How to Find a Therapist for Former Athletes Who Already Gets Sport

Former athletes can struggle when choosing a therapist, because many clinicians do not understand the experience of being an athlete, and clients end up spending most of their sessions explaining that experience rather than working on what brought them in. If you have been searching for a therapist for former athletes and keep finding people who are perfectly good clinicians and still not the right fit, there are some specific things worth knowing before your next consultation call. I am going to cover what the different professional titles mean and why they are not interchangeable, the step I see former athletes skip most often, where to look, and what to ask once someone is on the phone. I am a former Division I athlete and coach as well as a licensed therapist, so I have sat on both sides of this.

Key Takeaways

Not everyone working with athletes is licensed to provide therapy, and the titles carry more weight than they appear to. The step former athletes skip most often is getting specific about what they are actually navigating, because being athlete-informed and being trained in a particular concern are two separate qualifications. A consultation call exists so both people can find out whether the fit is right, which means clients get to ask questions too. Direct questions about experience, approach, and how a therapist handles disagreement are all reasonable. When the first person is not right, looking for another one is a reasonable thing to do.

Why is it so hard to find a therapist who understands athletes?

Most therapist profiles list anxiety, depression, and life transitions, and those words do not tell a former athlete whether the clinician understands what years inside competitive sport can do to identity, self-worth, and the way a person responds to pressure. A therapist can be very good at their work and still not recognize the pattern when a former athlete starts describing it.

A therapist does not need to have played college or professional sport to be a good fit. Many of the best clinicians for athletes never competed at all, and what matters more is whether they understand what they are treating.

Former athletes have often had their lives dictated by a sport schedule for a decade or longer, along with a built-in community, a constant feedback system, a source of status, an outlet for whatever they were feeling, and a ready answer to who they are. When all of that ends, the loss tends to be considerably larger than a change in how someone spends their weekends, and it deserves curiosity from a clinician rather than being handled as an adjustment problem.

There is research supporting how seriously this transition deserves to be taken. Runacres and Marshall (2024) pooled 37 studies covering 24,732 former elite athletes and found the prevalence of anxiety and depression to be more than twice that of comparison general populations, with real variation between sports. Leaving sport does not cause a mental health condition on its own, and those numbers do suggest former athletes deserve support that treats the transition as significant rather than as something they need time to adjust to.

Former athletes often come into a first session saying some version of I do not know who I am anymore, or nothing is wrong and I still cannot switch off, or I have accomplished everything I was supposed to accomplish and it still does not feel like enough. Those statements deserve real curiosity from whoever is sitting across from them.

Do I need a therapist or a sports psychologist?

The answer depends on what someone wants help with. A qualified sport psychology professional may be a good fit when the goal is mental performance, meaning focus, confidence, or competing under pressure. A licensed clinical therapist is generally the right call when someone is seeking assessment or treatment for anxiety, depression, trauma, or eating concerns.

Searching for this gets confusing quickly, because typing sports psychologist near me returns psychologists, therapists, performance consultants, coaches, and credentials most people have never encountered, and those roles are not interchangeable even though the search results present them side by side.

For clinical care, the NCAA's mental health guidance recommends that formal evaluation and treatment be provided by a licensed mental health care provider working within the scope of their clinical license, and it names clinical and counseling psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, licensed mental health counselors, and licensed marriage and family therapists among those providers (NCAA, n.d.). Depending on the state, that shows up as credentials like LCSW, LPC, LMHC, LMFT, PhD, and PsyD.

CMPC comes up frequently as well, which stands for Certified Mental Performance Consultant. That certification comes from the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies, and requires graduate coursework, supervised applied experience, an exam, adherence to a code of ethics, and ongoing professional development (AASP, n.d.). It is a real credential with real training behind it, and on its own it does not license someone to provide psychotherapy. Some clinicians hold both, which can be useful depending on what a person needs.

Reading the actual credentials matters more than assuming the word sports covers everything.

What should I look for beyond someone who works with athletes?

Former athletes should get specific about what they are actually navigating before they start searching. Being athlete-informed is one qualification and clinical training in a particular concern is a separate one, and both matter. Anyone dealing with pervasive anxiety, disordered eating, trauma, OCD, or chronic pain should ask a potential therapist directly about that background.

What I see happen frequently is a former athlete booking with a clinician who does general mental health work, because that person mentions athletes somewhere on their profile, when what the athlete is carrying is something specific that calls for specialized training. You would not go to a heart surgeon to get your ACL repaired. Both are doctors and both are good at what they do, and therapy deserves that same level of specificity. Asking about it is a reasonable thing to do.

