The guru-driven nature of sport psychology has contaminated the field and how it is perceived, evaluated, and valuated by coaches, athletes, and decision makers in organizations who may want to utilize the services of sport psychology practitioners. This chapter provides a foundational and fundamental rationale for advancing evidence-based and validated athlete assessment and intervention protocols. The prevalent approach to applied sport psychology is practitioner-centered. The American Board of Sport Psychology (ABSP) mission is to advance practice, education, and training standards in the field of applied sport psychology as well as provide licensed psychologists the opportunity to achieve board certification in sport psychology. Sport psychologists and sport psychology practitioners must distinguish themselves from coaches and other practitioner-advisors who work with athletes. Sport psychology offers practitioners of highly disparate education, training, experience, and credentials an unparalleled opportunity to break into the elite strata of sports.

The Critical Moment (CMT) testing paradigm introduces psychological stressors to practice settings by attaching physical, psychological, and material value to what would otherwise be routine moments during training. CMT brings accountability to practice sessions by documenting performance throughout a training period or on demand during specific testing epochs. The CMT creates psychological stress in a performance situation that otherwise might be perceived as routine and innocuous by an athlete. CMT paradigms are sport specific and can be customized so as to simulate important actions or tasks that are common and important to a particular sport. Anecdotally, one will frequently observe that athletes of all levels also are motivated intrinsically to compete and want to perform well and win, even in intra-squad competitive events or tasks that are ancillary or irrelevant to real game statistical performance.

This chapter describes maneuvers to access the internal system of the patient as well as means to accelerate or decelerate the work in that process of accessing the self-system. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), ego state therapy, and somatic therapy fit together like hand and glove. An extended preparation phase is often necessary before trauma processing in complex traumatic stress presentations and attachment-related syndromes, particularly when dealing with the sequelae of chronic early trauma. Clinical practice suggests that the adjunctive use of body therapy and ego state interventions can be useful, during stabilization and later on in increasing the treatment response to EMDR. Traditional treatment of complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociative disorders has usually included hypnoanalytic interventions, during which abreaction is considered an important part of treatment.

Psychophysiological stress testing (PST) should be routinely administered to all athletes at intake. This test provides an additional layer in the evidence hierarchy by extending Athlete’s Profile Primary Higher Order (AP PHO) constellation self-report and behavioral measures to underlying mind-body responding. Feelings of discomfort, worry, nervousness, and overall stress are expected to heighten in athletes with the most detrimental AP PHO constellation or in athletes who score high for neuroticism/subliminal reactivity (N/SR), and induce changes in heart rate variability (HRV) that are associated with increases in sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity. While differential levels of activation are usually necessary for sport performance, in the context of a static situation and cognitive stressors, greater low frequency (LF) and accompanying SNS is hypothesized to be disruptive and interfere with mental tasks, such as strategic planning as a precursor to motor action.

This chapter focuses on the modulatory role of the neuropetides in attachment as well as autonomic regulation, discussing sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal, particularly dorsal vagal and ventral vagal regulation as suggested by polyvagal theory. The probable role of the endogenous opioid system in the modulation of oxytocin and vasopressin release is discussed with a view toward the elicitation of both relational and active defensive responses are reviewed. Porges’ Polyvagal Theory delineates two parasympathetic medullary systems, the ventral and dorsal vagal. Brain circuits involved in the maintenance of affiliative behavior are precisely those most richly endowed with opioid receptors. Avoidant attachment is commonly associated with parental figures that have been rejecting or unavailable and refers to a pattern of attachment where the child avoids contact with the parent. The similarity of severe posttraumatic presentations to autism suggests that the research with regard to social affiliation in autism spectrum.

Mental imagery (MI) or visualization can be considered the go-to mental training (MT) method and is used by the vast majority of sport psychology practitioners. MI is addressed in the context of the Theory of Critical Moments and athlete’s profile (AP) models of peak performance construct bases and the brain-heart-mind-body-motor dynamics they advance in regard to intervention efficiency and efficacy. Athlete is tested for Visualization Responsivity (VR) using the Carlstedt Protocol Visualization Responsivity Test-Athlete Version (CPVR-A). This chapter provides some consecutive autonomic nervous system (ANS)-heart rate variability (HRV) reports that emanate from a professional tennis player who was high in hypnotic susceptibility (HS)/subliminal attention (SA), namely the baseline condition, positive-negative and relaxation visualization scenario-based HRV responses. It presents an MI intervention efficacy case study in the context of actual competition using a repeated A-B-A design. Variance explained in a visualization-based or associated outcome measure should be the intervention efficacy benchmark.

This chapter focuses on identifying and working with dissociative symptoms and dissociative disorders in a therapeutic context, providing a road map to assist with the pacing and planning of clinical interventions. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep can be conceptualized as a household strength processor that can accommodate the usual processing requirements of daily life. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been historically defined as requiring a trauma that is outside the range of normal human experience. Hypoarousal and parasympathetic activation that are an intrinsic part of dissociative symptoms are much more difficult to assess. The original painful memories live on in flashbacks and nightmares as well as in reenactments of the unconscious dynamics captured from the family of origin’s enactments of perpetration, victimization, rescuing, and neglect. Excessive sympathetic nervous system activation is easily construed to be an indicator of psychopathology.

This chapter reviews the disturbances in self-referential processing and social cognition in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to early-life trauma. It talks about the neural underpinnings of self-referential processing and examines how they may relate the integrity of the default mode network (DMN). The chapter describes the deficits in social cognition, with a particular focus on theory of mind in PTSD and the neural circuitry underlying direct versus avert eye contact. It then addresses the implications for assessment and treatment. Johnson demonstrated that self-referential processing is associated with the activation of cortical midline structures and therefore overlaps with key areas of the DMN in healthy individuals. Healthy individuals exhibited faster responses to the self-relevance of personal characteristics than to the accuracy of general facts. Less activation of the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) was observed for the contrast of self-relevance of personal characteristics relative to general facts as compared to controls.

Heart rate variability (HRV) measures have been found to consistently predict macro- and micro-level sport-specific outcomes, including performance during critical moments as well as reflecting differential states of attention, intensity, and mental control, especially when an athlete is under competitive pressure. This chapter explores and explicates HRV in the context of pre-intervention assessment of athlete mind-body-motor and outcome responses and attempts to arrive at an athlete’s individual zone of optimum functioning (IZOF), as well as criterion reference athlete’s profile primary higher-order (AP PHO) constellations with autonomic nervous system (ANS)/psychophysiological measures in both training and real competition. The polar system allows for real-time wireless and telemetry HRV data acquisition and analyses opening up the possibility of isolating specific inter-beat intervals during action. Such a capability facilitates micro-analyses of HRV and heart rate deceleration (HRD) on an unprecedented level, since investigations of HRV/HRD can be carried out during high-intensity training and competition.