Here is one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn over the course of my career. It is often that I become very righteous. It comes from something that I like about myself. I have a strong moral center, I believe in right and wrong and I therefore want to do the right thing.
That does mean, however, that when someone is doing something other than what I’ve landed upon at that moment, I can be quite judgmental. If there is a right, then there must be a wrong. Over the years, I have learned to think less black and white while holding on to my own judgments about what is right and wrong. I’ve learned that there is more than one absolute right in any given situation.
That is not what I want to write about today. This blog will be about a very different situation, one where no matter how nuanced a view I take, I know that someone else is in the wrong. In this case, I am thinking about something I have written about a lot in the past but less so recently. These are the abusers, the people who have been excommunicated from the sport, and those that remain unpunished but not still occupy the same category in my mind.
My righteousness used to tell me that it was fair to dehumanize these people. Their unconscionable behavior meant they didn’t deserve empathy, but that they needed righteous punishment. Now, I still think actions should have consequences, and consequences are often punishments.
But I also find myself trying to empathize even with those I really, strongly, dislike. And I want to explain why I found myself drawn to it, and why I suggest you, too, cultivate empathy towards the people you most dislike.
Empathy is pragmatic
Empathy is perhaps one of the most misunderstood concepts. Many people perceive empathy as soft, squishy and subjective. I’m here to suggest that empathy is far more pragmatic than it’s popular reputation.
To start, let me repeat my definition of empathy to contrast it with what I think it often gets twisted into. I believe that empathy is at its core about understanding. It is accepting that another person’s emotions and thoughts are real.
In that way, empathy is far from subjective. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Lack of empathy is a form of denial of other people’s existence.
I don’t think most people misunderstand the reaction to having your existence denied. When people perceive that their experience is being invalidated, they usually resist hard. They go to war with whatever armor they have and seek to eliminate their opposition.
Look at current frothing political debates and you can easily find “both sides” arguing that the other is lacking in empathy for their experience.
So if we accept that empathy is understanding, what is the purpose of understanding? Here is another moment where people get twisted because they equate understanding with agreement. If you accept that someone has thoughts and feelings, you have to agree with them. That couldn’t be farther from the truth!
The point of understanding is that your chances of influencing someone else in any positive way is completely blocked without it. If you do not start from a point of understanding, your options for changing their behavior-the way that they act on those emotions and thoughts, come down to raw punishment or intimidation.
Which brings me back to why I have cultivated empathy for people who have committed the gravest transgressions in my profession- those that have abused children. The empathy, in this case, is pragmatic. I would like to see if there is a way we can make abuse less likely to happen through means other than simply intimidating a coach with punishment and punishing after a transgression.
Punishment seems clean, lacking in ambiguity, and is far easier than taking an empathetic lens. But I have to question whether it is truly achieving what it sets out to achieve- a better environment for athletes in our sport. Perhaps, marginally so, but we can do better.
What is Actually going on
When I look at coaches that have abused athletes, almost all of the following is always true:
Concurrent, untreated mental health problems. The key part of this is “untreated”, not the mental health diagnoses themselves.
Substance abuse issues. Often instead of treatment, coaches who abuse children are “managing” through abuse of substances
Loneliness/social isolation from peers. Many coaches often have jobs where the coaching becomes their whole life, and the odd hours make it hard for them to socialize outside of the job.
Abuse as an athlete- they were abused by a coach and have not reckoned with it. They may still revere the coach that abused them and seek to rationalize the abuse that they received.
Lack of intervention when small transgressions occur. Without boundaries set well back from “abuse”, behavior escalates up to abuse unchecked.
If I go through that list of five, I think the last one is probably best addressed by the previous era of abuse management in sport. We have established firmer boundaries for what is acceptable behavior for coaches and although some perceive it as micro-management, I do think it mitigates abuse.
However, I think we are failing miserably on 1-3. Most coaches I know are not and have never been treated for mental health issues. Now I know there are probably people saying “but what if you don’t have issues?”. I think this is basically unrealized stigma. Saying you have never had a mental health issue is like claiming you’ve never gotten sick in your entire life.
Likewise I don’t judge people for drinking- if you were just at CSCAA and had a cocktail in my presence while I stayed sober please remain calm. I do think that drinking, or other drug use in place of working on your mental health is a problem. Only you can judge for yourself if that is the case.
What I do with coaches that I work with is to try and improve their mental health in a proactive manner rather than a rehabilitative pathway. I think rehabilitation is great- I also coach so I know why we don’t have physical therapists training Olympians. People who are competitive and self-improvement oriented often benefit from being challenged in other ways.
If you’re considering coaching, reach out and drop me a line.