A Volleyball Student Athlete’s Mental Health Journey

Hi everyone! Born in Toronto and then moving to Vancouver in Canada, I am a high school volleyball student-athlete and an older sibling. 

Although I love volleyball and certain fascinating subjects, academia and sports stress me out equally. Today, I want to share my mental health journey, experience, and some advice for other student-athletes or high school students out there who may relate to my past situation. I hope this story can bring you some insights or ideas to elevate your mental health.

Growing up, I was a pretty confident and outgoing kid who loved to volunteer and hang out with my peers. I was pretty much that “funny kid that didn’t try really hard”. 

However, when I moved to a new private school in grade 9, anxiety and stress began to stem within me. After seeing how much work is required for decent performance, ninth grade gave rise to another level of anxiety. After achieving one accomplishment, I would chase after the next one. Seeking validation from doing well at school fueled so much more stress and anxiety, as I would want to be better in the class, win, write good essays, do excellent on tests, and overall achieve high goals. 

Towards the end of grade 9, I began to struggle with an eating disorder, despite having health issues in the past. Even though I knew that I struggled with an eating disorder, I kept on blaming it on celiac when in reality, it was just mental instability and struggles. I didn’t know when to eat and when to not eat. By the end of my ninth-grade school year, I felt tired, burnt out, and as if I was a victim of fatigue. I was falling out of love with myself and with playing volleyball, my passion. 

Fortunately, the summer vacation after my ninth-grade year helped me relax, reset, and recharge. I was finally happy with food again, talked to a lot of friends, and realized that I was not the only one who “did not want to eat anything”. After the summer, I went back to volleyball again. If it wasn’t for the summer that allowed me to relax and reset, I would have stopped playing volleyball. That break was crucial to my well-being. 

My home life is good; my parents are happily married and divorce is not prevalent. Although my sister can be a “pill” at times due to tense sibling relationships which leads us to fight about “stupid things”, I strive to maintain a good relationship with my siblings. I have a great relationship with my brother due to our age gap; as we have nothing to fight over. I am not someone with “close close” friends, as my best friend lives in another city. I am also not known to have a close big group of friends. Although it allows me to focus and thrive in academics and my goals, I sometimes wish that I could have a typical “high school experience” where I hang out with big friend groups and attend parties regularly. Regardless, I decided to put my mind to studying and volleyball over parties. 

Throughout my high school journey, I learned to face the fact that you cannot instantly find your “best friend” in high school. It’s okay to not be the most popular and not attend the parties that are “fun”. However, I still encourage you to make new friends and expand your horizons. 

The brutal truth is that stress is involved in every teenager’s life no matter who you are. Whether it’s family, school, work, relationships, or body image, it is prevalent due to hormonal changes. I often find myself over-emphasizing stress about a test; even though I am confident about the content. I catch myself stressing about things that I don’t need to stress about— such as assignments, homework, and other factors that in reality, are not too significant. 

However, there are some factors that may not seem super “important” that stress me out. For instance, I love my dad. We share the same humour and have a great time together. My dad is a firefighter, and I often hear at school how firefighting is the most dangerous job. That conditioned a fear inside me as I love my dad, but I really don’t want to lose him. Therefore, whenever I hear an alarm or ambulance go off, I would do a double look to check if it was my dad. That caused me anxiety and fear, but I never told my dad that because I wanted us to stay happy. 

Although times can be stressful and scary, I eat chips to cope during the hard times. I also procrastinate by scrolling on my phone and doing it later. It’s almost as if procrastination is instinctual. However, I strongly oppose procrastination as it’s not healthy and fuels your anxiety and stress. 

For anyone who relates to my journey or finds themself in a similar position as me, I recommend living by this advice: never be afraid to ask for help; it’s the best thing you can do (even though I am sometimes guilty of not doing it). 

Another tip is to focus on one thing you can control at the moment. Inspired by my past fear of not being able to control my future and pondering on what my future will look like, focus on what you can do at the moment. Can you eat a bag of chips right now? Can you eat a salad right now? Can you spend time with your family right now? Instead of having your mind wander off to the future, consider what you can do to make yourself happy and in the moment RIGHT NOW. 

Something that I wish people could understand about me better is that I am not the “social bug”. I need my calm and alone time such as studying in peace instead of sitting with a friend group at lunch when I am trying to study. I believe that it’s important to recognize that everyone has their own needs and cannot stick around all the time. Everyone has their own things they worry about. Especially being in a private all-girls school, people often sit with their friends all the time. A stereotype towards people who need alone time is viewing them as a “loner” when they don’t sit with anyone. 

Throughout my journey, I learned that we are always learning; you are never done learning about yourself even if you are above the age of 95. Furthermore, I saw how fragile people can be and how that’s very normal. I was scared of being vulnerable at first and had to stress constantly about what I was eating. However, I learned that it’s okay to learn by myself in my journey. A key takeaway is that you’re gonna have bad days, but you’ll also have very good days. It’s all about accepting the balance. After all, a bad day is not equivalent to a bad life; it’s just a bad day. 

If I have a bad grade on a test, that’s okay; it does not equal my overall grade which will ban me from attending university. 

Overall, I enjoyed this experience. I have never spoken in my “own voice” until now. I wish you all the best on your mental health journey and hope you know that you are not alone.