u/Experiment626_x

Hello! To start, my mom always sought different groups and sports to put me in, but I never quite fit into any of them. From as young as I can remember I think I dealt with some level of anxiety that slowly manifested into the full blown disorder that I deal with now. I was also extremely quiet and a soft spoken introvert, and I never had many friends or a long standing group that I was a part of. I often, and still do, felt lonely, left out, and that I didn't fit in. Additionally, it turns out that I am actually also level 1 high functioning autistic, but did not get my Autism diagnosis until I was 18, and being undiagnosed for that long heavily impacted me. Unfortunately it is very common for females to go undiagnosed when it comes to autism, and I was one of those girls.

I tried so many sports including bowling, which is the one that stuck. I am well aware that bowling is sort of an odd ball sport and it is very hard for me to find people who understand it outside of the community of bowlers I am affiliated with. This has led me in my current situation to feel like there is no help for me, and there is no one who will understand or know how to support me through this time. (I hate to sound rude or harsh, I don't mean to come across that way.) It has left me extremely stuck, disappointed, frustrated, and hopeless.

I am now 14 years into this sport. Thousands of dollars and hours spent in this sport. Blood, sweat, tears, and many injuries that have left its marks on my body. So much I have poured into this sport and so much of my life that I committed to it to the point that it is apart of who I am. It is apart of my identity and I don't know who I am without it. It is where I get my socialization, my relationships, my community, my recognition, my accomplishments, my sense of pride, confidence, athleticism, activity, strength, resilience, and fulfillment. I earned so many valuable lessons, qualities, and skills by doing this sport. When I am in the bowling alley on the lanes doing well I am no longer the lonely quiet extremely anxious neurodivergent kid in the back row. I'm just a bowler who is doing well and getting acknowledgment for it. I hate to sound cringy but it is true.

I bowled in Junior Gold Nationals from 13-17 years old. I set many records, made school history. I earned plenty of scholarship money, medals, and other accomplishments and awards. I have done a lot of impressive things, state tournaments, local tournaments, leagues, PWBA regionals and more. I bowled in high school, and I am now a DII NCAA Women's Bowling athlete. But I am now paying the price for deeply rooted weeds that I kept in the shadows for so long. I don't know if I have ever truly had fun in my sport in a long time. Growing up the countless individual coaching hours that I endured outside of leagues and tournaments was at the hands of a coach who was strict, stern, and who would publicly embarrass me in front of my fellow youth athletes. She would also hit me with a wooden yard stick, make me do pushups/other exercises, etc. My mom kept signing me up to work with this coach, and I spent 11 years in total, 7-18, being subjected to her. My mom signed me up for everything and brought me to everything. She kept me extremely busy constantly doing leagues and tournaments whether I wanted to or not. Traveling all over the state or outside the state, losing sleep doing many of these competitions without any say most of the time. The bar was raised higher and higher, we would argue all the time during my competitions and the slightest mistakes made me feel like a massive failure. The pressure was too much. Depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, body dysmorphia, they all soon followed or fully developed into disorders. Being so young going through all of that was immensely damaging. I had little time to be a kid, my mom lived through me and I was always under a huge bright spotlight. A puppet on the strings performing at show after show. It wore me down physically, emotionally, and mentally. (I have chronic back pain, and knee and shoulder issues.)

It all came crashing down when I went to college. I moved into my dorm room and was finally free from the cycle and free to live and schedule my own life. I couldn't function at first, and I didn't know what to do. I had always been extremely independent, cooking myself food, doing dishes, doing my own laundry, cleaning etc. , none of that was the issue. The issue was I was so used to the toxic cycle I was in with my mom that once I was free I finally saw it, the damage it had done, and how my brain was struggling to live without it at first. That is when my anxiety disorder went completely out of control. I lost over 20lbs my freshman year, was nauseous every single day, overwhelmed with anxiety. Completely lost in my sport and identity. I didn't know if I actually enjoyed bowling or who I even was. Constantly had panic attacks at my collegiate tournaments. My teammate, and now my closest friend, saved my life by introducing me to my therapist and got me into therapy for the first time in my life. But the trauma and damage was so deeply rooted that there are days where it feels too stuck to be fixed even now 3 years into therapy. My family is now rejecting the notion of me being in therapy and is constantly urging me to stop it as they believe it isn't helping me. They expected me to be 100% cured by now which is ridiculous and its whole separate issue.

