Trial by fear

How I learned to define my self-worth in a medium with a binary system of success.

Clay stacks his opponent and applies an Americana submission in a no-gi match // photo courtesy of Clay Wren.

Written by Clay Wren

Dread sets in the day of.

My stomach aches, my hands are paralyzed. No form of comfort is solace to me.

Thirty minutes before. I’m hyperventilating, overhydrating, paralyzed, detached to my own body. Competition is any minute now, and I’ve accepted my fate.

I remember watching my opponent before every match, seeing the business-like mentality in his demeanor. He’s locked in, ready to fight. He expects himself to win.

I step onto the mat; we shake hands and start wrestling. It’s six minutes of pushing, grabbing and throwing, requiring immense cardio and strength to control and pin someone who is trying to do the same thing to you.

Most of the time, I lost. My sophomore and senior years of high school I managed my best win/loss records, and even then, I won less than half of my season matches.

I couldn’t understand why I continued to wrestle. I didn’t enjoy the preparation process, and my memories of competition are filled with terror, anxiety, shame, and distress.

I thought I feared losing but losing became a comfort. The warm embrace from my family and team, their sympathetic words. Reassurance everything would be okay.

“We are always proud of you, win or lose.”

I felt comfort in loss that gave me an out, an option to give up at any point, and I let it control me. When I experienced any adversity, my mentality would suffer, and I became convinced I could not overcome the man in front of me. I gave up in countless matches and felt a secret relief at the end when I knew the ordeal was over.

I lost so much; it became expected of me. Winning a match felt like a small glimmer of hope, but I never truly convinced myself I was capable of achieving great things.

Robert T. Lewis, in his book “Taking Chances: The Psychology of Losing and How to Profit from it,” wrote that the value attributed to winning is often self-imposed, and competitors can develop toxic relationships with the systems of winning and losing.

“When we feel we have lost, we are so shattered by the experience that we also lose our perspective…this kind of self-devaluation prevents us from making a realistic appraisal of our performance and it becomes impossible to learn or grow from it,” he wrote.

Competition produces only two outcomes, and I found my self-worth dependent on binary results, not the actual events of the contest or the preparation I put into it.

Every win felt euphoric, every loss felt devastating, with no in-between.

For competitors, we are often nearsighted in our views of success. Winning represents hard work, losing represents a failure to work or lack of talent. We desire to win because we feel that success is a reflection of our character, which precedes our reputation and self-worth.

As I kept losing, I perceived winning as a greater task, giving up became easier and anxiety grew. I felt little shame immediately after my matches, but suffered intense guilt and despair as time elapsed.

I felt like two versions of myself in a toxic relationship — the bystander who pleads with the competitor to win, and the competitor who begs the bystander for forgiveness after losing.

Adriana Kaplánová, in her article “Competitive Anxiety, and Guilt and Shame Proneness From Perspective Type D and Non-type D Football Players,” wrote that negative evaluation of oneself stems from post-competition reflection, and this feeds into continuous cycles of pre-competition anxiety.

“During the introspection of negative experiences in sports, frequent mistakes occur, such as excessive selective focus attention on sports performance in which the athlete has failed in the past associated with the fear of recurrence of this experience,” she wrote.

I relied on my support system to comfort me but grew uncomfortable with my obsession to impress and satisfy the people around me. When people told me their pride or happiness was not dependent on wins and losses, it angered me.

Though I also unconditionally loved my friends who competed, I falsely felt that their perception of me mirrored my self-esteem.

I never made it to the state tournament. I lost my last match at the regional qualifier my senior year and didn’t recover for some time. A sport I thought I loved was marred by soreness, pain, anguish, brutal twice-a-day practices and an eating disorder resulting from weight cutting and yo-yo dieting.

I cried in the locker room in the hours after my last match, raw emotions spilling out. I thought I would never compete again.

Three years later, I’m often so excited to compete I can’t sleep.

I get to the venue and test the grips in my hands. I’m reviewing the game plan with my team, visualizing my strategy.

30 minutes before. I’m calm, warmed up, swaying back and forth. Music still can’t drown out my thoughts.

When the referee calls me to the mat, I avoid eye contact with my opponent.

We shake hands, and start grappling.

Clay on the podium after taking first in the absolute gi division at his last tournament // photo courtesy of Clay Wren.

I’m competing in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a similar combat art focused on submissions. My newfound happiness in the training process helped me realize how much my environment factors into my well-being.

In jiu-jitsu, drilling often works at a slower pace, with a focus on technique and precision. Rolling (sparring) is an activity of my own prerogative. I choose when to attend, how hard I train and I lift weights on my own time.

Competition is an option, not a requirement.

Physical and mental wellness, in a backwards sort of sense, flourished when decisions were regulated to my own commitment. I am twice as strong, in far better shape than I was in high school and look forward to every training session. Anxiety is no longer an essential component to my preparation process — it’s been replaced with a love for growth and stability.

This environmental change was immediately noticeable in my competition success. I dominated my first tournament, submitting every opponent. I won 12 out of 13 matches at my last tournament, bringing home double gold and silver.

Jiu-jitsu feels more intricate than wrestling — less instinctual, and heavily reliant on technical ability. When I lose, I’m fighting until the end. When I win, I’m in control.

I’m in a flow state, able to hear my coaches and focus on my gameplan. The sport, despite being less reliant on physical strength compared to wrestling, feels more sinister. We are threatening chokes and joint breaks instead of pins.

Knees, necks, wrists, shoulders, elbows, feet. No body part is safe, and submissions can happen quickly. My strategies are often simplified compared to the training room, something that feels inescapable when competing, but I feel renewed purpose behind my body and movements on the competition stage.

I have felt failure, too. Anxiety is still a part of my pre-fight process, but I’ve learned to manage it. When I step off the mat now, different feelings await me. I feel an aspiration to improve, a desire to refine techniques.

Clay holding his gold and silver after winning his last tournament // photo courtesy of Clay Wren

I still have a troubled relationship with my support system. I don’t feel quotes like “losing is part of the process” or “it only matters you tried” are helpful to improvements of my jiu-jitsu or character. Celebrations from the people around me feel different after I’ve experienced the lowest depths of loss, but these are both normal effects of the nature of winning and losing. The people around me aren’t to blame, it’s a psychological barrier I have to overcome in my journey to discovering self-love.

We do different things to cope with competition anxiety. Some of us hype ourselves up, attempting to evoke a primal, violent being within. Sometimes we look for distractions or disassociate from the realities we soon face. Most often, we are trying to mask our true selves.

Someone who desires to feel a brief, fleeting euphoria.