Naomi Osaka Doesn’t Feel Safe
SEPTEMBER 10, 2021
Right now, all over the globe, armchair athletes are sitting around criticizing Naomi Osaka, and negatively labeling her as a spoiled brat, emotionally unstable and mentally weak. They say she needs to “suck it up”, “get over it” and “quit complaining”. “Professional tennis has always been this way”, they say. “That’s the culture of competitive sports”. “She’s playing tennis and making millions”, and the way she is behaving and complaining is “sending the wrong message”. I didn’t make up any of these quotes. I’ve heard each one of them, expressed by players of all levels, young and old, at my local tennis club in Santa Barbara, California. The fact is - it is they, any of us, who are talking about Osaka in this way, that are spreading the wrong message.
What they don’t understand is that beneath her “childish” reactions, “overly dramatic” emotions and “privileged” behaviors is a physiology - not a weakness or something to ignore, push aside or get over. Beneath her emotions, behaviors and reactions is a body that feels safe, in danger or overwhelmed by threat. Although this might sound soft, this is actually hard science based on Polyvagal Theory, a neurophysiological framework developed by Stephen W. Porges Ph.D, that describes the neuroanatomy behind what it’s really like to be human. What looks to be deliberate, or conscious, or a poor choice, on Osaka’s part, are actually not decisions made by her thinking brain. These are adaptive and reflexive bodily responses triggered by her autonomic nervous system in the service of survival.
Osaka doesn’t feel safe. This started long ago, in the controversy that unfolded in her 2018 US Open victory over her idol Serena Williams, and has been growing ever since. In fact, in her body, where it really counts, it wasn’t a victory at all. Serena and the referee have a confrontation unlike any seen before in the history of tennis and it ends up with the referee giving a game to Osaka, Serena in tears, the crowd booing, and Naomi taking it all in as if she’s responsible for what’s happening. When she wins the final point of the match, instead of celebrating, she pulls her hat down and hides her face. After a sympathetic hug at the net to Serena, Naomi sits down, covers her head and face with a towel to hide the tears of shame, mistaken as tears of joy by the commentators on tv. She sits there for several minutes, wanting to hide from the world and get away from the pain of what just happened. She isn’t happy, but sad - her body immobilizing toward collapse and shutdown. In the world of trauma, this is what happens when the body is overwhelmed by threat. It’s a reflexive response triggered by the autonomic nervous system as a last ditch effort to survive. The problem is that afterwards, the body often struggles to find safety and to feel safe again on the inside. The nervous system essentially gets re-tuned to protect and defend, even when in a neutral or safe environment. Over time, this hypervigilant state of defense limits what challenges you can handle, breaks down your resilience and adaptability, and ultimately crushes any sense of peace, contentment and joy. This is what Naomi is experiencing now. Beneath her thinking brain and conscious awareness, her body is overwhelmed with threat, and she doesn’t know how to help herself find, feel and absorb safety in her body and nervous system.
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She wants to feel better on the inside. She wants relief from the constant pressures of competition and to escape the relentless scrutiny from all of us. She wants to be seen, heard, valued, liked and even loved. She wants to belong. Despite what she wants, her body feels alone and evaluated. From her body’s perspective, the tennis court isn’t a safe environment. All sports, especially tennis, are packed with danger - cues of risk and uncertainty coming at you from all directions - from your opponents, the environment around you, including the fans and cameras, and within your own body as you push through the discomfort and fatigue of hours of competition. But tennis is also different from many sports, especially team sports, because of what’s missing - social connection. On the court, players feel alone and evaluated. They miss the most powerful cues of safety recognized by the body - coregulation. Simply put, coregulation is social engagement and support, especially with those you trust and who are aligned with your goals and values. In team sports, players use vocalizations, body language and facial expressions to acknowledge their cooperation and support of one another.
Off the court, the cues of threat continue as players manage the media; scramble for money, rankings and sponsors; and live in hotel rooms competing in weekly tournaments, isolated, away from friends and family, especially during COVID. In these uncertain environments where success on the court feels like it rests solely on their own shoulders, the players can’t absorb sufficient cues of safety to recover, let alone find peace, contentment and joy. It’s just a matter of time before their bodies give up the fight, and they run, hide, collapse or shut down. In essence, our culture of competition and evaluation is setting our champions up for anxiety, depression, burnout and early retirement.
The entire culture around athletics, from coaches, fans, media, sponsors, teams and organizations, beginning at the earliest stages of sports development, is grounded in competition and evaluation. You must win to succeed. You must beat your opponent. And our champions of today are competing, while also being evaluated, more than ever before! Many players have been conditioned by the culture to believe that they must fight, attack and be aggressive in order to win. However, from a neurophysiological perspective, rather than a feeling of safety, when you fight, you mobilize in defense. This approach is depleting, unsustainable and one step closer to feeling anxious, helpless and eventually giving up. Here’s why.