My sophomore year started rough, and I had a severe enough panic attack where I landed in the hospital and they misunderstood what happened and I spent a few hours in the psych ward, an experience I will never forget. However, my second semester of that year I think I was the happiest I ever was in my sport and was really expressing and developing my identity. This past year, my junior year, things got worse. I truly lost my ability to enjoy my sport which is so sad because I was doing well my end of sophomore year. My teammate and close friend graduated, and was no longer on the team this year. I struggled socially to get along with my teammates. They treated me poorly, mocked me, isolated me, and have bullied me and done awful things to me throughout this entire past school year and season. I went through a lot of negative experiences with my coach these past three years as well. And I have had numerous negative experiences in general with the athletics at my university and other things. This past semester specifically left me extremely burnt out and overwhelmed, but I managed to finish my 3rd season, despite what I was going through.

I moved back home for summer break and crashed. I went from 5 classes, 3 practices a week, and tournaments over weekends to nothing. I tried to go practice on my own and spiraled. The shock I guess wore off and the burnout that I was not truly feeling because I was in go mode all semester long hit me like a truck. I froze on the lanes and couldn't walk and throw the ball. That is where I still am now 5 weeks later. I can hardly bowl once a week in a casual league I do with my closest friend and had to give up all of my other bowling commitments. Even bowling once a week is too much to bear. I have a physical overwhelming anxiety response. My entire body shakes violently and sweats profusely, my heart is racing, I feel ill, my mind is freaking out and I can hardly pick up the ball and do my 5 steps to get to the foul line and throw it. This has caused me an entire crisis over my future and life.

Who even am I without bowling? What would I even do? I may not bowl this upcoming school year. The one thing stopping me is that it is my last year. How could I not do the sport I have done my whole life my last year of undergraduate in college? There is so many others things to consider but I am overwhelmed with anxiety and depression over this. My depression diagnosis is now classified as Major depressive disorder, and my anxiety disorder is severe. I don't know what to do. I have such guilt and anger that I can't do a sport that has been apart of me for my whole life. How could I just give it up? What do I even do? I apologize that this is so long I am just so lost and overwhelmed.

Hello! To start, my mom always sought different groups and sports to put me in, but I never quite fit into any of them. From as young as I can remember I think I dealt with some level of anxiety that slowly manifested into the full blown disorder that I deal with now. I was also extremely quiet and a soft spoken introvert, and I never had many friends or a long standing group that I was a part of. I often, and still do, felt lonely, left out, and that I didn't fit in. Additionally, it turns out that I am actually also level 1 high functioning autistic, but did not get my Autism diagnosis until I was 18, and being undiagnosed for that long heavily impacted me. Unfortunately it is very common for females to go undiagnosed when it comes to autism, and I was one of those girls.

I tried so many sports including bowling, which is the one that stuck. I am well aware that bowling is sort of an odd ball sport and it is very hard for me to find people who understand it outside of the community of bowlers I am affiliated with. This has led me in my current situation to feel like there is no help for me, and there is no one who will understand or know how to support me through this time. (I hate to sound rude or harsh, I don't mean to come across that way.) It has left me extremely stuck, disappointed, frustrated, and hopeless.

I am now 14 years into this sport. Thousands of dollars and hours spent in this sport. Blood, sweat, tears, and many injuries that have left its marks on my body. So much I have poured into this sport and so much of my life that I committed to it to the point that it is apart of who I am. It is apart of my identity and I don't know who I am without it. It is where I get my socialization, my relationships, my community, my recognition, my accomplishments, my sense of pride, confidence, athleticism, activity, strength, resilience, and fulfillment. I earned so many valuable lessons, qualities, and skills by doing this sport. When I am in the bowling alley on the lanes doing well I am no longer the lonely quiet extremely anxious neurodivergent kid in the back row. I'm just a bowler who is doing well and getting acknowledgment for it. I hate to sound cringy but it is true.

