"If I Can’t Do It my Way, It Doesn’t Make Any Sense Anymore!" – Bringing Meaning into Working with Sport Clients in Transitions

Abstract

Transitions represent prototypical phases when athletes may question the meaning of their sport and life. While for some, the profound questioning can help commit more consciously to chosen career and life projects, it can turn into a crisis of meaning for others. However, to date, sport psychology has not yet addressed the concept of meaning extensively. In this article, I aim to promote the integration of meaning-based transition interventions through introducing theoretical perspectives on meaning in life and sport, and through sharing my own experiences in my roles as former athlete and current scientist practitioner. Key lessons are derived as recommendations to guide practitioners when using meaning to complement their work with sport clients in transitions.

Keywords:

• Athlete
• crisis
• existential
• meaning
• purpose
• scientist practitioner

From elite athlete to scientist practitioner: a personal story of how a meaning perspective has become meaningful

My athlete perspective

After 20 years of competing in canoe slalom on the Olympic level and with only a few races left before I would be forced to end my elite athletic career forever, I sent the following message to my sport psychology practitioner (SPP) to share my struggle:

I don’t know what to do anymore. I have tried so hard to make it less important to me, so it won’t hurt so much when I must soon stop. But nothing works! How do I turn this love, passion, energy down!? How do I dampen the significance it has for me?? Everything just makes so much sense in the canoe slalom world, the rules are clear: you work hard, you get some return. If I don’t put my heart and soul on the line in racing, I will regret this forever when it’s over! But if I do, it will hurt so much when I am not allowed to compete anymore. I feel so lost…

Several years after navigating the athletic retirement transition, the message still resonates with me. It encapsulates how big a role sport played in my life and how deeply I cared. As pointed out by scholars in our field (e.g., Ronkainen & Nesti, 2019), traditional sport psychological concepts such as motivation or goals fail to fully encompass the emotional depth of elite sport. This deficiency became apparent in my own journey as an Olympic athlete, student and competing mother, where I found that my experiences were not adequately represented. At the time and with good intentions, my SPP encouraged me to explore my complementary identities beyond being ‘just’ an elite athlete. However, I had always thought of myself as a multifaceted person with varied interests and a balanced life thanks to my children, family, friends, and studies. In my mind, identity issues were therefore not at all what I was struggling with. On the contrary, I had vocational aspirations, knew where I wanted to go next in life, and was eager to discover the world. But this should not and could not simply replace my sport, I thought! I felt misunderstood by my SPP’s approach because to me, guiding my focus away from my sport felt like an attempt to distract me, intended to let what my sport meant to me wither away all by itself. For me, this made him complicit with the people forcing me into retirement, and I lost trust.

My scientist practitioner perspective

Since then, I have become a SPP working with athletes and coaches of different performance levels, and I have often wondered what I would have done as SPP knowing what I know today. In my reflections, I am very much appreciative of the SPP's well-meant concern and professional expertise, and I fully understand why identity work seemed like a reasonable approach. After all, in sport psychology literature it is widely assumed that an exclusive athletic identity (which I presumably suffered from) can have negative effects (e.g., impaired well-being, career immaturity and dysfunctional beliefs) for the retiring athletes (Brewer & Petitpas, 2017). Yet, thanks to my engagement in multiple life roles (i.e., evolving from athlete to SPP and researcher) I have since found a satisfying and theoretically sound explanation to why an identity approach did not resonate with me. It was not a question of "Who am I if not an athlete?" but "What does my sport mean to me?". Therefore, instead of directing my focus away from sport, as SPP, I would have explored the meaning that sport had in my life, and how and why it contributed so much (and maybe too much) to my overall meaning in life.

Today, I integrate meaning-based approaches in my applied work with clients in transitions and help athletes become aware of the relationship they hold with their sport by looking into where they derive meaning in sport from, and how it relates to their wider meaning in life. With this personal account from my complementary perspectives as a former elite athlete and current scientist practitioner (Schinke et al., 2024), I aim to demonstrate how the concept of meaning has shaped my practice for the better by allowing me to recognize when transitions in competitive sport (such as a missed Olympic qualification) can arouse existential concerns (such as meaning) for clients (Horner et al., 2023). In those critical moments in an athlete’s career, identity and meaning related concerns are intertwined and often arise simultaneously (Nesti & Ronkainen, 2020). Yet, through my own athlete story, I intend to convey that an identity approach does not necessarily feel validating for the client. Instead, simply bringing the notion of meaning into conversations with athletes could feel affirming for them, since this would acknowledge athletes’ whole-hearted sporting pursuits in their experienced profoundness. In the early years of my practice, I mainly drew on the framework of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) but found that for some of my clients, the tools did not resonate and even felt instrumental. I realize now that what was lacking was the acknowledgement of the existential depth of their experiences—a feeling I shared throughout my own athletic career. Despite ACT's intention to assist clients in leading a more values-based and thereby meaningful life, this approach draws on contextual-behavioral accounts (Sharp et al., 2004) to explain, for example, why athletes experience performance anxiety. However, these explanations simply fail to reflect how competitions can evoke existential anxiety by feeling like they are about life or death for athletes.

