In this podcast, we share the first part of our conversation with Dr. Suzanne Brown, a clinical psychologist and expert in the areas of identity and attachment theory. Susie outlines a number of strategies as to how we can better understand our players through an empathetic approach, sharing some ideas as to how coaches can utilize an understanding of psychology to improve the environment for their players. For the full discussion, head over to playdevelopmentproject.com and check out the Masterclass discussion section.
Hi everyone, welcome to another Play Development Project Masterclass discussion. Delighted to be joined by clinical psychologist Dr. Susie Brown. Susie, how are you?
I'm good, thank you. How are you Dave? I'm very well excited about this conversation and psychology and a few other areas that we're going to cover. But to give our viewers and our members a bit of insight into your background, can you explain a little bit about what you do, what your expertise is and how that fits more recently into sport?
Yeah, so I am a clinical psychologist, as you mentioned. I guess traditionally that's probably thought of as working with mental health difficulties, so working across the age range, whether that's from children, all the way through to adults and older adults, working predominantly with things like mental health distress and psychological distress, really working to improve well-being. So that's sort of been my background and I've been working in that field for about the past 11 years now. And in terms of more recently getting involved in sport, that really came about as a result of Michael Dodd, so a Birmingham City Football Club, pulling together quite an innovative and for me I think quite a collaborative way of working in the field.
So he actually arranged a kind of TED talk today. So I attended that and were the likes of people like Russell Earnshaw, Nick Lovett, Keith David's all presented that. And then that was about a year ago now, since then I've been working with the RFU Little bit and BCFC, both at an organisational level and an individual player level. Fantastic, it sounds like a very interesting, I guess, transition or somewhat a new challenge based on your experience.
I mean, from a personal perspective, how exciting has that been and how have you found the sort of crossover between, I mean, you're working with people across the board, but to apply it in a sporting setting, is it a big difference? I guess, like you say, people are people, so there's definitely that consistency throughout that. I think what I found really interesting is thinking about it in terms of the multiple levels, so at an organisational level and then seeing a lot of parallel processes between what happens as a player, but also as a coach, what you're doing. So for me, for instance, football can become your world as a player, and I think as a coach, you're all involved and invested in this because you're incredibly passionate, but again, it can become your world, right?
So it's trying to work alongside both staff and children really, or adolescents or adults, really thinking around the same process is really, I wouldn't say it's necessarily so different, but I would say there are particular nuances I've found within sport, particularly things like identity that we've talked about that really, I suppose, are magnified for me in terms of thinking about the impact of things like identity within sport. Certainly, very interesting. In this area, we've sort of touched on through our lead researcher, Jimmy Vaughn, and he's done some stuff around self-determination theory, and she had his own experiences as a young academy player when his world kind of came crashing down. So no doubt we'll go into that a little bit, but to go back to your experience, you've worked around the idea of specialising in trauma, identity and attachment.
So can you give us an insight and a bit of a bit of understanding as to how these ideas work based on your experience and then how they apply potentially for coaches? Yeah, so this is an area I've been interested in really from the start, so it really guides everything I do based on the fact that as people, we are really driven by our attachment systems. So just to give a brief description, because people may not have heard that term before, attachment really decides how a child attaches to an adult, often it's your parents, but it really can be anybody who raises you. And this really sets the building blocks and foundations for your relationship.
So how you then interact with others is really driven as a result of your attachment system. So if you think about it, the brain is always responding to new experiences, new relationships. It's really driven by not just your own sense of personality and self, but what happens to you? We exist in relation to others.
We're not just an isolated person. So if you think about it from a very young age, we're almost being given this blueprint on how to interact with others. And so as a thought of that, when trauma happens, that can really change your trajectory. So you begin to learn about yourself, you begin to learn about others, and how safe the world is.
So with good experiences, you learn that you yourself are safe and lovable, you learn that others are trusted and can be drawn upon when you need them and you learn that the world is a safe place, even if there are trauma or tragedy or events where you need to overcome difficulty. You're able to do that because you're able to draw upon your own coping strategies and you're able to reach out and have to help when you need it. Now, unfortunately, that's not the case for many children. So they do experience a lot of trauma where unfortunately, maybe the adult around them isn't always consistent, isn't always available.