I bowled in Junior Gold Nationals from 13-17 years old. I set many records, made school history. I earned plenty of scholarship money, medals, and other accomplishments and awards. I have done a lot of impressive things, state tournaments, local tournaments, leagues, PWBA regionals and more. I bowled in high school, and I am now a DII NCAA Women's Bowling athlete. But I am now paying the price for deeply rooted weeds that I kept in the shadows for so long. I don't know if I have ever truly had fun in my sport in a long time. Growing up the countless individual coaching hours that I endured outside of leagues and tournaments was at the hands of a coach who was strict, stern, and who would publicly embarrass me in front of my fellow youth athletes. She would also hit me with a wooden yard stick, make me do pushups/other exercises, etc. My mom kept signing me up to work with this coach, and I spent 11 years in total, 7-18, being subjected to her. My mom signed me up for everything and brought me to everything. She kept me extremely busy constantly doing leagues and tournaments whether I wanted to or not. Traveling all over the state or outside the state, losing sleep doing many of these competitions without any say most of the time. The bar was raised higher and higher, we would argue all the time during my competitions and the slightest mistakes made me feel like a massive failure. The pressure was too much. Depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, body dysmorphia, they all soon followed or fully developed into disorders. Being so young going through all of that was immensely damaging. I had little time to be a kid, my mom lived through me and I was always under a huge bright spotlight. A puppet on the strings performing at show after show. It wore me down physically, emotionally, and mentally. (I have chronic back pain, and knee and shoulder issues.)

It all came crashing down when I went to college. I moved into my dorm room and was finally free from the cycle and free to live and schedule my own life. I couldn't function at first, and I didn't know what to do. I had always been extremely independent, cooking myself food, doing dishes, doing my own laundry, cleaning etc. , none of that was the issue. The issue was I was so used to the toxic cycle I was in with my mom that once I was free I finally saw it, the damage it had done, and how my brain was struggling to live without it at first. That is when my anxiety disorder went completely out of control. I lost over 20lbs my freshman year, was nauseous every single day, overwhelmed with anxiety. Completely lost in my sport and identity. I didn't know if I actually enjoyed bowling or who I even was. Constantly had panic attacks at my collegiate tournaments. My teammate, and now my closest friend, saved my life by introducing me to my therapist and got me into therapy for the first time in my life. But the trauma and damage was so deeply rooted that there are days where it feels too stuck to be fixed even now 3 years into therapy. My family is now rejecting the notion of me being in therapy and is constantly urging me to stop it as they believe it isn't helping me. They expected me to be 100% cured by now which is ridiculous and its whole separate issue.

My sophomore year started rough, and I had a severe enough panic attack where I landed in the hospital and they misunderstood what happened and I spent a few hours in the psych ward, an experience I will never forget. However, my second semester of that year I think I was the happiest I ever was in my sport and was really expressing and developing my identity. This past year, my junior year, things got worse. I truly lost my ability to enjoy my sport which is so sad because I was doing well my end of sophomore year. My teammate and close friend graduated, and was no longer on the team this year. I struggled socially to get along with my teammates. They treated me poorly, mocked me, isolated me, and have bullied me and done awful things to me throughout this entire past school year and season. I went through a lot of negative experiences with my coach these past three years as well. And I have had numerous negative experiences in general with the athletics at my university and other things. This past semester specifically left me extremely burnt out and overwhelmed, but I managed to finish my 3rd season, despite what I was going through.

I moved back home for summer break and crashed. I went from 5 classes, 3 practices a week, and tournaments over weekends to nothing. I tried to go practice on my own and spiraled. The shock I guess wore off and the burnout that I was not truly feeling because I was in go mode all semester long hit me like a truck. I froze on the lanes and couldn't walk and throw the ball. That is where I still am now 5 weeks later. I can hardly bowl once a week in a casual league I do with my closest friend and had to give up all of my other bowling commitments. Even bowling once a week is too much to bear. I have a physical overwhelming anxiety response. My entire body shakes violently and sweats profusely, my heart is racing, I feel ill, my mind is freaking out and I can hardly pick up the ball and do my 5 steps to get to the foul line and throw it. This has caused me an entire crisis over my future and life.

Who even am I without bowling? What would I even do? I may not bowl this upcoming school year. The one thing stopping me is that it is my last year. How could I not do the sport I have done my whole life my last year of undergraduate in college? There is so many others things to consider but I am overwhelmed with anxiety and depression over this. My depression diagnosis is now classified as Major depressive disorder, and my anxiety disorder is severe. I don't know what to do. I have such guilt and anger that I can't do a sport that has been apart of me for my whole life. How could I just give it up? What do I even do? I apologize that this is so long I am just so lost and overwhelmed.