Myth: Mental toughness means you push through it
Toughness does not mean silence and mental toughness does not mean you can just brush it off. It is knowing when your head and your body aren’t working as a team, and refusing to fake it for the sake of a win or loss. Ilia Malinin entered the Milan-Cortina 2026 as the men’s favorite “Quad God” and left the free skate in eighth after two falls. He told NBC it was his mental.
Eagles’ Lane Johnson most recently was a scratch versus the Week 4 matchup against the Los Angeles Rams. He wasn’t injured and was a full participant at practice that week, but something happened that clearly made him decide he needs to take a step back. This is real mental toughness – the ability to be aware about it – because not listening to yourself about something like that could lead to further injuries.
Myth: If the culture is good, athletes will just say something
If a team culture is good, why the need to say anything at all? Multiple reasons on this. A team could still have stigmas, confidentiality fears, public perception, low mental-health literacy, and players even have fears of being cut over having mental health struggles. Sometimes a team culture looks good because they can be hiding issues. Other times, it can be good because people are able to speak about their mental health.
We should not assume that because everything is going well, there isn’t something behind the scenes that a player could be dealing with. Sometimes we don’t know until months later that a player was playing through an injury for weeks during a season. This is why debunking stigmas and myths with mental health in the athletic world is important, because it takes lots of work to understand and empathize with these players to let them have a safe space.
Myth: Medical clearance means the athlete is back
Lots of physical injuries and mental issues go hand in hand with athletes. Oftentimes when they’re injured, they don’t want to be and they wanna be on the field helping secure wins each week. But when an athlete is no longer injured, they still can very well face mental battles to get back to where they were before the injury. They might have a fear of reinjury or even fears about how they’ll do and how the public or the team will perceive them.
NBA wing Spencer Jones said before that returning is 70-80% mental because injury breaks the deal you thought you had with your own body. The International Olympic Committee also previously stated that physical injury should be assessed as routine, and return should run on safety, stability and function, and not a date on a rehab chart.
Myth: Athletes can just mute online hate
With the world at our fingertips at lightning speed, the second a player makes a mistake in a game or makes a decision that the public might not like, fans will be fast to engage. It’s psychological, too, because they’re very passionate about their team and want the best possible scenarios each week (which is a win).
Getting hate from one person can be harsh, but getting 20 thousand tweets a second after fumbling a ball or missing a play is a real thing that athletes deal with. People need to remember that these athletes can easily see these posts and hate comments, and it’s not always easy to ignore. Further, it’s a workplace condition, and leagues still haven’t gotten on top of this kind of new, mainstream way of expressing displeasure in actions.
Myth: The hard part ends when the career does
Retirement is not always a victory lap or sunshine and rainbows, sometimes it’s hard after a player’s identity was so tied to who he (or she) was on the field. Olympians Michael Phelps and Jonathan Hilbert struggled with this exact thing, leaning on help when they realized they needed it. This same pattern happens across all leagues and sports. The body might stop competing, but the mind does not get the memo yet. Support after that last game matters just as much as the support during it.
It’s important to continue discussing mental health for athletes because there’s still plenty of work to be done to understand just what athletes go through.
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