Athlete Mental Health & Wellness
Mental health therapy designed through a sport social work lens to incorporate a whole-person approach to athlete wellness
Supporting Athletes On and Off the Field
Is your brain impacting your performance?
You’ve put in the hours, pushed through the hard days, and learned how to keep going even when things don’t feel right. From the outside, you may look like you’re doing fine, but internally, you might feel anxious, overwhelmed, exhausted, disconnected, or stuck.
Maybe you’ve told yourself to just push through. Maybe you’ve tried to manage it on your own, talked to a coach or teammate, or even been in therapy before. But you’re still struggling—and you’re wondering if it’s possible to feel better without losing the part of yourself that makes you an athlete.
If the pressure to perform has become constant and you’re longing to feel more at ease...
If anxiety is affecting your confidence, focus, relationships, or ability to enjoy your sport...
If food, exercise, or changes in your body have become a source of fear, guilt, or control...
If your relationship with your body has made it difficult to feel comfortable in your own skin...
If an injury, setback, loss of playing time, or transition has left you questioning who you are without your sport...
If perfectionism, OCD, trauma, depression, or the pressure to always be “strong” is taking more from you than you want to admit...
You don’t have to keep carrying it alone.
As a sports social worker, I use evidence-informed therapeutic interventions through an athlete-centered lens to help you navigate the mental and emotional challenges that can come with sport. Together, we can work toward understanding what you’re experiencing, developing healthier ways to cope, and building a relationship with yourself and your sport that feels more sustainable.
Therapy can be a place where you don’t have to perform, prove yourself, or have all the answers. You can show up exactly as you are.
Because you are more than your performance, your statistics, your position, or your results.
You’re a whole person. Your mental health matters, too
Imari Medeiros (she/her/hers) is a certified Sport Social Worker through the Alliance of Social Workers in Sports and the University of Kentucky College of Social Work. She has 11 years as a mental health treatment provider in hospitals, schools, clinics, outpatient programs, and spending the last 5 years as a dedicated therapist. Imari has implemented therapy as a tool to help her clients navigate symptoms of anxiety, eating disorders, body image, depression, and trauma.
What is Sports Social Work?
Sports social work is a specialized field of social work focused on the mental health, overall well-being, and social environment of athletes at all levels.
Sports social work combines the principles of social work and mental health with an understanding of the unique experiences of athletes. Your mental health, relationships, identity, physical health, performance, and life outside of sport are all interconnected.
As a sports social worker, I consider the whole person, not just the athlete. This means creating a space to explore what you're experiencing both within your sport and beyond it, while developing practical tools and strategies to support your mental health, relationships, identity, and overall well-being.
As a certified Sport Social Worker, I acknowledge that sport can be a source of identity, community, purpose, confidence, and connection. Sport also comes wtih struggles within that can affect every other part of your life.
My clinical experience, combined with specialized training in sports social work, allows me to look at your mental health through the context of the whole athlete: your sport, relationships, identity, body, goals, and life beyond competition.
I support
athletes
navigating:
Sports
Performance
Athlete identity &
Self-worth
Injury &
Rehabilitation
Eating Disorders &
Body Image
Anxiety &
Perfectionism
Depression &
Burnout
Examples of Skills Learned in Therapy
Through a Sports Social Work Lens That Prioritizes a Athlete’s Well-being
Dialectical Behavior Therapy
(DBT)
Where mindfulness, distress tolerance skills, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness skills are taught to help you manage intense emotions, reduce self-harming behaviors, and improve relationships.
Helps athletes develop skills to manage intense emotions, tolerate stress, navigate relationships, and respond more effectively to the pressure and challenges that come with sport.
Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy (ACT)
Incorporate the 6 core principles of ACT to learn how to accept painful thoughts/beliefs as natural ways of thinking, and commit to behavioral changes that align with your values - not your anxiety.
Develop psychological flexibility and learn to respond to difficult thoughts and emotions while staying connected to your values—both in sport and in life.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy
(CBT)
Explore the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors—including the perfectionism, self-criticism, and performance pressure that can affect athletes.
Explore the connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors—including the perfectionism, self-criticism, and performance pressure that can affect athletes.
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)
Per the IOCDF, ERP is specialized form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that helps individuals break the cycle of obsessions and compulsions by gradually exposing you to thoughts, situations, images, or triggers that create anxiety (the exposure) while helping you resist engaging in compulsions, avoidance, reassurance-seeking, or mental rituals (the response prevention). Over time, anxiety naturally decreases on its own and the feared outcome more manageable.
For athletes experiencing OCD, ERP can help you face anxiety-provoking thoughts and situations while reducing compulsions, avoidance, and reassurance-seeking.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Explore root causes of distress by discussing in depth defense mechanisms, early relationships and understanding of self, and the unconscious mind (behaviors/fears/motivation) that impact how you move through the world daily.
Helps athletes explore how past experiences, relationships, identity, and patterns of thinking may influence their emotions, self-worth, relationships, and experiences within and beyond sport.
Somatic Approach
Focus on the mind-body connection to help process experiences and release tension in the nervous system. In this “bottoms up” approach, we use the body’s physical sensations to shift emotional states. You can learn to calm your nervous system, discharge built-up stress, and return to a state of safety and regulation.
Helps athletes develop greater awareness of the mind-body connection and recognize how stress, anxiety, trauma, and performance pressure show up physically, while learning tools to support regulation and a greater sense of safety in their bodies.