Separation Anxiety and Sports

It’s not what you think. Normally, the words “Separation” and “Anxiety” indicate what happens when you are apart from a person or object.

But with fall sports fully under way, we want to emphasize is what happens each year for those fans who truly invest all of their emotional energy into their teams.

Then, if their team suffers a defeat, that person has a statistically higher likelihood of suffering a heart attack. This is particularly true in the largest games, like the playoffs or the Super Bowl.

This is crucial to understand, because watching sports should be enjoyable not potentially deadly!

So, let’s start practicing what we need to do to separate emotional outcomes from those of your team. The big games are not upon us yet, so we have some time to practice this habit each weekend during the games you do watch.

Remind yourself of what you already know intuitively: there are times when your team wins, and other times it loses. And to make sure you are around for those eventual times when it does win again, practice separating your emotional outcomes from those of your team.