Simone Biles: How the Olympic star overcame a mental block and found confidence in herself again

Simone Biles shines in Paris 2024 after overcoming her mental health crisis REUTERS/Hannah Mckay TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

At just 27 years old, Simone Biles has won six gold medals so far at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and has accumulated just as many medals and awards in her long sporting career.

With overwhelming strength, talent and personality that she has demonstrated at every step of her career, in the final of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (Olympics) Biles decided not to compete in the team final and later in the individual all-around because she feared for her mental health. This was a turning point in her career, after which she was able to overcome her difficulties and shine again, as she does now at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

At that time, Simone suffered from “twisties,” a potentially dangerous phenomenon that causes gymnasts to lose their sense of direction when they are in the air. “For anyone who says I quit, I didn’t quit. My mind and my body are just not in sync,” she said in anguish during those atypical Olympic Games held in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why can an elite gymnast lose confidence from one moment to the next, suffer a mental block and withdraw in the final? Dr. José Eduardo Abadi, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and writer, described to Infobae the condition that the gymnast suffered at the Tokyo Olympics:

“Jumping is a physical thing but also a mental thing,” said the athlete REUTERS/Paul Childs

“Biles suffered from panic and anxiety, which often generates a very important phobia, and the result is a withdrawal and a significant inhibition to go out and expose herself. This, like any anxiety disorder, generates a disqualification to be able to carry out the project she had.”

He added: “This has to do with anxiety disorders that you have probably had before and may have largely overcome, but some current trigger may have made them emerge. The fact of training and your usual sports routines are of course important, but they do not prevent that when faced with certain, let’s say ‘biographical traces’ of anxiety disorders or, sometimes, an awakening of anxiety due to some current trigger, they can inhibit what seemed invulnerable or invincible. It should not surprise us, that can happen in an athlete.”

The gymnast had said at the time: “I think it was just the stress factor. It built up over time, and my body and my mind just said no. But I didn’t even know I was going through that until it just happened.”

During the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, Biles struggled with a mental block known as the “twisties,” prompting her decision to withdraw for her psychological well-being REUTERS/Mike Blake/File photo SEARCH “BEST OF THE TOKYO OLYMPICS” FOR ALL PICTURES. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY.

Regarding this situation, Dr. Jorge Rocco, a psychiatrist specializing in sports, explained to Infobae that anything can be the trigger that leads to a stressful situation and having a symptom:

“The triggers are not the same for everyone. For some, it may be the breakup of a relationship, the loss of a job, not enough money, for others, it may be frustration in a subject. These high-performance gymnasts are exposed to a lot of demands and much more stress than us, and on top of the difficulties of everyday life, there is the issue of performance.”

She added: “In the case of Simone Biles, we have to take into account some things from her history, that she was abused and mistreated. This means that there were no people to support her and take care of her. Paradoxically, when she did the jumps, where there is no support, where there is nothing to hold on to, the symptom appears.”

After pulling out of the competition, Biles said, “After the performance I did, I didn’t want to continue. I have to focus on my mental health. I think it’s more present in the sport right now. We have to protect our mind and our body and not just do what the world wants us to do.”

Stress and overexertion can severely affect high-performance athletes at critical moments (Illustrative image Infobae)

Robert Andrews, Simone Biles’ therapist and founder and director of the Houston Sports Performance Institute, called Biles’ condition “diathesis stress” in an interview published in Relay. “It means that the scales get out of balance if you start adding stress. Over time, the scales tip and the brain flips. That’s when the mental blocks happen. In Tokyo, that stress pushed Simone, it reached a critical level and her brain said she couldn’t do it (…) When you get to the point where there’s too much tension on the scales, it tips and the brain won’t let you do anything you could do anymore,” said Biles’ psychologist.

The Netflix documentary “Simone Biles Soars Again” offers an in-depth look at the gymnastics star’s struggles and successes from the 2020 Tokyo Games to her return to competition.

The film tells how the gymnast was born in Ohio, United States, and during her childhood the courts determined that she and her sister Adria were to be raised by their grandparents (her mother and father had problems with drugs and alcohol). On the other hand, her brothers were left in the care of another part of the family.

The documentary also addresses the episode that marked her life: sexual abuse by Larry Nassar, former medical coordinator of the US national gymnastics team, who was sentenced to more than 60 years in prison for child pornography and sexually abusing more than 150 women.

Simone Biles testified in the case that investigated Larry Nassar for sexual abuse and sentenced him to life in prison Saul Loeb/Pool via REUTERS

At the time, Biles said: “Most people know me as a happy, cheerful, energetic girl, but I feel broken and the more I try to shut off that voice in my head, the louder it screams at me. I am no longer afraid to tell my story. I too am one of the survivors who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar.”

