BU Alum in Paris Keeping Olympians’ Minds Sharp and Healthy
Karen Lo (Wheelock’13) on how she gives elite athletes a mental edge
Japan players huddle ahead of the second half of Paris Olympic men’s rugby sevens Pool A match against South Africa on July 25, 2024, at Stade de France in Saint-Denis, near Paris. Sports psychologist Karen Lo (Wheelock’13) says she emphasizes to her clients that “there is so much more life to be lived after the Olympics. Athletes always see the Olympics as the end, and go, ‘What if I screw this up and I have no other chances?’ But it’s not, and we should never frame the Olympics this way.” Photo by Kyodo via AP Images
BU Alum in Paris Keeping Olympians’ Minds Sharp and Healthy
Karen Lo (Wheelock’13) on how she gives elite athletes a mental edge
The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are underway, and as many as two billion people worldwide are watching. Fans’ expectations for the athletes could not be higher: perform at an elite level and bring home Olympic medals for their country.
But for athletes, who are almost all young, and sometimes teenagers, managing the weight of these expectations—along with their expectations of themselves and those of their coaches—requires an extraordinary amount of mental toughness. Decorated American Olympians like gymnast Simone Biles and swimmer Michael Phelps have opened up in recent years about the mental toll of maintaining such a high level of performance at such a young age. Biles notably pulled out of the all-around competition at the 2021 Tokyo games to focus on her well-being, after losing confidence in her ability to perform one of her patented and dangerous stunts. And the retired Phelps says therapy helped him overcome debilitating depression and anxiety during his swimming career, pulling him out of a spiral that could have killed him.
“I can help somebody else because I know that the feelings that I have, I had, what I go through every single day, every single week, every single month. I know I’m not alone,” Phelps said of his desire to share.
Phelps and Biles have helped bring athlete mental health into sharper focus internationally, says sports psychologist Karen Lo (Wheelock’13), who has worked with professional athletes in her native Hong Kong and across Asia for more than a decade through her practice, Inner Edge. Lo’s clients have included horse racing jockeys, fencers, golfers, swimmers, squash players, and soccer players. Lo is currently in Paris for the summer games supporting two Olympians from Hong Kong, who wish to remain anonymous because of cultural stigmas in the East about using psychology.
“The labels we have on our athletes go beyond just being strong-willed and tough,” Lo says. “These labels don’t make them feel safe to find someone for help even when they need to.”
BU Today spoke with Lo about how she prepares her clients mentally to perform on a stage like the Olympics, why she’s hopeful about this newfound emphasis on athlete mental health, and the work left to be done.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q&A
with Karen Lo
Bostonia: How do you define sports psychology, and why is it important?
We normally define sports psychology as “the mental side of sport”: confidence, setting goals, using self-talk to be able to perform under pressure. These skills are the foundation of how we get better, which are scientifically proven. But there’s a lot more to sports psychology than just “mental skills.” It’s understanding the contexts that affect the way we think and behave in and out of sport that are also equally important, and I think are less visible to the public eye. Why are some athletes more motivated than others, even if they are equally disciplined? If an athlete has a certain personality trait which is not conducive to that sport, does that imply they should quit? How is their sport participation affecting their identity? How is their perfectionism getting in the way of their performance, and how did they develop that? These are all important questions to answer before we can actually help an athlete get better.
Bostonia: Are athletes today more mindful of their own mental health or mindsets than they’ve been in the past, and why or why not?
I think athletes—or just the sports community in general—are a lot more mindful than in the past, but we still have a long way to go. Everything happens in contexts. How do we cultivate healthy environments, while we are supporting the individuals at the same time? What are the coaches’ stances on mental health, for instance? Are we in a system that allows for athletes to be vulnerable? If the environment isn’t conducive, I’d say we can only go so far, even if we teach our athletes to be mindful. So a lot of my work is also trying to change the high-performance environment, when I can.
Bostonia: What have we learned from Olympians like Simone Biles and Michael Phelps, who have been open about their mental health struggles after achieving great success at a young age?
I think this is a great start, especially to our local community [in Hong Kong and China]. Psychology is still, to this day, very stigmatized culturally. I’ve worked before with a soccer team of expats and local players, and local players would tell me, “You’re hired because we have expats,” or “This is for foreigners, not for us.” We need athletes of all ethnicities to talk about [mental health]. I think since Tokyo 2020, our local community has started to properly discuss issues like these. I still think, however, that we’re not at that stage where athletes can openly discuss them and say, “I’m struggling mentally. Let me go see a psychologist or counselor.”
A good starting point would be to understand sports psychology in terms of gaining mental flexibility—to learn how to actively adapt to different situations and increase our abilities to handle difficulties with ease. We’re still stuck at that stage where we think athletes should just “suck it up” or “push through” when things go bad. I was grateful for [Hong Kong] world-record holder and Olympic swimmer Siobhan Haughey, who said after she medaled in Tokyo 2020, “80 percent of my race was mental.” The mental part of the sentence certainly gained some traction, which is far more convincing when I say it! That’s how and when we can get the conversation started on athlete mental health. To me, the key to getting athletes to talk about mental health is to speak about mental flexibility, so that we’re focused on getting better, and not just [focused] on our deficits. Issues like perfectionism, motivation, burnout, and feeling depressed would then pop up in those conversations.
Bostonia: Some of these Olympic athletes are achieving their greatest life moment at 16, 18, 22 years old. How should athletes think about staying balanced from that day forward, when it may feel like everything else pales in comparison to their Olympic glory?
I think this is when my identity work with athletes comes in. Athletic identity is often tied to the sport performance. I try to have these identity conversations very early on with my athletes—even months before the Olympics. We try to explore the self (“Who am I outside of sport?”), talk about the reality of the situation (“How strong is my athletic identity?”), and we continue these conversations after they have medaled, without taking away the current spotlight or moment. For some, the achievement is probably all they can think about. If so, how does this make them feel and what can they do that would be helpful for the identities they have? For others, the spotlight actually gets them anxious, because they start dealing with so many more expectations from the community and they feel anxious if or when they are unable to perform (again). This happens when the spotlight extends beyond the Olympics, especially for those who are sponsored by global brands. These are conversations that we have early, so that we are well prepped for the “greatest life moments” to happen—or not.
My latest book (published in Chinese this month, just in time for the Olympics), Sport Psychology 2: Are You Just an Athlete?, illustrates exactly that. I wrote this partly because I knew that at one point or another our athletes are going to struggle with identities outside of sport!
Bostonia: What, specifically, do you do to care for Olympic athletes during the games? What about afterward, once the spotlight has shut off?
I’d say in most cases the prep work is done. Being present, to me, is the most important thing. The encouragement you give is probably no different from the encouragement you’ve always been giving to them, except you try and weave in things you’ve discussed over the past year to let them know that we’ve both done the hard work. Of course, it also depends on what the athletes want during the games—the night before, the day of—whether it’s a meditation session, a conversation about nerves, the “what-ifs,” etc. I also try to emphasize that there is so much more life to be lived after the Olympics. Athletes always see the Olympics as the end, and go, “What if I screw this up and I have no other chances?” But it’s not, and we should never frame the Olympics this way.
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