Important

• Nature of Stress – Stress is a dynamic process and experience produced through a person-situation relationship that is perceived as taxing or exceeding resources; situations themselves are not inherently stressful.
• Stress vs. Emotion – Studying specific discrete emotions (e.g., anxiety, anger, joy) tells a more informative and complete story about a person’s adaptational struggle than simply looking at the broad concept of stress.
• Role of Cognitive Appraisal – The experience of stress and emotion is heavily dictated by primary appraisal (evaluating what is at stake) and secondary appraisal (evaluating what can be done and the resources available).
• Types of Stressors – Athletes face acute or chronic stressors that can be competitive, non-competitive, or organizational. Furthermore, unexpected stressors (which an athlete cannot plan for) are typically perceived as more threatening than expected stressors.
• Stress-Injury Link – According to the Stress-Injury Model (SIM), psychosocial variables increase an athlete’s vulnerability or promote resilience to injury primarily through their linkage with stress and the resulting stress response.
• Dangerous Sport Attitudes – Sporting cultures that promote “acting tough and always giving 110%” or beliefs that “injured athletes are worthless” can blur the line between normal discomfort and injury pain, encourage athletes to play through severe injuries, and negatively isolate injured athletes.
• Psychological Responses to Injury – Athletes face a dynamic range of psychological responses to being injured, notably experiencing identity loss, fear, anxiety, a lack of confidence, and performance decrements.
• Benefits of Injury – While traumatic, athletic injuries can yield long-term benefits such as profound personal growth, psychologically-based performance enhancement, and physical or technical development.
• Career Transition – Career termination is potentially one of the most traumatic experiences an athlete will encounter, often resulting in an immediate loss of purpose, identity, and confidence as they transition away from a highly structured team environment.

Core Concepts

• Stress: An experience that is produced through a person–situation relationship that is perceived as taxing or exceeding the person’s resources.
• Stress Response: Our physiological, cognitive, affective, and behavioural reactions when we are faced with heavy demands.
• Primary Appraisal: An evaluation of what is at stake for a person in a situation.
• Secondary Appraisal: An evaluation of what can be done in the situation, which depends on an individual’s available resources, level of perceived control, and expectations regarding the future.
• Harm/Loss Appraisal: An evaluation of a situation in which psychological damage has already been done and the loss is irrevocable.
• Threat Appraisal: An appraisal of a situation where an individual anticipates harm might occur or is likely to occur.
• Challenge Appraisal: An appraisal that although there are obstacles in the way, they can be successfully overcome.
• Coping: Cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage specific external or internal demands (and conflicts between them) that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person.
• Problem-Focused Coping: Coping efforts that help people change the actual situation, such as seeking information, changing tactics, or confronting a teammate.
• Emotion-Focused Coping: Coping efforts to change the way a situation is attended to or interpreted, in order to deal with the emotions that arise.
• Avoidance Coping: Coping efforts in which athletes attempt to physically or mentally remove themselves from the stressful situation.
• Emotion Regulation: The processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions.
• Coping Effectiveness: A decision about whether or not a coping strategy helped to deal with the problem and/or the distress associated with the problem.
• The Miracle Question: A solution-focused counseling technique that asks an athlete to imagine a miracle occurred overnight solving their problems, shifting their focus toward identifying the first signs of recovery.

Theories and Frameworks

• Cognitive–Motivational–Relational Theory (CMRT): A theory by Richard Lazarus identifying 15 core emotions, each with a core relational theme that describes the essence of the relationship between a person and their environment.
• Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes: Proposes that challenge appraisals are experienced when individuals believe they have the resources to cope, whereas threat appraisals occur when demands are perceived to exceed resources.
• Process Model of Emotion Regulation: A model consisting of five types of emotion regulation strategies: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation.
• Stress-Injury Model (SIM): A framework showing that psychosocial variables influence injury outcomes via the stress response.
• Integrated Model of Psychological Response to Sport Injury and Rehabilitation: A dynamic model demonstrating how personal and situational factors influence an athlete’s cognitive appraisal of an injury, which in turn drives their behavioural and emotional responses.
• 5-Stage Model: Adapted from Kübler-Ross’s stages of grief, this model maps an injured athlete’s response through Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.
• Conceptual Model of Adaptation to Career Transition: A model examining the causes of career termination, factors related to adaptation, available resources, and interventions that determine the ultimate quality of the career transition (distress vs. healthy).

Notable Individuals

• Richard Lazarus: Prominent researcher who developed the Cognitive-Motivational-Relational Theory (CMRT) and emphasized that stress and emotion depend on cognitive appraisals.
• James Gross: Proposed the process model of emotion regulation to describe the ways in which people consciously or automatically manage their emotions.
• Williams & Andersen: Developed the Stress-Injury Model (SIM) which explores the linkage between psychosocial factors, stress, and injury vulnerability.
• Petitpas & Danish: Identified key psychological responses to athletic injuries including identity loss, fear, and lack of confidence.
• Wiese-Bjornstal, Smith, Shaffer & Morrey: Developed the Integrated Model of Psychological Response to Injury and Rehabilitation.
• Hardy & Crace: Adapted the 5-Stage model of grief to athletic injuries.
• Taylor & Ogilvie: Developed the Conceptual Model of Adaptation to Career Transition.
• Marcus Stroman: Major League Baseball pitcher whose rehabilitation journey exemplifies the use of confidence, positive self-talk, goal setting, and social support to facilitate physical and mental recovery.