So what people do, because we're adaptive creatures, and it's always driven by it, the fact that we are adaptive creatures, is we learn many different ways to get our needs met. So for instance, you might find that actually it makes more sense than it's safer for a child to really focus in on a task. So actually, the adult's not that safe. I can't actually approach the adult in the situation.
So I'm really going to focus in, and when we think about this in sport, I'll really focus in on the task that I'm being asked to do, but I'm not going to approach the coach. That's too dangerous to me. Similarly, it might be that actually, because the adult isn't always available, I need to stay close to this adult. Yeah, so in the event of a coach, I need to stay close to them.
I need to make sure that they're going to be there, because I'll need my needs to be there. And I'm not quite sure if they're going to be paying attention to me, or one of the other 10 children that they're coaching right now. So you might have children that really need your support, really can't get on with the task, because they're so focused on trying to maintain the relationship with you. So, sorry, go on.
No, I was just going to say absolutely fascinating. While you're talking, I'm thinking of different players. You know, I'm thinking of players who I can relate to, who are perhaps from my coaching perspective, who are harder to break down or understand or build that relationship with, but might be exceptional at doing what they do on the pitch. And those others who seem to be there to please and want to be in your ear or seem to be helping all the time.
And I think it's a really interesting and almost not a stark warning, but it sort of outlines the responsibility that coaches have and the influence that coaches have as role models and important people in child's development and in their lives. It's really interesting. Yeah, so it's huge, because the thing is, back in the 60s, people thought that you only have one attachment figure, and then obviously, as we've learned a lot more about the process, we know that we can have many attachment figures throughout our lives. So coaches are huge influence in terms of not just offering an attachment figure, but when children are going through trauma, maybe their home life isn't great, actually as a buffer to mental health problems, the fact that actually a coach can provide a good role model.
It really gives them an opportunity to then take in and digest the fact that other adults in their environment can be safe and secure. So actually, you've got such a huge, important role in these children's lives, but it will definitely impact on their ability to get on with the task at hand for them to be able to seek support from you. So I always say to the coaches that I'm working with, ideally, obviously, you're working children within a context of a safe and secure environment. They have a secure attachment.
Generally speaking, though, unfortunately, we know that that's not always the case. So ideally, in attachment, you have sometimes a whole circle. So you've got somebody that can really come to you for support when needed, so can approach the coach with the relationship with safe enough. Once people feel safe enough, they will go off and explore.
That's what we're designed to do with social creatures, which is supposed to explore our environment, especially if you translate that to being on the pitch, you want to go off and explore, you want to go and take great shots, you want to be able to put all these skills into practice. But actually, if you're not able to do both, so if you don't have the whole circle, then actually you're not thriving. At best, you're trying to survive, but you're not thriving. You're not seeing the best of the children that, you know, those kids that don't come to you to ask to help, and just like the kids that can't detach away from you, you're not seeing the best of their abilities.
Really interesting. I guess for those working in Academy of Iron, that can be at times a bit more prevalent than perhaps grassroots. But when talking about those attachments and the importance and the relationship of the coach, what advice would you pass on to coaches as to how they can start building meaningful connections, whether that's with a new group or perhaps players that they're having challenges building those relationships with? So it's initially treating every child as an individual, which sounds very basic and straightforward, but the reality is, you know, you're competing with lots of demands, you've got a lot to do within any one session, and trying to hold in mind lots of different children as individuals can be really difficult, but understanding that every behaviour that you're seeing is a communication, because we are as active as creatures, what you are seeing is a communication of something.
Now, often it's driven by anxiety, so these behaviours that you're seeing, whether it's completely to exclude the coach or to stick closely to the coach, it's being driven by anxiety. So it's really about knowing how to regulate that anxiety with the child, so co-regulation. And once you're able to do that, you're modelling that, you're providing the scaffold to children a framework that they can then begin to use that themselves when you're not there. So I think for me, it's really engaging their peers, so remembering that particularly working with adolescents at this point in their life, actually the healthy thing for them to be doing is really engaging with their peers and moving away from adults, because again, evolution says that's what we're designed to do, we're designed to go out and really rebel against adults and find our own way of living.
