Simone Biles: An Insight into Trauma’s Impact
Simone Biles has been called one of the greatest American gymnasts of all time. As she has performed during the 2021 Olympics, she has equally become connected to the idea of an athlete's mental health. In her decision to pull out of certain gymnastic events, due to the state of her mental health, there has been a flood of discussion regrading the pressure put on athletes and the grueling physical training. Theories on Simone’s mental health issues have referenced the ramifications from 2020’s isolation due to COVID protocols as well as jettisoning the term “twisties” into common language to understand the physical effect of psychological hindrances on an athlete. Another piece of the puzzle that deserves highlighting is the impact of trauma not only on an athlete, but on any human being.
Simone was one of the hundreds of girls molested by Larry Nassar, convicted sexual offender and previous team doctor for the US women’s national gymnastics team for eighteen years. Simone is also a child of the foster care system, eventually being adopted by her grandfather at the age of six. Both of these situations are traumatic. It is important to understand that when traumatic things happen in our lives, there can be lasting effects. In interviews with Simone over the years, I’ve heard how angry she is at systems that didn’t take care of the hundreds of young women under Nassar’s care, one of those systems being the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. I can only image the psychological connection to a mother that also didn’t take care of Simone or her three siblings. While it seems Simone was cared for and loved by her adopted family, there has been a history of people in her life that significantly let her down and did not take care of her. These types of traumas leave lasting scars.
People may not understand, or they might even question, why Simone is dealing with the impact of trauma now even though these events happened years ago. Again, this gives us a great opportunity to more deeply understand how trauma can work in the brain. When a traumatic event happens either once or in a reoccurring manner, the brain often fragments, compartmentalizes, or even hides parts or all of the event. It does this as a protection. Your body goes into fight, flight, freeze or fawn responses and you are in survival mode. There is often a disconnect or disassociation of mind and body. When the individual gets back to a safe environment, the event or events can often feel too overwhelming to process. This can lead to further compartmentalization or disassociation from the event. Typically the processing of the trauma won’t occur until there is a mental trigger associated with the past trauma or when the build up of carrying the trauma becomes too much.
An analogy sometimes used for this process is of a linen closet. Your brain stores memories similarly to a neatly organized linen closet. Towels folded with towels, sheets with sheets, and everything in a tidy spot. Trauma is like someone threw you a huge comforter covered with goat head sticky burrs that you have to shove into your neat closet. It hurts to handle the comforter so you throw it in the closet and quickly shut the door. The comforter is too big for the closet and may even disrupt the other neatly organized items. The comforter is so enormous, it even busts the doors open sometimes. Eventually you decide to take the comforter out, but hopefully you do it with a trusted friend or professional. Slowly you take out each burr, you put your closet back together, and you find a space for the cleaned and neatly folded comforter.
Looking from the outside, it seems like Simone’s comforter has busted through her doors on an incredibly public stage. It takes great strength and bravery to be taking care of herself and listening to her needs. Where systems have failed her before, she is not failing herself because she is calling out her process. I hope we can all help her take some of the burrs out of her trauma by respecting her process.