4 Reasons Why “Picture Someone You Hate” is Something Coaches Should Think About Before Saying
Content warning: discussion of sexual assault and complex trauma
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I have been fighting for most of my life, but maybe not the kind of fighting you’re thinking about when you read that—I wasn’t starting fights on the playground, I wasn’t one of those teens who got into fistfights in high school all the time. My kind of fighting was the silent kind, the kind that is the constant buzzing of a nervous system always on alert, always watching for danger, always leaping to take care of others so the peace would be kept.
It was lonely. No one realized how hard I fought. I was always the “innocent” one, the one who “lived under a rock.” People didn’t realize that I didn’t know the latest pop culture or innuendos because all my energy was focused on surviving.
Then martial arts entered my life, and I was introduced to the joy and challenge of fighting as an art. It was the first time I had really felt free from that fight for survival. Ironic, isn’t it - by learning how to fight, I was able to learn how to stop fighting.
Imagine, then, what I felt when my coach told me to picture someone I hate when training. For me, it shattered my peace every time I heard it - the real world like a rock through a window - and all those broken shards would grate at me for the rest of the class.
Certainly, some people may find picturing someone they hate helpful, and what follows is not a refutation or a denial of that. Rather, I will give reasons from my experience why we need to be thoughtful about our approach and our words. So, if I step into the role of a coach right now, I am going to give four reasons why coaches should think before saying “picture someone you hate.”
1. We are potentially bringing up trauma for our students.
In actual fact, considering that research shows that the majority of adults have experienced at lease one type of adverse childhood experience before age 18 (1), that 1 in 3 women will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime (2), and that sexual minorities, gender diverse individuals, and Indigenous women face an increased risk of violence (3), we are more than likely bringing up trauma. When mental health therapists work with people who have experienced trauma, it involves a lot of preparation beforehand so that individuals have the tools to cope when going through their trauma - developing grounding and coping skills, resourcing in Somatic Experiencing, the Calm Place in Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Moreover, working to heal trauma also involves having an established therapeutic relationship in which the person trusts the therapist and consents to the process. In contrast, in martial arts clubs, students often come to their first ever martial arts class to face a coach they have never met in a space they have never seen and are encouraged to think about their triggers without even knowing the coping skills they can use in that space. Is it any wonder there are so many people who never come back after their first class?
2. We may be reinforcing the trauma responses of our students.
From my clinical experience with the impacts of complex trauma and what we know about helping folks manage anxiety, encouraging students to potentially bring up trauma and then getting them to beat it up on a bag, I would suspect, might further reinforce the trauma response. To explain, if people are triggered and are in a hyperaroused state, the thinking part of their brain is not engaged. They are fully in their downstairs brain, just trying to fight and survive. In that moment, they may be reexperiencing their trauma. To me, it would seem that having people hit the bag in that state would further reinforce that trauma response as being needed, much like avoidance sends a message to the brain that the thing you are avoiding actually is dangerous, whether, in fact, it is or not. It is all based on the stress response, and if we are encouraging our students to activate their stress response and put themselves in a state where they feel like they are in danger, pushing them to hit the bag in that state will send the message to the brain that they are, indeed, in danger.
3. Telling our students to “picture someone you hate” disregards the individual reasons why people train martial arts.
Not everyone is there because they want to express anger. For example, some might be there because it makes their bodies feel good. For others, they might be there for the community found in martial arts spaces, or because they want to compete, or because they want to improve their health. Presenting a single option arguably has the potential to be very alienating for many students.
4. We are missing out on an opportunity to build our students up.
Complex trauma impacts a child’s self-development - their sense of self, their identity, their feeling of competence and worthiness in the world - often leaving them feeling at their core that they are bad, that they are not enough, that they are not loveable. Many folks with complex trauma are drawn to martial arts, so you likely have many people in your classes with this background. When we tell people to picture someone they hate, we are putting them back into a space where they may have felt helpless, reinforcing all of the terrible things they came to believe about themselves.
Instead, focusing on helping people feel more powerful in their bodies has the potential to be more beneficial for their mental health. Affirmations and mantras while training can be powerful ways to slowly rewire the brain from trauma pathways - I am not enough - to new pathways that support their wellbeing - I am enough.
My favorite affirmations and mantras as as follows:
I am powerful.
I am confident.
I am strong.
I am enough.
When I started using these intentionally, it was a game-changer for my training and my mental health. My self-confidence improved, I had greater self-compassion, and I was able to train more effectively because I was not so anxious all the time.
Choice is important
Overall, the question I am left puzzling with from a clinical perspective is does visualizing your problems help you work through a response that was frozen in your nervous system? Or does it reinforce the pathways in your brain that identify that person or thing as dangerous? I don’t know the answer to that, and the answer might be different depending on the individual experiencing it and the setting in which they are training. However, I think the important element here is choice. As coaches, it is important to give our students choice and allow them to listen to the wisdom of their own bodies. For some, that might indeed be picturing someone they hate on the bag.
For me, I had been fighting for survival my whole life. I didn’t want to be reminded of that in the gym, where I had come to escape it. What I needed was acceptance of myself and where I was at. What I needed was to learn to stop fighting, to stop trying to please everybody, to stop trying to make the world okay so I wouldn’t be in danger. Martial arts taught me acceptance in a very experiential and embodied way, and through that, I was able to start building myself up with affirmations and mantras, until I was able to find joy eventually. In learning how to fight in the gym, I learned how to let go of feeling like I always had to fight for survival in my life. I was able to do this eventually because I made the choice for myself to stop listening to advice I knew wasn’t right for me.
What can you do?
For coaches, try these things if it feels right for you and your students:
Invite your students to think of their own intention for training.
Invite students to identify an affirmation to focus on building themselves up.
Invite and welcome all feelings that come up while training.
Be clear about your role and your competencies. You are not a therapist on the mats, even if you are off of them. Encourage your students to connect with a professional so they can develop strategies that they can use on the mats.
For students, try these things if it feels right for you:
If your coach suggests something that your body says is not right for you, it is okay to listen to your body. Sometimes it is not safe to overtly disobey your coach, so come up with strategies of resistance that work for you. For me, this was using affirmations rather than picturing someone I hated. My coach didn’t know the difference.
Thinks of affirmations or mantras before class and use them with intention, if this feels okay for you.
Seek professional help when you need it. Martial arts can bring up a lot for people, which can lead to harm or healing, depending on the supports you have to facilitate that.
That’s it for me this month! Let me know your thoughts, and, if it feels right for you, please feel free to share.
See you on the mats!
Nicole
References
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/fastfact.html
https://www.who.int/news/item/09-03-2021-devastatingly-pervasive-1-in-3-women-globally-experience-violence
https://canadianwomen.org/the-facts/sexual-assault-harassment/