Responsibility & visibility · Individual therapy · Chicago
Therapy for coaches in Chicago
Supporting a team can involve responsibility for outcomes you cannot fully control. You may spend much of your time attending to others while giving little attention to your own reactions and limits.
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What you may be noticing
- Carrying losses or conflict home
- Feeling pressure to remain composed
- Difficulty resting during a demanding season
Your experience may look different. These examples are starting points for a conversation.
How we can work on this
We can explore how responsibility, criticism, and expectations affect you. Therapy can be a place to understand your responses and consider boundaries that support your well-being.
I am Sam Rustum, LCPC. My work is collaborative: we will discuss your priorities, choose a starting point, and check whether our approach is useful to you.
Who supports you after you have supported everyone else?
You may spend a practice or competition attending to other people’s reactions and notice your own only afterward. A loss, disagreement, or difficult decision can follow you home. We can discuss what happens when the expectation to remain composed leaves you little room to process the day.
A session might return to a moment when someone questioned your judgment. What did the criticism seem to say about you? Did you become defensive, replay it all evening, or respond by working harder? We can examine how responsibility and personal worth become connected in that reaction.
From there, we might work on describing your own needs, considering a boundary during a demanding season, or recognizing frustration before it enters a close relationship. We will review what happens when you try a change. Our conversations can also include the parts of your identity that receive less attention when the team takes priority. The work centers on your mental health and relationships, with coaching situations as meaningful context.
Questions you may be asking
Can I discuss criticism from parents, players, or colleagues?
Yes. We can explore its emotional effect, how you interpret it, and how you want to respond. You can provide context while leaving out identifying or private information about others.
What if I feel responsible for every result?
We can examine how you distinguish your responsibilities from factors you cannot control, and what happens emotionally when a result disappoints you. That can give us a specific pattern to work on.
Can therapy help me be more present outside the season?
We can discuss how you transition out of constant responsibility, what you want time for, and the reactions that make rest difficult. We will define changes that fit your circumstances.
A place to begin
Let’s make room for what you need.
A free 15-minute consultation gives us a chance to talk about what is difficult, answer your questions, and consider whether working together fits what you need.