From a healthy relief valve useful for psychophysical well-being, sport can turn into a fixation. Professor Andrea Fossati recalls which are the alarm bells to which it is good to pay attention
Maria Elena Perrero
04 May 2022 | 10:55 (edited May 04, 2022 | 10:55)
Love it sport to the point of making it one dependenceso much so that you can’t stay a day without it: to what extent is it good to train consistently and regularly, and when this constancy and regularity become aobsession? “General terms like sports addiction contemplate behaviors of very different origins that have their final outcome in an unhealthy relationship with sports practices “, he says to Official Active Professor Andrea Fossati, director of the Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Service at the San Raffaele Turro Hospital, full professor of Clinical Psychology and dean of the Psychology Faculty of the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. Speaking of the ‘unhealthy’ relationship with sport, Professor Fossati clarifies: “With this term we mean a dysfunctional use of sport. But it is not always easy to distinguish one dependence From one passionin the sports field “.
When sport is addictive
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However, there are some indicators that can warn us that something is wrong with our relationship with sports: “For example, when it is sport it becomes so extreme or is practiced with such frequency that it causes physical damages in those who do not have a base as a professional or semi-professional athlete – explains Fossati -. Often, in fact, those who suffer these negative consequences are amateur athletes who turn to the preparation of extreme performances “. In these cases, more than ever, it is essential to follow detailed training schedules but also to know your limits. “However, it is typical of sportsmen to always move one’s limit a little further”.
Compulsive sport
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Raising one’s level is not always bad. The problem arises when it is raised to a point where there are more negative effects than positive ones. Then there is another important distinction to be made. “Where there is an authentically problematic relationship with sport is when it is sport becomes a compulsion, something that is no longer a desire but a sort of moral obligation, a fixed idea – underlines Professor Fossati -. So you start putting sport before any other activity or person, work, family, affections fit together between one workout and another “. In other words, sport becomes the focus of our life. And this, when you are not a professional athlete, can undoubtedly be a sign of dependence.
Sport as addiction: the risk of compulsiveness
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Among the compulsive attitudes that can be implemented by sportsmen, Fossati indicates one in particular: “Sports, as we know, require a certain frequency of training, which in the long run can fall into repetitive patterns of behavior, generating real routines . If a person is inclined to always check what she has just done and once the training is finished she is not sure that she has done everything correctly, at the end of the session she could decide to restart and do it all over again – explains Fossati -. And this, understandably, becomes a consumption of time and a physical consumption, which is not good for one’s body and one’s social life ”.
Addiction to sports and eating disorders
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Then there is the vast world of sports addiction dictated by problematic relationships with one’s physical appearance and with food. Cases of people with anorexia or bulimia nervosa who throw themselves headlong into sport to consume as many calories as possible and burn all the (little) food ingested. “The one related to weight control and ai food disorders Properly speaking, it is one of the most widespread forms of dysfunctional relationship with sport – confirms Fossati -. The sport it is used as a way to control weight and increase calorie consumption: everything must be aimed at ensuring that sport leads to consuming all the calories consumed. In these cases, sporting activity is no longer a means to improve oneself and one’s performance, but a method of weight control, the possible increase of which generates anxiety. That’s what happens in the vigorexiaa disorder as present among those who practice sports as it is elusive in the diagnostic criteria “.
Addiction to sports and fitness
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After all, a certain desire to improve one’s physical shape is common to almost all those who play sports. And as long as there is only an incentive to improve, without exaggerating, that’s a good thing. “The point is to understand when the pleasure of sport is overwhelmed by the desire to improve one’s own fitness and the metabolism. This happens above all in disciplines that require a high energy expenditure: in some cases we are inclined to do them not so much for the intrinsic pleasure of the activity, but for its effects on a physical-aesthetic level ”, underlines Fossati.
When the passion for sport becomes an addiction
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Beyond these specific cases, however, what is perhaps the most common form of sports addictionof passion that becomes obsession, is revealed when sport passes from generating selfless pleasure to generating stress and higher and higher goals, sometimes unreachable. “There are those who are dissatisfied with their work, their life, their loved ones, and find an outlet in sport. However, if you start thinking you have the only moment of joy in sport, imagine yourself as great champions and behave as if you were, then you can enter a circuit where sport more than moment of escape becomes a real one prison, which can sometimes make the use of illicit and doping substances seem legitimate ”, underlines Professor Fossati. In other words, when you sacrifice all your work and social activities to play sports, you have to ask yourself what is happening. When you realize that you live for training and not vice versa, and that training exhausts your life, it means that sport, from passion, has become prison.
May 04, 2022 (change May 04, 2022 | 10:55)
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