In artistic gymnastics there are many terms related to fear: twisties, mental blocking, giving up, balking. It is a physically demanding activity with a high rate of injuries, but also very difficult on a mental level.

In the documentary, Biles explains: “The first and last Yurchenko double somersaults I ever did feel the same: scary. The vault is a physical thing but it’s also a mental thing. You have to have a lot of strength, power, good awareness in the air. There are a lot of components and only a fraction of a second to know if it’s going to be a good vault or not, and most of the time I’m trying not to die.”

The Yurchenko double somersault is an event that no female gymnast in history has ever been able to accomplish in competition, and Biles did it and does it in competition.

Biles worked with different techniques to regain her strength, self-confidence and will to win (Illustrative image Infobae)

According to Dr. Abadi, in order to work on these problems from a psychological point of view, it is necessary to try to get the person to put words to that anxiety and give them support and support: “It is extremely important in cases of anxiety to be able to show how they are due to a factor that has to do with the imagination, but that this imagination, naturally, influences not only what one thinks, but also the body, how the person moves and what they do.”

She added: “In these cases, the athlete must be removed from the feeling of urgency and her ego structure must be strengthened, basically, by moving her away from the idea of ​​the inevitability of repetition: the situation does not have to be repeated. And that anxiety, that adrenaline that she may feel before a sporting event, does not have to disappear. It has to be able to be used in another way, as strength, self-confidence and the will to win. In other words, the order of the situation is reversed. Anxiety is not what holds me back, but rather what can allow me to win the next competition.”

For the new Olympics, in addition to the support of her coaches, Lauren and Cecile Landi, her family and, in particular, her husband Jonathan Owens, an American football player, Biles has had the support of her therapist Robert Andrews, a key expert in her sporting life who helped her overcome her difficulties.

The gymnast overcame her personal and mental health challenges after her withdrawal in Tokyo and returned to shine at the Paris 2024 Olympics (Credit: Netflix)

In an interview published in Relevo, the psychologist said: “Simone Biles is a great example. She retired and not only made that decision for her mental health, but also for her physical health. If she had done those jumps, she could have injured herself because her brain didn’t know where she was in space. So what she did was defend herself mentally, physically and emotionally. Her example has given permission to many athletes to ask for help. Since the pandemic, we see more and more people wanting mental health services and she, in some way, helped open that door.”

According to Biles’ psychologist, “one of the secrets of my work with athletes is to get their personality to be reflected in their performances in competition, and that is very important in gymnastics. Little by little, we got Simone to have fun. We achieved what we call ‘her personality of a committed artist’ and her body responded magnificently.”

“If she puts on a big smile, the judges smile and her rivals’ coaches stop to look at her. In a psychological analysis, that makes her special,” said the psychologist.

“We had to work really hard to keep her empowered and able to continue to show up that way despite a culture that didn’t allow it. So that was really the only struggle we had: fighting against that old culture of stoicism where it seems like a gymnast isn’t having fun, that she’s too serious and perfectionist. We had to fight so that Simone could be herself and be her essence.”

“Because of her inner strength, the courage to overcome adversity, she is a role model for many young girls around the world,” said the gymnast’s psychologist REUTERS/Paul Childs TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

The expert added: “Simone didn’t really believe in herself. “That’s what we set to work on, helping her build her confidence. The goal was to analyze her mindset, how she handled emotions and remember moments when she had been reactive. We introduced the concept of ‘taking your foot off the gas’ or, in other words, not using so much energy.

In the documentary, Simone talks about some of the psychological resources she uses: “We talked to my therapist about how to stay calm through visualisations in case I had any problems in the competition. For example, ‘Is there anything that will help you not to get stressed?’ In my case, I feel much calmer on the beach. ‘Visualise yourself there, breathe deeply,’ she told me. ‘What makes you feel powerful?’ I immediately replied: ‘The colour red.’ This is my power and I use it in competitions. It really makes me feel calmer.”

Finally, Andrews said: “Because of her inner strength, her courage to overcome adversity, she is a role model for many young people around the world and now she is back again.”

Regarding this ability, Dr. Rocco spoke of Biles’ resilience: “Resilience is a concept that was taken from physics. When a metal is subjected to tension, it changes and when that tension is removed, it returns to its normal structure. So, an epidemiologist decided to use this concept for people who, while suffering adversity, were able to see an opportunity in it. Simone, in a way, is resilient because she transformed something that prevented her from carrying out her sport into a challenge that she managed to overcome, she overcame fear and thus all the symptoms she had. That is why she is resilient, someone who transforms adversity into an opportunity.”

And that resilience is engraved for life on the tattooed arm of this super athlete with words from a poem by Maya Angelou: “And still I rise.” In Spanish, “Y aún así me levanto,” Simone assures us, in sport and in life.