Sport psychology isn’t just therapy for athletes. But that’s what it’s been reduced to. A great performance psychologist will help everyone in the organization appreciate the influence and impact of human behavior on performance - and help everyone perform better. They’ll also help you identify better talent and develop that talent more effectively. They’ll help you manage change, transition, turnover, and teamwork. They’ll help bolster your confidence in decision-making. They’ll provide a psychological lens through which everyone can view the game. They’ll influence things like travel, rest and recovery. A great sport psychologist will help you in the draft (recruiting), trade deadline (transfer portal), and with the players on your roster. Above all, they’ll quickly help everyone develop confidence in them - because they help the other performers (read: everyone) in the organization build competence (and confidence of their own along the way). If you’re only using sport psychology for therapy, you’re missing the point. You’re missing the benefits. You’re missing the opportunity to help everyone think, feel, and perform better. And if you aren’t of conviction that your current sport psych can do that… we need to talk about that, too. This isn’t to say therapy and mental health treatment aren’t important. Of course they are. But reducing the role to therapy is like reducing a strength coach’s role to just strengthening after an injury. Or reducing a coach’s role to just X’s & O’s with no mentorship. All of sport is behavior. An organization is just a collection of people behaving. Make the most of the experts in human behavior.

Good reframing is about changing the way you think to better align with your values in a given situation. It's not about lying to yourself about how you feel or dismissing your experience.