AT ALTA THERAPY, WE UNDERSTAND THE UNIQUE CHALLENGES AND EXHILARATION THAT COME WITH PARTICIPATING IN EXTREME SPORTS. THESE ACTIVITIES PUSH OUR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL BOUNDARIES. WE’RE HERE TO SUPPORT YOU ON YOUR JOURNEY TO WELL BEING, HEALING, AND PERSONAL GROWTH.

An Integrated Approach: At Alta Therapy, we are not just therapists; we are individuals who share your passion for extreme sports. Our therapists bring their personal experiences, professional expertise, and deep understanding of the challenges you face. We are committed to creating a therapeutic alliance based on trust, empathy, and mutual understanding, ensuring that you feel heard and supported throughout your therapeutic journey.

The Benefits of Psychotherapy for Extreme Athletes

☑️ Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) A type of talk therapy, CBT examines a client’s thought patterns and how they influence behavior and choices. CBT helps clients pinpoint how some of their thoughts and behaviors may hold more historic weight and may not be helpful to them now. Over time, clients can use CBT to develop more helpful, accurate thinking patterns and coping behaviors that can reduce symptoms and improve quality of life.

☑️ Exposure Therapy Exposure therapy can help clients confront and overcome their fears. Exposure therapy helps clients break patterns of avoidance by creating a safe environment in which he or she can face what they fear.

☑️ Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) A person’s life experiences and wellbeing heavily depend on the “story” that everyone tells himself or herself. With NET, a client can develop a fuller, more positive life story that appropriately contextualizes the traumatic event and how it has influenced him or her.

☑️ Psychodynamic Trauma Therapy Psychodynamic trauma therapy focuses on different factors that may affect or cause a client’s PTSD symptoms, such as experiences and coping mechanisms. This type of therapy focuses mostly on the client’s unconscious mind and how it influences behavior. Here, the therapist helps a client recognize and process painful, unconscious feelings so they can be released instead of being avoided.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD):

The effects of trauma and what it looks like (flashbacks, images, nightmares, avoidance of place and people that remind of the event – this is where we see people stop engaging in their sport for longer periods of time, or not coming around the community as much, irritability and triggers, which look different from the sort of irritability of depression (we’ll get into that in a moment) but more so jumpy, reactionary, and dissociative (which is like a tuning out and fogginess at the same time). 

If this persists for longer than six months, we typically have a bigger need for professional support because the person’s difficulties begin to compound with unhealthy coping mechanisms and can lead to bigger issues. 

While there are many merits to extreme and alternative sports, including eco-centricity, increased resilience and mental flexibility, Alta Therapy also understands that some individuals have undealt traumas prior to joining their extreme sport (ES) of choice. If vulnerabilities exacerbate while in the sport, that can directly impact performance and may lead to dire consequences. 

So many of us regard our activities as a form of therapy which psychologically, we know can lead to feeling like you’re solving your deeper issues but are really engaging in a process where the chemicals secreted in the brain by way of the activity give a momentary relief.

General Worry and Anxiety:

Conquering fear and anxiety are fundamental aspects of participating in extreme sports. Through psychotherapy, we help you understand and manage these emotions, allowing you to approach your activities with greater confidence and control. By addressing the root causes of fear and anxiety, we can help you build a solid foundation of emotional strength, empowering you to push your limits and achieve your goals. Your anxiety does not have to pertain to sports for you to receive support. This is a general psychotherapy program that is dedicated to the holistic wellbeing of the extreme sports community.

Normative Grief/Complicated Grief: 

Grief is a natural response to losing a person, part of ourselves, an animal or even a place. Although we more easily recognize the natural process of losing another human being, ANY time someone feels a sense of loss and longing from what they were attached to and no longer has access to, grief is bound to cause a state of distress.

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression

Acceptance

How the loss occurred, our attachment, and the degree of longing will influence the way we experience grief. Sudden, such as impacts, strikes, and suicides versus foreseen death will set of a different series of brain activity than losing a person we know will soon pass, like a terminally ill or elderly loved one. Even the experience of terminal illness is different than natural death from old age. 

☑️ Identity Disruption feeling like a part of you has died (this is especially important for teammates and people who jump together frequently/work closely on projects together in the sport). 

☑️ Marked Sense of Disbelief about the loss or death: more formally and popularly known as denial

☑️ Avoidance of reminders that the person is dead or the loss which occurred, or avoidance of places (not going back to my beloved jiujitsu academy after moving out of state and after covid. I would have preferred to never see it again than to face the reality that a new chapter in my life had caused the separation)

☑️ Intense emotional pain

☑️ Difficulty integrating socially, even athletically again.

☑️ Emotional numbness the longer we are in these sports the more we habituate to loss. 

☑️ Intense feelings of loneliness and detachment from others

☑️ Feeling that life is meaningless Every person will experience at least some of the symptoms of grieving, but there are many subjective reasons as to why some of us feel some symptoms, while others do not.

Other areas of support Alta Therapy covers are:

Depression • Panic Disorder • Disordered Eating • Drug and/or Alcohol Misuse • Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder

What if people have feelings about getting diagnosed? 

Some athletes are known to pride themselves in maintaining composure under stress. It’s seen as a power, an ability that has rendered some substantive results. We can see this as a close relationship to modes of survival and survival tactics. We feel powerful when we compartmentalize our difficult experiences. A diagnosis is NOT the point in this psychotherapy practice. It’s not the main reason or goal. 

We try to find a healthy balance between the performing athlete and the true essence of a person, the human, outside of their sport. If there’s a diagnosis, it’s just language that helps us get closer to implementing tools to help. Most people are generally relieved to receive a diagnosis because it puts a name to the looming inexplicable sensations they’ve been feeling. The weekly action plans, where skills are built, tend to help the person dedicate appropriate time to managing their mental and emotional difficulties, so they hopefully have enough bandwidth for recreation and other necessary dimensions of wellness, like work and family.

If you’re interested, we would love to hear from you.