If you got anything out of this post, I'd love to hear your feedback.
- Carl Jung
Until you make your unconscious conscious, it will direct you and you will call it fate.
So much of hitting a baseball is about not letting yesterday play a factor into the most important game of the season. Today’s game.
- Steve Springer
More than any other decade, the 1980s for the New York Mets were considered to be one of the most complex and controversial of the century. Players played with a type of fierce competitive energy that represented a uniquely chaotic era of baseball play.
For a select few, these players were known to play as hard on the field as they played off it, which earned them the nicknames Scum Bunch and The Bad Boys.
For many, substance abuse was a pervading theme for players who struggled to handle the pressures of playing baseball in New York. The expectations were high and without an outlet, a compromised character or unhealed trauma would inevitably be exposed in a world of temptation and excess.
Like many of these young players in their prime, it seemed that the pressures of baseball would expose a few flaws that had existed in professional sports. Specifically drug abuse.
As a wiry 19-year-old, Dwight Gooden made his MLB debut in 1984 for the Mets. Swiftly establishing himself as one of the most exciting pitchers to ever step on the mound. The following year, he would pitch what is statistically considered the most dominating single season in baseball history. Gooden would earn the Cy Young award, winning 24 games in a single season with a league-leading 268 strikeouts. The following year, he would participate in the Mets winning the World Series.
In 1995, reports of substance abuse began to emerge within the New York Mets front office. Not long after, he tested positive for cocaine during spring training of that year. During his career which lasted 16 seasons, it was clear that his addiction had taken a toll. In the years after his suspension, he would be what many would consider a shell of his former self.
What began as a brilliant flash of technical prowess and talent, slowly dimmed as his body was no longer able to perform the way it had earlier in his career.
Though he would come back to pitch a coveted no-hitter with the Yankees, it seemed as though his spirit had been broken somehow. His competitive spirit and the life in his arm were gone.
Gooden would retire in 2001 after being cut in spring training by the New York Yankees.
This would be the end of his career. He would finish with a record of 194 wins. More than half of those would come in the earliest part of his career before his failed drug test.
Understanding Gooden
Gooden’s troubles with substance abuse would continue after his retirement. Following several arrests, he would be incarcerated for violating probation. What followed would be a quarter decade of self-sabotage. After years of relapses, time in prison, and stints in rehab, he was desperate for help and answers.
He eventually came across an interesting breakthrough during one particular psychotherapy session.
While they were discussing some of the possible underlying causes for his substance abuse, he was asked to recall any early childhood memories that he would consider traumatic. One particular memory began to rise to the surface. A memory that he may have conditioned himself to forget.
An Athlete Searches For Safety
When he was five, there had been a heated argument between his older sister and her boyfriend. During their altercation, Gooden was told by his sister to take his younger brother and hide in the bathroom, where she said "it would be safe."
Their sister’s boyfriend had a gun, and moments later used it to shoot and kill her. A young Dwight Gooden and his brother were left hiding in the bathroom. When the police arrived they found the two innocent children huddled together.
The breakthrough that Dwight Gooden and his therapist discovered was astounding.
Typically, when he used drugs, he preferred to do them alone, and in the bathroom with the doors locked. His way of escaping from the existential problems of his adult life was the exact same behaviors that he had lived during that traumatic moment as a child.
His way of self-isolating with drug use was a coping mechanism.
It was as if he was participating in a ritual to create the sense of safety he was trying to recreate the moment he heard the deafening gunshot in the bathroom. In a way, each time he abused drugs, he was attempting to subconsciously relive the experience while providing himself the sense of safety he never truly had.
He was attempting to heal wounds with the escapism that drugs provided.
From a clinical perspective, he was trying to establish what is known as a corrective experience.
A lesson can be learned in the following.
Key Takeaways From Gooden
Like our mechanical habits in our respective sports, we tend to revert to our most engrained-based action or worst instincts when under stress and anxiety. Our tendency to lose our temper, react tentatively, make excuses, transfer blame, or second guess our abilities, are ways our nervous system seeks safety.
Even poor mechanics can overlay on this concept. We can spend hours working on a particular adjustment only to fall back to our previous bad habit when it's time to perform in the game. Our nervous system seeks safety in the same way.
The enemies to our progress will most likely not come in an insidious way like drug addiction, but the consequences can be similarly frustrating; if we don’t understand what our mental traps are, why they exist and their place of origin, we are destined to repeat them for the rest of our lives.
The answer can be summed up in the following.
Work on your weaknesses so they don't become a liability. Work on your strengths to turn them into a weapon.
Or as Socrates said, "Know thyself."
New Decade, New Challenge
It seems that each modern decade has its substance abuse issue for players to tackle.
From the 40’s to the late 70’s many players suffered from alcohol abuse. In the 80s during the crack and cocaine epidemic, street drugs were making players a shell of their former selves.
In the '90s to early 2000s, amphetamines, and "uppers" replaced street drugs and served as the performance-enhancing drug of choice during the steroid era.
Today it seems like the new drug is technology and social media. The anxiety and comparison traps it issues can undermine the mental health of athletes and creative types.
Understand...
No one gets through this life unscathed. We all will experience big and small traumas as we transition from childhood to responsible adults. Without a healthy outlet, our levels of anxiety will compound. The subconscious will surface in ways that will be a mystery to us.
There will be a pattern to the types of conflicts we experience because we will be facing the same challenges over and over until we understand the deep, subconscious, and underlying cause.
Even when we don’t seem to be the ones causing them.
Procrastination. Transferring blame. Lack of motivation. The comfort that avoiding risk-taking is also a drug. It comforts us when we're faced with the prospect of failure, pressure to perform, and higher responsibility.
If what we want is to get the most out of our talents through hard work, we must reconnect with any part of us that has been wounded and overlooked, otherwise, we will always be susceptible to subconscious behaviors that will surface at the most inopportune times.
Oftentimes, the reason we see self-sabotage with high-profile success is because of the hidden wounds that have never healed.
Instead of escapism, we need a healthy sustainable outlet.
Our past holds many answers to our present-day questions. We must be able to learn from the past without living there. When we’re pursuing something for the wrong reasons, it’s a guaranteed recipe for failure.
Yes, things are hard, but not disproportionately hard. It is not necessarily hard beyond what we’re capable of because our capabilities can expand to the degree of our challenge.
Why Do We Self-Sabotage In Sports?
For many, the answer is usually located somewhere in our childhood. In our early development, the events in our lives shaped our physiology and neurology.
We will never know how far Dwight Gooden could have taken his talents. With his talent, he very well could have become the greatest pitcher of all time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to discover the source of the trauma that drove his addictions until many years after his retirement.
Now we can only speculate what records he would have broken or what legendary feats he would have achieved.
Instead, we are left with a singular cautionary tale that showcases the strength of the enduring human spirit and the importance of understanding the subconscious in a world of chaos.
We too can find the source of our own hurt, before its effects begin to compromise our work and life goals.
Through this lens, it’s no wonder why adopting new habits and taking on risks or pushing through pain and resistance appears to be an impossible task.
It’s not that we lack drive, motivation, or character.
We have not been cursed by the fates.
We are simply, human.
Follow Us
Instagram - @Applied Vision Baseball
Youtube - Applied Vision Baseball