For the first time I used BWRT in the realms of sports enhancement last week with a young football player struggling with anxiety whenever he thought about his next match. It was getting so bad he was starting to get depressed as he was not enjoying the build up to the matches even days before.
In our session as we dug deeper into his presenting symptom of anxiety, we found he was actually anxious about a match he played months ago. He was surprised to realise he had been running the bad match over and over in his head. In that match he had a bad performance and was substituted at half time. The fear of the past was clouding his future.
We needed to rewire the negative emotion running from the memory of the bad game through a positive feeling so he would get better thoughts about playing football in the present.
We took our time to figure out exactly the worst part of the memory of the bad game and to understand how he wants to feel instead in future times when he thinks about playing football.
We did a few rounds of BWRT, getting the intensity of anxiety right, then replacing it with the neutral feeling to the point where it did not bother him anymore. He was most surprised of all when he said he found it hard even to connect to feelings of anxiety anymore.
I look forward to continuing to use BWRT to aid in sports enhancement – my true passion.