Naming the concern first helps. Former athletes whose central struggle is identity might search terms like athlete identity therapist, life after sport, or sport transition therapy. Former athletes whose perfectionism has taken over their work, relationships, training, or parenting should look for someone with real experience treating perfectionism and what tends to travel alongside it. When what looks like athlete discipline has become tangled up with food, body image, or compulsive exercise, that calls for a clinician with specialized training in eating concerns. Anyone dealing with trauma, panic, OCD, or chronic pain deserves more than a profile that says I work with anxiety.

A therapist can understand sport culture very well and still not be the right clinician for the specific concern someone is bringing in, so both pieces have to line up.

How do I find a therapist who works with athletes?

Using several routes tends to work better than relying on one. Athlete-specific directories, general therapist directories read carefully, athlete advocacy organizations, university programs, and referrals from people who already understand the problem will each surface different clinicians.

The Association for Applied Sport Psychology maintains a directory searchable by location, sport, and specialization. When therapy is what someone needs, it is worth checking whether the person also holds a clinical license.

General directories like Psychology Today have a sports performance filter, and the filter alone will not sort this out. Reading profiles closely for specificity matters more, meaning words like athletic identity, former athlete, sport injury, sport transition, perfectionism, grief, disordered eating, or body image, written in a way that suggests the clinician actually thinks about them. A profile listing sports alongside dozens of other specialties usually indicates someone who works broadly rather than deeply in this area.

Sidelined USA is worth knowing about for former athletes whose careers ended through injury, since they focus specifically on athletes facing permanent removal from sport and point people toward clinicians familiar with grief, injury, and transition.

Local universities are an underused route. Counseling programs, athletic departments, sport psychology programs, and kinesiology departments often know exactly who in the area works with athletes privately. Physicians, athletic trainers, dietitians, and former athletic departments may know someone as well.

The aim is a short list of clinicians whose training overlaps with both sport culture and the specific concern someone is carrying.

What questions should I ask a sports therapist in a consultation?

Ask about experience with current and former athletes, experience with your specific concern, the approaches they use, how they think about the therapeutic relationship, how they handle feedback and disagreement, how sessions are structured, whether they use work between sessions, and practical details like fees, scheduling, and insurance.

Former athletes often approach a consultation call as though they need to prove they are struggling enough to be there, when the call exists so both people can find out whether this is a fit. Most therapists expect to be asked questions.

Starting with the specific concern tends to work best. Can you tell me about your experience working with whatever someone is navigating, whether that is OCD, an eating disorder, chronic pain, suicidality, perimenopause, or an identity transition. Then move to sport. What experience do you have working with current or former athletes, and how familiar are you with the transition out of competitive sport.

Asking what therapeutic modalities or approaches someone uses is also worth doing. Nobody needs to become fluent in therapy acronyms, and what matters is whether the clinician can explain their approach clearly and connect it to what the person brought in.

Then there is the relationship. How do you approach the therapeutic relationship, and what values or principles guide how you work with clients. This question matters more for former athletes than for most people, because many spent years inside relationships where authority, hierarchy, evaluation, and compliance were built into the structure. Therapy should not become one more room where someone is trying to be the good client.

The question I love most is how a therapist approaches feedback, disagreement, and collaboration. That one gets at whether they expect a client to follow their lead or genuinely see them as a collaborator, and the answer says a great deal about what the work will feel like.

The practical questions matter too. How sessions are typically structured and what someone can expect walking into one. Whether the therapist incorporates work between sessions or treats that as individualized. Scheduling, availability, fees, cancellation policy, and insurance.

Asking all of that is information gathering about someone a person is considering trusting with a lot.

How do I know if a therapist is the right fit?

Fit has more to do with whether someone can build enough trust and collaboration to do meaningful work than with whether they agree with everything the therapist says. Flückiger and colleagues (2018) pooled 295 studies covering more than 30,000 clients and found a consistent positive relationship between the therapeutic alliance and treatment outcomes, holding across treatment approaches, client characteristics, and countries.

A good therapist for former athletes does not need to know a particular sport or conference, and curiosity about the client's version of it matters much more. Asking what sport meant to someone rather than assuming is a good sign. So is a clinician who can separate what helped an athlete succeed from what may be costing them now, and who explains their clinical experience plainly while staying inside the boundaries of their training.

