How EMDR can help you improve your sports performance:

  • Get past the last loss or a big loss.
  • Get over the time you let your team down.
  • Get past an injury that keeps bothering you when you think about it.
  • Help with focus and concentration.
  • Move beyond getting angry in the sport – at the ball, other participants, at yourself.
  • Improve focus and concentration

Sports are a great example of the need for balance between mental focus, physical endurance and using emotions to regulate between the two.  EMDR helps improve focus and concentration by helping you put things behind you and helping thinking to settle down and desensitizing emotions.
If you get angry easily during a game or a match, there is a good chance that negatively charged emotions are getting in your way.  EMDR can help clear those out.

In addition, EMDR helps you deal with distractions that take away from your ability to focus and concentrate.  There are two types of distractions, internal and external.

Manage internal distractions

Internal distractions are the type that go on inside your head.  Thinking too much, worry and getting down on yourself are a few examples.

EMDR helps stop internal distractions because it:

  • Releases the negative emotional patterns that feed into feeling bad;
  • Allows ‘letting go’ of past events without always thinking about them and having them bring you down;
  • Frees you up to allow you to be in the present moment of each event as it is experienced – making success more likely.
  • Teaches you how to deal with failure

Most, if not all sports, have the percentages of successful completion set such that ‘failure’ is an inherent part of the process to achieve success.
In baseball, for example, a good batter bats in the 300s, which means they get hits about 1/3 of the time.  That means that 2/3s of the times batters are not successful – no hits.  To be even an average batter means that you will hit the ball and get on bass way-less than half the time.
Life is like that, too.  It’s not about accepting failure, it’s about learning how to mange yourself when let-downs happen.
You have to learn to manage failure because it can become an internal distraction; for example, you start thinking about it all the time, or at just the wrong times.

Managing ‘Failure’ is an ‘internal’ distraction because it plays on your mind.

Manage external distractions

People yelling at you, trying to harass you and make too much noise are examples of external distractions.

  • EMDR helps manage external distractions because it helps you get perspective on what is important.
  • With EMDR you become desensitized to your own internal emotional ‘triggers’ and, in turn, become less likely to be triggered by others.

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Dr. Amber Quaranta-Leech, LPC-S

Amber holds a PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision from Regent University. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor in both Texas and Oklahoma and holds Supervisor credential for Texas. Amber is an EMDRIA consultant and trainer. She has over a decade of experience in the trauma field in work with uniformed services, domestic violence, childhood trauma and abuse, and recent mass trauma events. Amber provides consultation for EMDRIA certification, for consultants-in-training, and supervision for LPC-Associates. Amber continues to research the benefits of EMDR therapy with a variety of populations. Her goal is to help build strong clinicians who are well versed in trauma interventions to better support their clients. Amber sees a limited number of clients with a focus on trauma work, she is also a Certified Career Counselor and Certified through EAGALA to provide equine-assisted therapy. 

Dr. Jose Carbajal, LCSW

Dr. Jose Carbajal, a U.S. Army veteran, earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work and a master’s in theological studies from Baylor University, and a Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Texas at Arlington. With over 15 years of clinical experience and extensive teaching experience, Jose specializes in trauma, sexual abuse recovery, domestic violence, and substance abuse. His research focuses on trauma interventions, neuroscience, and faith. He is EMDR Certified, an Approved Consultant, and an EMDRIA Approved Trainer, with numerous publications and professional presentations to his name.

Dr. Amanda Martin, LMFT-S, LPC, BCN

Amanda Martin holds a PhD in Family Therapy and is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Supervisor, and EMDRIA Approved Consultant. With over 14 years of experience, she specializes in trauma therapy for individuals and families in residential and outpatient settings. Amanda also provides supervision for EMDR certification, EMDR consultants-in-training, and LMFT-Associates. Her mission is to help people find a healthy, joyful, and fulfilling path in life. Her warm, supportive, and interactive counseling style incorporates Symbolic Experiential Therapy, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, EMDR, HeartMath, Animal-Assisted Therapy, Neurofeedback, and Collaborative Problem Solving.