From Individual Fixing to Relational Guidance in Narrative Sport Psychology

While the rapidly growing field of sport psychology consultancy directed towards children and adolescents often focuses on what can be called the personal troubles of the athlete (e.g., performance anxiety or anger), this chapter suggests that such problems are grounded in more overarching social issues in the sport environment, especially in performance-oriented contexts. This chapter proceeds along two paths. First, it describes how traditional sport psychology tends to treat problems as personal troubles that need to be “fixed” or “coped with”. Second, it discusses how youth sports psychology can move beyond such detrimental effects through practices inspired by narrative psychology that offer socio-relational guidance rather than merely seeing problems as something that exists within the individual and therefore needs individual fixing. We conclude with a discussion of the ways in which redefining psychological problems as social issues may contribute to both personal development of young athletes and social change within sports environments.