Extreme Psychology
There may be more to high-risk sports than a “no fear” mantra.
Lindsey Konkel • July 13, 2009
![Rock climbing and other extreme sports put athletes at risk of serious injury or death. Psychologists are <br>studying the reasons that drive people to such extremes. [Credit: Carl A, flickr.com]](https://scienceline.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/rock-climbing-mod.jpg)
Rock climbing and other extreme sports put athletes at risk of serious injury or death. Psychologists are
studying the reasons that drive people to such extremes. [Credit: Carl A, flickr.com]
While fear can humble an athlete, it can also challenge him or her to overcome it. Courage is about facing fears and taking risks — managed risks, says Brymer. Athletes that set attainable goals within the range of their technical ability are more successful at channeling fear into focus — opposite the notion of fight, flight, or freeze — the body’s typical response to a fear-induced adrenaline rush. “Freezing up” while navigating a whitewater rapid or climbing the face of a cliff could be catastrophic.
Allan Warren has nearly drowned twice while kayaking. A friend of his flipped his kayak in a rapid and was pinned underwater for 25 minutes by a submerged tree branch before being rescued. Another friend broke his neck jumping off an 80-foot cliff at an extreme skiing competition, but survived.
Death is a constant risk and companion in extreme sports. Cheating death hasn’t inflated Warren’s ego or given him a false sense of invincibility — quite the opposite, in fact. “More than anything,” says Warren, “it’s a way to humble yourself, to reconnect with nature, to learn a lot about life, who you are as an individual.” This aspect of being exposed to the uncontrollable forces of the natural world, while exploring parts of his own personality he never knew existed, resonates with the humbling experiences of Brymer’s and Willig’s study subjects.
“You have to be completely focused, you have to be on top of your game,” says Warren. “Rocks everywhere, waterfalls, trees in the river,” he says of the steep creeks on North Carolina’s Green River, “people don’t usually get hurt kayaking at that level. It’s either you make it out or you die — the margin of error is miniscule.”
Participants do not freeze with fear; instead their perceptions seem to open up, resulting in the same heightened sense of awareness and calmness associated with meditation. Out of all the themes common to the extreme sports experience, this one surprises Willig, the London psychologist, the most. “When you look at extreme sports from the outside, they look so fast, so ferocious,” she says.
Rich Gottleib loves the calmness and clarity, the sense of being completely in the present that comes with climbing. “It’s a very immediate thing. It totally removes you, totally injects you. In that moment, reality cannot rear its ugly head.”
This mental state of complete involvement and focus, a loss of self-consciousness and a sense of passing time is what psychologists term “flow.” For centuries, practitioners of Eastern religions have sought flow through meditation. Brymer finds that many extreme athletes report transcendental flow experiences similar to those of meditation practitioners.
Testing a Theory
Phenomenology, Brymer’s method for interpreting and comparing extreme athletes’ first-hand accounts, is qualitative in nature — on the fringes of a science that demands quantifiable and reproducible results.
Though Michael Bardo, the Kentucky neuroscientist, has his doubts about the scientific legitimacy of a method that employs no numbers or quantifiable units and consists of just sitting down and talking to people, he acknowledges its utility. “I would never say that qualitative research is worthless,” he says. “It can be useful for coming up with new theories about the way we see the world. It can lead to hypotheses and to experiments.”
Now that Brymer has a better understanding of the behavior and motives that govern extreme sports participation, he plans to jump into the measurable science of how the brain works. Brain activity mapping using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, could show him which parts of the brain are active as a BASE jumper visualizes approaching a jump, flying through the air and then landing, for example. This type of information would allow him to show whether jumping off a cliff or a tower activates the same parts of the brain as meditation.
Quantifiable results must accompany the phenomenological reports in order for Brymer’s research to gain mainstream scientific applaud. This new theory of extreme sports psychology, says Bardo, “has to be put to the test.”
Changing a scientific and cultural paradigm can be a gradual and arduous process, but Brymer feels he is up to the task. “I’m going to keep questioning the presuppositions by getting to the bottom of the athletes’ experiences.”
14 Comments
Very good story. It really gives a different perspective of people many of us would consider “crazy,” yet they are more accurately highly trained athletes with clear focus on detail, technical skills, and most importantly safety.
Very good story Lindsey. As you know I’ve been anxious about it because I was so curious as to what you found. It’s interesting to me that my comments matched fairly closely with the research being done.
I found the part about flow particularly interesting. In my undergraduate studies I was a double major in philosophy and religious studies. I remember a moment in my Zen Buddhism class when I was talking to the professor about whether or not I was practicing my meditation outside of class. My response was that there are many ways to meditate, to focus the mind and to reach a state of no thought. Whether skiing, climbing, or kayaking, outdoor sport has always been my method for reaching that state of spiritual connection.
Thanks for putting this together, it’s really interesting.
hello..
Now I want to write research about “Meaning life of Extreme Sport People”. I need reference. can you help me??? I need result of any research about it. journal or ebook. (sorry if my vocabullary and Grammar is not good, I can’t speak English so well). Sorry if I bother you and thankyou for your attention.
Can you please tell me how to get in touch with the photographer of the picture used on Lindsey Konkel’s article posted July 13, 2009. I want to get permission to use that rock climbing/repelling picture.