More caution is warranted with someone who turns every problem into a performance problem, who moves straight into goal setting, who minimizes the loss because the athlete chose to stop playing, who treats discipline as automatically healthy, who cannot describe their experience with a specific concern, or who seems to expect compliance rather than collaboration.

When the first therapist is not the right one, looking for another is a reasonable thing to do. Clients can give a therapist feedback, say when something did not land, ask questions, and decide an approach is not working for them. You are in choice around all of it, which for someone who spent years being coached, corrected, ranked, selected, benched, and told when to push harder can be a genuinely unfamiliar position to sit in.

Finding someone who gets the whole picture

What tends to matter most is finding a clinician who understands the world a former athlete came from and can competently work with the person sitting in front of them now, including all the parts that have nothing to do with sport. Knowing what preseason means, or having played the same sport, matters considerably less than that.

Someone who already understands that perfectionism was praised, that pushing through worked remarkably well for a long time, that being the athlete provided belonging and certainty and a clear answer to who am I, and that walking away from it can surface questions there was never time to ask while competing.

At Perrin Wellness and Performance, I offer individual telehealth therapy for former athletes in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Former athletes who have been searching and keep feeling like they have to explain the entire athlete experience before they can get to themselves do not have to settle there. You can read more about individual therapy for former athletes or book a consultation to find out whether it feels like a fit. If you are struggling and want support right now, you can call or text 988 at any time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between a sports psychologist and a therapist? A therapist is a licensed mental health professional qualified to provide clinical care within the scope of their license. A sports psychologist specializes in the psychological side of sport, and some are also licensed clinical psychologists while others focus primarily on performance. The NCAA recommends licensed mental health providers for formal mental health evaluation and treatment (NCAA, n.d.).

How do I know if I need a sports psychologist or a clinical therapist? Start with what you want help with. A qualified sport psychology professional may be appropriate when the primary goal is mental performance, such as concentration, confidence, or competing under pressure. Someone seeking treatment for trauma, depression, significant anxiety, eating concerns, OCD, or suicidality should look for an appropriately licensed clinician with relevant expertise. Some professionals have training in both areas.

What questions should I ask before booking with a sports therapist? Ask about their experience with current and former athletes, their familiarity with the transition out of sport, their expertise with your specific concern, the approaches they use, how they handle feedback and disagreement, how collaborative their sessions are, and the practical details like fees and scheduling. Identifying what you need first makes it easier to evaluate whether someone has the training to provide it.

Can therapy for former athletes be done online? Yes. Individual therapy is regularly provided through video sessions when it is clinically appropriate, and my own practice is fully telehealth. Licensing still applies, because a therapist generally has to be licensed in the state where the client is physically located during the session, so that is worth checking early in the search.

What credentials should I look for in a sports-informed therapist? Start with an appropriate clinical license when therapy is the goal, which depending on the state may look like LCSW, LPC, LMHC, LMFT, PhD, or PsyD. Then look at training and experience in the specific concern, along with real familiarity with athlete mental health or sport culture. A CMPC credential signals specialized mental performance education and experience, and it does not function as a clinical therapy license (AASP, n.d.).

About the Author

Emily Perrin, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker, former Division I soccer player, and former Division I coach. She works with current and former athletes who are dealing with anxiety, burnout, perfectionism, identity loss, and the emotional weight that can come with years in competitive sports.

Having spent nearly 15 years in athletics, Emily understands the pressure athletes often feel to keep going, stay disciplined, and look like they have it handled, even when they are struggling. Her work combines clinical training with lived experience in sport.

Emily's approach is trauma-informed and body-centered. She helps clients make sense of patterns like emotional shutdown, overthinking, people-pleasing, chronic stress, and harsh self-criticism. Her goal is to help athletes feel more grounded in who they are outside of performance, achievement, and sport.

She has supported athletes, coaches, teams, therapists, and sports organizations, including Division I programs and professional teams.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for individualized mental health care, diagnosis, or treatment.

References

Association for Applied Sport Psychology. (n.d.). Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) certification. https://appliedsportpsych.org/certification/

Flückiger, C., Del Re, A. C., Wampold, B. E., & Horvath, A. O. (2018). The alliance in adult psychotherapy: A meta-analytic synthesis. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 316–340. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000172

National Collegiate Athletic Association. (n.d.). Mental health best practices. https://www.ncaa.org/what-we-do/health-safety-and-performance/mental-health/best-practices/

Runacres, A., & Marshall, Z. A. (2024). Prevalence of anxiety and depression in former elite athletes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, 10(4), e001867. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2023-001867