Overcoming Sports Addiction: Hypnosis for Balance in Your Body

Sports are "so hot right now." It's not surprising, I myself love crossfit immensely and think it's cool to feel and look so strong. Unfortunately, you can also slip into sports.

Basically, you can do anything in life, but with some moderation.

The same is true for sports. You can read more about overcoming sports addiction in this blog article.

Noticing sports addiction

If you find yourself compulsively exercising, even if you have been injured, or experiencing social problems as a result, chances are you have become addicted to exercise. To the " runners high" so to speak 😉.

Even if you feel guilty when you can’t exercise once in a while, this can be a sign that you have an exercise addiction.

It can also be recognized by rigidly sticking to your exercise schedule, despite the fact that you may be able to go to a wedding or other party of your friends or despite the fact that you may have to work.

You may even suffer from withdrawal symptoms if you can't stick to your exercise schedule.

An exercise addiction isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Exercising is, after all, very healthy, but if you overexert your body and experience mental health issues when you’re not exercising, there may be more going on. It’s possible that you’re using exercise as a kind of “crutch” to avoid dealing with other problems in your life.

A study on causes of sports addiction invited people who exercised more than 10 hours per week. 23.6% of the participants were rated as people who could suffer from sports addiction.

So exercising more than 10 hours a week doesn't automatically mean you suffer from sports addiction. How you deal with it when you can't exercise for a while, get sick, suffer an injury or have another obligation during your regular exercise schedule are better things to pay attention to. With that, you check whether you are suffering from sports addiction.

If exercising just doesn't make you feel good and you continue anyway, this can also signal addiction.

There is a difference between going through your pain threshold while exercising and not feeling well mentally because you simply exercise too much.

Then you can also see (or feel) if it wouldn't be better for you to exercise for 1 hour every day, still giving you 7 hours of exercise per week. Which is still more than the government recommends for a healthy lifestyle.

People with a sports addiction, just like those with a drug addiction, are more likely to suffer from depression, ADHD, or to have had a traumatic childhood.

Then again, if you suffer from depression this does not make you a sports addict, because in the group with no risk of sports addiction there were also people with depressive symptoms.

In addition, exercise addiction is often associated with an eating disorder, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia. In such cases, it is often a symptom of another underlying issue.

However, you can also have a sports addiction without having an eating disorder[1]. Ultimately, about 13% of the participants at risk for sports addiction also suffered from an eating disorder.

Both men and women can suffer from sports addictions. However, are you a young woman, with a normal BMI and still not satisfied with your body? Then you are again at a higher risk of developing a sports addiction[2].

It's also not surprising that you can become addicted to exercise when you're not feeling well. After all, it puts you in a better mood, reduces depressive symptoms (if you do it right), improves your self-confidence, enhances your feeling that you can do something, and somehow reduces everyday problems and anxieties (source 2).

Sports performance if you are a sports addict

However, with addiction, you don't make your body healthier, you overload it and thus actually break down your body.

An obsession with sports doesn’t always help you perform better. After all, your body also needs rest .

In fact, research shows that elite athletes who suffer from sports addiction perform worse than athletes who are not addicted to sports. Performance actually got worse in 4 years in some cases and if there was any progress, it was very small (5%) compared to the other groups who improved up to 37%.

The study examined athletic athletes with a specialization for "track and field" sports (source 2).

Your identity and sports addiction

What is interesting is people who profile themselves as athletes. So you say you are an athlete, are more likely to suffer from sports addiction than people who do not name it.

This is partly because you might worry that people will judge you if you don’t look like an athlete. That emotional social pressure can lead you to exercise more than is actually beneficial.

Dancers also suffer from this, as they not only want to perform well, but also want to look aesthetically pleasing. This makes dance attractive(er) to watch (source 2).

Of all sports, endurance sports are the most addictive (source 2). This may also be why people talk about the "runners high."

The annoying thing, though, is that recent research (2023) shows that people who started endurance sports early in life, do them for decades and are older than 50 suffer more from arteriosclerosis in their coronary arteries, than people who play other sports[3].

In addition, certain events can trigger a sports addiction, such as losing something ( your job or relationship), being bullied, or something else beyond your control that causes a great deal of pain[4].

Overcoming sports addiction

To treat a sports addiction, it is important to change illogical beliefs about sports and to promote total self-acceptance.

This can be done with cognitive behavioral training (source 4) and that in turn can be combined with hypnosis to enhance or accelerate effects.

It is then used to change wrong beliefs about sports to correct and helpful beliefs.

A hypnotherapist can help people with an addiction to sports by identifying what beliefs cause you to prefer exercising to going to the wedding of one of your friends.

Or why you keep exercising when it also bothers you or when it makes you cry.

In a preliminary consultation, a person with a sports addiction can talk more about how the addiction is affecting his or her life and what he or she thinks is causing the addiction.

This gives a hypnotherapist tools to select techniques that help change beliefs about the importance of sports.

After the person is put into hypnosis, then the therapy can really begin.

So that therapy can address:

1. Your identity (if you put yourself down as an athlete)
2. Traumatic events.
3. Feelings you sport away.

Hypnosis for identity change

If you identify yourself primarily as an athlete, this can lead you to put pressure on yourself to exercise more than is wise. In that case, a hypnotherapist can help you bring other aspects of your identity more to the forefront.

Because, of course, you are more than just an athlete. You are also someone's partner, friend, girlfriend, family, parent. You have a particular job, you (hopefully) enjoy other things too.

With parts work, an advanced technique, other parts of your identity are made larger so that your identity becomes a beautiful whole and "athlete-ness" is given a less important position.

Then you can also rest when your body needs it, and in that time you can do something else fun with family or friends, for example.

Hypnosis for processing trauma

A divorce, a loss, or being bullied are actually very traumatic events, and they cause pain. So, trying to “work out” the pain isn’t always healthy. While you’re exercising, you feel good, but in between workouts, the pain returns.

Hypnotherapy helps you work through that pain, so you feel good outside of sports and don't necessarily need sports to feel good. Then you can at least rest during injuries.

For example, hypnosis can be used to reduce the symptoms of PTSD. In addition, the story you tell yourself about the trauma can be changed, new meaning can be given to your life after the trauma, and you can address how you will deal with the trauma in the future[5].

Hypnosis for dealing with feelings you sport away

Sports are often used to boost self-confidence, but there are other ways to do so as well . By examining beliefs about how the world works and how you’re supposed to function within it to see how logical they are, and by removing beliefs that hinder your self-confidence, hypnosis can already make a big difference.

In addition, strengthening self-acceptance is important. This can be achieved with suggestions such as:

"I'm good enough."

"I can do anything."

"People love me for who I am, not what I look like or how strong I am," says Dr. K. K., president of the company.

These are just examples. Thereby, this feels more logical when you are in the hypnotic state and if some things have already been processed, than if you are reading it now from the blog.

Learn Hypnosis

Whether you are a therapist, personal trainer or otherwise help people who exercise. Knowledge of hypnosis is helpful in helping people with sports addiction.

In this way, you can also help people you coach with sports to take rest when it will actually benefit their performance.

So come to the free master class for an introduction.

Or register for one of our events and trainings.

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