal space. It is really important. And we all appreciate you so much. Music. As we wrap up this conversation with Laura Collins, we're left with some powerful insights about resilience, identity, and the evolving culture of sports. Laura challenges us to rethink competitiveness, not as something that has to come at the cost of mental well-being, but as something that can be balanced with compassion. She highlights how modern sports culture still carries echoes of its origins in ancient warfare, but with greater awareness and trauma-informed care, while we can shift toward a healthier, more sustainable model for athletics. Instead of dismantling competitive sports, Laura encourages us to reshape them, creating environments where trust and emotional safety are just as valued as performance. She also leaves us with an important reminder, our emotions and our struggles are not things to suppress, but signals to be acknowledged. Whether it's a young athlete navigating pressure or someone managing stress in their everyday life, Recognizing emotions, whether they manifest physically or verbally, well, it's a crucial step towards healing. Laura's example of helping a client work through panic attacks by tuning into their body reinforces the importance of self-awareness and support systems. Healing doesn't happen in isolation. It happens through connection, whether with a therapist, a coach, a mentor, or a community that truly listens. You know, this conversation for me has sparked some thoughts about how we can approach resilience both in sports and in life. And if you found today's discussion valuable, share it with someone who might need to hear it. Laura, a big thank you from me to you for today's conversation. I found it compelling, compelling on many different levels. So thank you very much for sharing your sojourn with us today. Well, folks, if you like the episode, if you like the podcast, please share it with others. Go in and rate it give it 5 stars if you are so generous but anyways thank you for showing up for another week I will see you on Friday for Bite Size Fridays and until then keep well keep strong. Music.