Hit The Ball

You will come to see that a lot of my blogs will center around my experiences as a softball mom. I’ve been supporting my daughter since T-Ball, and after 8 years I have learned so much, not about softball, but that each player, with their own little personality, deals with pressure, stress, winning, and losing differently. My daughter can be pretty hard on herself and trying to get her “out of her head” is a work in progress.

Working on anxiety, in life in general, is like working on your skills in softball, or any other sport. There are times in a person’s life and/or moments when he/she can say “I got this!” Then there are moments when a person can feel like he/she is in a “slump”. At times, my daughter, and her teammates, find themselves in “slumps”.

So, how do you work through those times in your life, when you are in a slump? One way is by focusing on whatever the issue might be. In sports, you focus on the one skill that is causing you to feel inadequate. In softball it could by your batting. The one thing that was ingrained into my daughter during her T-Ball years is “see the ball, hit the ball”. Hit the ball – focus on the ball and hit it. Not the next step, not the coach (in that moment), or the bantering from the opponents, or the parents in the stands. Three words – hit the ball. Focus on the moment before moving forward. Yes, the goal is to make it to first base or to get the ball outfield; but none of that can happen without hitting the ball first. So, see the ball, HIT THE BALL. And this happens by practicing, daily.

Similarly, the process of working through anxiety, is through practice. Deep breathing, journaling, meditation, and self-care are a few techniques that are helpful, but they must be repeated regularly in order to be affective. Practicing these techniques will develop positive tools that you can use to manage your anxiety. Developing a technique to manage anxiety is like practicing “seeing the ball, hitting the ball” in softball to get out of a batting slump. The more you practice and the more you utilize the tools you’ve learned to manage your anxiety, the better the chances of improving your mental health.