James McClean’s stance on opening up may work for him but we are not all elite sportspeople

James McClean, the former Republic of Ireland soccer international, raised a storm last week when he told Paul Kimmage in the Irish Independent : “I see it as a weakness that I’d have to speak to someone about my feelings, my emotions.” And he viewed players who talked to a team psychologist as weak too – “As a man, I see that as a weakness. I don’t need to open up.”I recognise this macho stance about emotions from growing up in Glasgow. Only in his cups was it acceptable – just - for a red-blooded male to indulge his emotions – anger being an exception, of course. The cultural taboo went further than mistrust – it verged on a phobia about delving too much inside – what might he find? Thankfully, the world has changed and that phobia has faded for most men and women, even if James McClean is not one of them. Even the Football Association of Ireland finally conscripted a psychologist into its ranks after the first Israel game. For the pressures of elite sport are considerable. Young men and women sacrifice enormous chunks of their early lives to training, travelling, playing and recovering. Relationships can suffer, careers may stall and the constant threat of failure or career-ending injury haunts them. READ MOREPhysical fitness, self-discipline, team camaraderie and a sense of purpose, on the other hand, may help elite athletes bolster their mental resources and help shield them from some of the anxieties and vulnerabilities that afflict their non-sports peers in increasing numbers. That being said, elite athletes are more susceptible to mild eating disorders and a survey of elite GAA players found that gambling is widespread, with around 6 per cent of them – mainly men – having a gambling problem.Irish rugby international Hannah Tyrrell continued to play elite sport right through the torment of a bulimic eating disorder and bouts of self-harm. Like James McClean, she shied away from revealing what was going on inside her head for a long time. But sport offered a distraction and a relief from these torments until she could finally speak up. And this chimes with research showing lower levels of anxiety and depression in teenagers who take part in sport, compared to those who do not. Freeing children from solitary bedroom screens, fostering social interaction and friendship, building a sense of belonging and boosting self-esteem are all potential outcome of taking part in sport. Importantly, these have also been shown to be important antidotes to anxiety and low mood.[ ‘She’s a special person’: Stephen Bradley hails impact of psychologistOpens in new window ]The benefits of team sports are even greater in adolescents who have had adverse experiences in childhood such as neglect, abuse, parental substance abuse and single parenthood. Followed-up over 13 years into young adulthood, team sport participations was linked to a very significant reduction in depression or severe anxiety. This fact is very relevant for the super-elite athlete who, research shows, is more likely to be driven by early negative experiences in childhood compared to merely elite athletes. Take the golfer Tiger Woods, for example. He was bullied and mocked as a child for his crippling stutter. The enduring psychological imprint of early tough experiences can trigger a hunger for success and the relentless drive and self-sacrifice that are crucial for elite success. Woods’s yawing fortunes with police and drugs since the peak of his career show elite athletes’ troubles don’t necessarily end when they retire. Stepping out of the cocoon of an elite team and its supports and demands is a shock for many retiring sports men and women. Former Republic of Ireland and Liverpool footballer Jason McAteer describes how retiring from elite soccer left him in a void of identity, meaning, structure and purpose. US swimmer Michael Phelps and basketball player Michael Jordan also found the transition to mere mortals very difficult.But all of us face life transitions that can unsettle us and create problems that we can either adjust to and address or retreat from and avoid. On average, retired elite athletes are no more or less anxious or depressed than the rest of us . Which begs the question – are we all feeling more mentally unsettled? The answer to that is definitely yes for Gen Z (born 1997-2012), to some extent for millennials (1981-1996) but no for baby boomers (1946-1964) like me. Why is this?[ It’s no wonder people my age are miserable. Everyone keeps telling them they’re totally screwedOpens in new window ]Ask any boomer and they will likely tell you how they were let out the door to play on the street and beyond with scarce oversight from their parents – that was certainly my experience. Having this sort of personal control – as opposed to being constantly ferried from one organised activity to another - builds confidence in children and confidence is the greatest antidote to anxiety. Yes, smartphones and social media play a part in this generational shift in behaviour: there was nothing to do in a boomer’s bedroom so you had to go out or else you would die of boredom. Another generational difference lies in expectations. Comparison is the thief of joy, a saying attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, tallies with research: happiness is the what we expect minus what we perceive; if the result is a positive number, then we feel happy, if negative, we feel unhappy. What we expect in the way of personal achievement, looks, goods or other attributes has risen. But so also has the accessibility of people in comparison to whom we feel we are lacking or failing. Adolescents have lost the reference group of contentedly miserable peers who could hang about on the street corner mutually commiserating about their fate in consoling solidarity. The author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathon Haidt, wrote another book called The Coddling of the American Mind, in which he argues that by trying to protect young people from psychological discomfort, we have by mistake made them more fragile, anxious and less capable of dealing with tough times. Key to this has been the trend to medicalising normal emotions - “I have anxiety” – as if this was a medical condition rather than an understandable emotional response to what you are thinking and doing. Once you start seeing your emotions as medical diagnoses that arise uncontrollably, it sabotages your ability to deal with them. [ Extreme sports – where self-absorbed masochism gets dressed up as sportOpens in new window ]We must look inside ourselves from time to time – and talking this through with another person can be a crucial part of this, whatever James McClean says. But it is equally important to realise that how we behave moulds how we feel just as much as vice versa: we can learn, sometimes with help, to become masters of our emotions and not their slaves. Elite sportspeople have to do this – and so does every GAA, soccer or hockey child stepping out on to the turf on a damp Saturday morning. Ian Robertson is emeritus professor of psychology at Trinity College Dublin