Thanks,
Patrick
Good article. I am a therapist who treats individuals with drug addiction. I’m also interested in High Sensation Seekers as well as Highly Sensitive People. From what I have gathered, Elaine Aron, author of The Highly Sensitive Person, there is actually a type of individual who is Highly Sensitive and also a High Sensation Seeker. A person with both traits is likely to take very calculated and thoughtful risks, and being intelligent and often creative, will take those risks that would cause “normal” human beings to think they are crazy, when in fact, they can see, hear, feel and sense things that others are not able to. This will assist in them being able to handle difficult and risky adventures.
Good luck trying to understand it from the outside.
“Death plays a huge role in why men climb, in the way they climb and why some of them eventually quit climbing in the high mountains. Alpinism often means high risk and the loss of life. Your friends may die up there in the clouds, in storms, swept away by avalanches, or cowering under a volley of stones. Perhaps they’ll freeze to death alone at the bottom of a deep, dark crevasse or sit down to rest and never get up again. This is the long fall, where the sky is rose and the mountains have never been as beautiful as they are today. Life bleeds away from a head injury, unnoticed. It’s about climbers dying doing what they love and spectators speculating, judging, and maybe having the last word. Alpinism is the story of men and the risks men take, the ones they are equal to, the ones they barely get away with, and those risks that kill them. It is about obsession. The danger and the glory, the addiction of going harder, higher, longer. Sometimes we get away with it, we survive when others do not.”
A nicely written article with balance that asks that all important question of why risk your life? One thing that isn’t mentioned and seems obvious to non sensation seekers is that we feel strongly attached to our lives and the meaning of life. This would make, I think, one of the most interesting avenues to explore next – how to attach people to their lives so that they can get that high level of dopamine response from just breathing. Many people can get highs from ordinary pleasures such as a second biscuit with their cup of tea (read Bill Bryson – Notes From a Small Island – for a description of just that!) so you have to assume that it is possible and the neat trick would be to realign brain chemistry to allow people to get to that state without the need for external stimulus. Meditation can get you there and I can’t help feeling that some use of extreme sports may be nothing more than putting pressure on the individual to concentrate intensely. Although claims of extreme physical activity being a way to get into ‘the zone’ perhaps that’s because it may be a short cut to getting in ‘the zone’ This would make a strong link between a group of people who also drink, take drugs etc because that personality type is tuned to using short cuts to pleasure. Humans naturally tend to find the simplest way of reaching their goals unless the insula provides inhibition.
I’d like to try out flying from above the sky, and then surviving the fall to tell everyone what it felt like. It’s the feeling of cheating death that sometimes gives the high, same as proving that you’re in control and not anyone else is–not even higher being that whether or not exists.
You realize therefore considerably in the case of this matter, made me individually believe it from so many numerous angles. Its like women and men are not interested except it’s something to do with Woman gaga! Your individual stuffs excellent. Always take care of it up!
Reading about this, people who have high achievement to the other extreme, fear of failure, anxiety, depression and other mental illness, I am highly convinced that the primary neurotransmitter “if control” in the brain is Dopamine. For example, I think they are totally wrong with the medical industry to focus on Serotonin. When we know anti depressants don’t work in 3/4 of the people for depression and anxiety. However, give anyone a *small* dose of Adderall or Amphetamine. All of sudden that person acts like their true self…the fear, anxiety, and depression lifts like magic. I know this sounds off topic, however, lately everything seems to focus on Dopamine in all aspects of Psychology. It is interesting to see people struggling severely in therapy, then a subtle increase in dopamine and *all of a sudden* they are in touch with themselves and like they never had a problem at all doing more fearful things that caused the problems in the first place. The biggest problem is that there is more than Dopamine and the drugs, like extreme sports that enhance it are addictive, the anti depressants they have now don’t do much because depression usually improves in 4-6 weeks anyways with the placebo effect. Dopamine I believe controls everything in the mind. All the other chemicals are “subsystems”
I came across this article when searching for information on HSP’s (highly sensitive persons) who are athletes, as I consider myself both. I have done various extreme sports for many years at a moderate level.
As an HSP I will analyze things to death before doing them, and usually avoid over-stimulation in my everyday life. I’m the first one home from every party and can find pleasure in very small things. At the same time, taking on and mastering a physically risk-filled situation gives me intense and lasting pleasure, a very joyful feeling of privilege. The only way I can describe it is the feeling of making the impossible possible. Maybe this is true for other so-called “sensation seekers”, we’re not so much seeking “sensation” as the otherworldly feeling of mastering the impossible.
I have known a lot of extreme sport athletes over the years and many were. or are drug addicts alcoholics etc. I have wondered many times if there was some sort of corralation between the two. and I was correct in my assumptions. Great article BTW Michael Maltese
Very interesting article. Thanks for this!
I am a skydiver, and am very interested in the brain activity and psycology of individuals who share a passion for my sport. To date, I have never met a community of individuals as full of compassion, humour, honesty, and gratitude towards life than i have with the skydiving community.
I have never had addiction problems. I have a fascination with human behaviour and human potential. I wish there were more studies done on the minds of extreme athletes.
If anyone would like to personally delve into this topic in more detail, by all means, feel free to email me. I would gladly answer any questions…about our sport or about myself.
Cheers!
Great article, I stumbled upon this after reading a fascinating 2018 study “Psychiatric Aspects of Extreme Sports: 3 Case Studies” It’s an interesting read for anyone who enjoyed this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5798939/?report=classic