Safety is more than the removal of threat - it’s a feeling of safety in your body. You must receive sufficient cues of safety from your internal, external and relational environments to feel safe in your body. As you now understand, Osaka doesn’t feel safe in her body. Instead, she feels alone and evaluated from every angle, on and off the court. She is exhausted from fighting and defending herself from the competition. On the court, and off the court, everything she does is looked at, analyzed and evaluated as good or bad, right or wrong, enough or not enough. She’s chronically criticized as if her behaviors are intentional, her reactions are planned, and her emotions are controllable. As if she isn’t human. All professional sports, tennis in the extreme, especially when money, status and identity are on the line, are the epitome of competition and evaluation, and competition and evaluation aren’t safe for our nervous system.
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None of this is to argue that we must give up the competition and evaluation prevalent and necessary in the world of sports. There will always be a winner and a loser - that’s what often pushes athletes to higher levels and makes sports exciting and engaging. There are also standards that need to be met and upheld - that’s what distinguishes someone as a starter from a sub, varsity from junior varsity, and a professional from an amateur. The point here is to understand the impacts that competition and evaluation have on our athletes’ bodies at the neurophysiological level, beneath conscious awareness, and to help them manage their reactive responses and physiology to optimize resilience and performance, on and off the court.
Every human, you, me and Osaka included, will attack, defend or run at the first signs of danger. When that strategy doesn’t work, or when we feel overwhelmed by threat, we will retreat, hide, dissociate, shut down or even collapse. This is where Osaka finds herself today, after another devastating loss in front of the world at the US Open. She’s not only emotionally and psychologically deflated, her body is in shutdown mode. Slowing down, preserving resources - her nervous system is overwhelmed by threat, and making a last ditch effort to survive.
But there is a way through this. A path that will lead Naomi to even higher levels of contentment, resilience and performance.
First, she needs to understand that what’s happening in her body is an adaptive strategy of survival triggered by her autonomic nervous system, not that she’s mentally weak. In fact, her bodily responses match Djokovic’s (see: Images Here) and many other top players as they feel “threatened” on the court.
Second, she needs to learn how to regulate her physiology to build resilience and optimize performance. In essence, this comes down to developing awareness of her reactive bodily responses, and knowing how to deliberately shift her bodily state to match the demands of the situation. She needs to know when and how to ramp up, calm down and stabilize, but not from a place of fear, anger or aggression, but with a sense of control, safety and comfort. And she needs to recognize what’s happening in her body, get ahead of it when necessary, and help herself mobilize (attack, pump herself up, or counterpunch) when she notices the early signs of immobilization (checking out, losing energy, wanting to quit). This is vital, because each time she collapses, gives up or shuts down, she continues to re-tune her body and nervous system to be defensive, more sensitive to even lower levels of threat, and less resilient and adaptable to adversity. As this progresses on the court, she will continue to lose motivation, put up less of a fight, and give up much more quickly than before when things don’t go her way. In a matter of only a few points, she might check out or want to quit when historically, she would have dug in, fought, and figured out a way back into controlling the match.
We see this not only in Osaka, but in other players as well. A body stuck in defense results in a player that under performs when it really counts, overreacts, smashes racquets, gives up too quickly, suffers from bouts of anxiety and depression, and no longer wants to play the game. In other words, the fear inside the body of losing takes over and the player fights, runs or hides until the body can’t fight, run or hide any longer - and so it shuts down.
This isn’t the end of the story. The hero is coming; coming in the form of safety! Naomi must re-train her body to feel safe through a variety of on-the-court resources including conscious breathing, awareness & attentional control, imagery, posture shifts and bodily movements. Basically, she needs to help herself find, feel and absorb what’s safe, reliable and stable for her, especially as the pressure builds. In addition, her lifestyle (sleep, nutrition, exercise), habits, relationships and daily routines off-the-court are equally important and need to be specifically tailored to calm her nervous system and enable her body to feel safe and accessible again.
The story doesn’t end here either. More than a solution for Naomi, it’s one for all of us. Tennis, like all sports, is a metaphor for what it’s like to be human. In a single game, match, interaction, hour or day, our body’s react as we encounter safe, dangerous and life threatening environments, situations and relationships.These reflexive responses change our perception of the world and others depending on whether we feel safe, in danger or overwhelmed by threat. When we recognize and respect what’s happening in our bodies, and know how to find what’s safe in any situation, we optimize our health, our relationships, our resilience, and our performance, on and off the court.
Sincerely,
Michael Allison
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