So it's using peers, so for instance, if you know the children that won't particularly approach you as a coach, what you can help to do is within earshot of those, help other children nearby, because hopefully they'll be able to take in those chunks of information and digest that. So the children that are really stuck close to you and actually can't shake them half, because they need your attention, it's really about understanding that, well, we all need attention. I often hear, it's really attention-seeking, that's just not the case, we're all attention-eating, so we all need it. So it's really about thinking, how can I help to encourage this detachment, but in manageable chunks, because we know it's going to evoke anxiety.
So this might be about getting the balance between giving them more responsibility, so selecting the team that they want, picking them as a captain, but also remembering that they are a child, so you don't want them to become the mini-adult, you need to maintain an adult position here, but really encouraging them to be able to cope with increasing chunks of time away from you and actually really embedding them within the team. Really, really interesting. Also, from a PDP perspective, it's interesting to hear you refer to them as not being mini-adults, which I think is great. We've got to remember spoken to a few people recently who constantly use the word children, which I think is refreshing in sport, and obviously much more relevant to you as opposed to athletes, players and so on.
And secondly, from a PDP perspective, it ties into that model of ecological dynamics and appreciating people's complex adaptive systems. I think a lot of what you're speaking about from a psychological perspective, ties into some of the research that we've shared before. In terms of this model of attachment theory, and insecure attachment and ambivalence, which you've presented onto coaches as far as I understand, can you take us through this model and what that actually means? Yeah, so I guess drawing upon what I've just said.
So the secure attachment is the complete circle. An insecure avoidant attachment is the children that will avoid at all cost the coach relationship, so they'll really focus on what it is that they need to do, even to the detriment of themselves. So let's say, for instance, you know that you could be helping them in some way, that you could be really exciting what they're doing currently, and they're not really reaching that full potential. These are the children that at all costs will not approach you, whether that's because of not just driven by anxiety, but expectations around shame and how difficult that can be to really ask for help and what that says about them and also the judgments that may follow from that.
That's the type of child that you think about as an insecure avoidant attachment, so they're going to avoid the relationship and they're going to focus elsewhere. Now, these are the children that try to be incredibly self-reliant, but ultimately really do need assistance. So one thing I often remind coaches about is the chronological age of the child is not the same as their social and emotional age. So you could be working with children and saying children, but adolescents and adults that are in their 20s, and actually their social and emotional age are of a six-year-old, because they've not been given that scaffolding, they've not been given that emotional literacy or that regulation throughout their experiences of early life.
So actually they've not developed it, it's a skill really. So you need to be able to develop this as skills. Now, the great thing about our brain is that it's incredibly plastic. So, for instance, we go through two major growth periods, so one being when we're first born up until around the age of five, and so lots of learning is laid down and embedded, but again, from adolescence, so particularly for men at around the age of 12, all the way up until 25, you're having major brain changes, and then again, up until you're 30, and our brain stays plastic, right?
So we would never learn new things if it didn't. The fact that you've got a huge amount of growth potential during adolescence, you know, I speak to a lot of people, they say, well, you know, by the time they've come to me, they're 18 years old, they're, this is who they are, they're fits. That's just not true, they're still developing huge important parts of their brain. So the, to go back, and so the insecure ambivalent is the script to where I gave of the child that is unsure of your ability and your availability, so they will stick close to you at a cost to them learning and exploring, and you know, again, really embedding themselves with their peers.
So these are the children, I guess, that you might describe as the class clown, or, yeah, so both children, though, I guess what you might find is that, they're not able to express their emotions, they're experiencing, they haven't got the language, potentially, and to do that, so what you might find is all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you'll have a complete blowout, and then the lid will be put back on very quickly, and you'll think, where the hell did that just come from, right? That was open to nothing, because you've asked them to do something, and can they just flicked out? Actually, what's happening is it's a build-up of this anxiety, and then you're seeing the surface, it's almost like that iceberg, you're seeing the top of it, but it's driven by a lot that's underneath it. Thanks for joining us on the Play It Development Project podcast.
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