Finally, in my position as scientist, my current PhD project centers on the concept of meaning in elite sport by exploring which role it can play in the lives of athletes and their environments. In my work, I am engaging with meaning in life and sport on the conceptual level whereby meaning serves as analytical lens to understand why transitions can be challenging for athletes. As such, I am interested in moments of crisis, when athletes lose their meaning, but also in moments when sport becomes so encompassing and meaningful that a ‘dark side of meaning’ emerges, making people prone to overcommitment (Bailey et al., 2019), a problem that has yet to be addressed in sport.

Why meaning-informed interventions are needed to assist sport clients in transitions

Transitions are an important and inevitable part of athletes’ striving for career excellence, i.e., leading "a healthy, successful, and long-lasting career in sport and life" (Stambulova et al., 2021, p. 14). In this perspective, healthy implies resourcefulness (such as perceiving sport as personally meaningful), while being successful indicates that mental health and well-being are not only prerequisites but also possible and desired outcomes of a sporting career (e.g., when contributing to athletes’ meaning in life). During transitions, however, athletes’ mental health can be particularly challenged, requiring them to seek psychological assistance to move forward with their careers and lives in a broader sense (Stambulova, 2023). In wider psychological literature, a hallmark symptom of individuals in transitions, and by extension also athletes, is a sudden questioning of previously stable assumptions about themselves and the world, of their higher motivations and the very foundation of their athletic, and ultimately life pursuits. In this sense, transitions can be understood as prototypical phases of in-between, as cross-roads where meaning becomes an issue for an athlete to move in one direction or another. While for some athletes, the profound questioning can help them commit more consciously to chosen career and life projects, for others, it can develop into a crisis of meaning. Such a crisis state, during which people agonizingly experience a lack of meaning and perceive their life as empty and without direction (Schnell, 2021), can engender the search for meaning which can become maladaptive and even psychopathological if unsuccessful (Beckmann, 2023). Although sport psychology has not specifically delved into the concept of crisis of meaning, extant transition scholarship reveals important overlaps with the notion of crisis transitions (e.g., Stambulova, 2023). More specifically, like a crisis of meaning, in the transition process a crisis marks a stagnation phase, often characterized by subclinical symptoms such as disorientation in decision making and behavior (Stambulova & Samuel, 2020). Transitions have the potential to disrupt the continuity of an athlete’s experience and can be triggered by external events, such as progressing from the junior to senior category, or internal contradictions, such as the realization that even a major win does not bring lasting fulfillment (Samuel et al., 2023; Stambulova & Samuel, 2020). This disillusionment, coupled with a lack of meaning and orientation has been reported by athletes struggling with the post-Olympic transition (Howells & Lucassen, 2018), indicating the need for SPPs to consider this concern more explicitly.

In the past, mainly practitioners and scholars rooted in the existential perspective have hinted at the potential that meaning holds for applied sport psychology work (e.g., Luzzeri & Chow, 2020; Nesti & Ronkainen, 2020; Ravizza, 2002). These authors pointed out that the concept becomes especially helpful when seeking to assist athletes in personal struggle, encountered for example during crisis transitions, because it allows for a truly holistic approach to practice (Nesti & Ronkainen, 2020). This contention is in line with the founding father of meaning-centered therapy, Viktor Frankl (2006), according to whom meaning represents the fundamental human motivation. In his view, human beings occupy three overlapping dimensions: physical, psychological, and spiritual (i.e., meaning-oriented) ones. This distinction is important, because while symptoms like depression or anxiety can be of somatic or psychological nature (i.e., rooted in the first two dimensions), they can also be caused by an existential vacuum, a sense of meaninglessness and alienation from cultural and societal expectations and therefore originate in the spiritual sphere (Frankl, 2006; Schulenberg et al., 2008). In the latter case, meaning-centered interventions are best-suited to tend to people’s concerns. In psychotherapy and counseling psychology many meaning-informed practices exist that are highly effective in enhancing quality of life and reducing psychological stress across various populations especially during transitions (e.g., adolescence, retirement, bereavement, or trauma), because these often engender meaning-centered concerns (Vos & Vitali, 2018). In this regard, an engagement with the notion of meaning is a necessary addition for SPP practice to promote clients’ well-being and mental health in a holistic sense during times of challenging career and life transitions. Meanwhile, very little scholarship within sport psychology provides guidance for practitioners which is why I intend to sensitize readers by illustrating its application through a case example from my own practice. The applied case in the final part of this article draws on theoretical knowledge about the psychology of meaning in life which I will briefly present in the following section.

What does meaning look like and why is this relevant for SPP practice?

Dimensions of meaning

In the psychological perspective, meaning in life refers to a mental state, an enduring quality of a person’s inner life, and many scholars (e.g., King & Hicks, 2021) agree on the concept’s multidimensional structure today. Accordingly, meaning in life consists of several dimensions, namely (a) coherence, as cognitive component (i.e., a sense that one’s life can be understood and predicted to some degree); (b) significance/mattering, as evaluative component (i.e., a sense that one’s life has an inherent value and is worth living); (c) purpose, as motivational component (i.e., a sense of orientation and direction derived from central goals and (d) belonging, rooted in the existential feeling of having a place in this world and being connected to others and/or nature (Schnell, 2021).

At least two arguments about these dimensions are relevant for applied practice in sport. First, scholars have argued that investigations of meaning’s separate dimensions are necessary to better understand how meaning is actually experienced (Martela & Steger, 2022). The recognition that meaning is not a unified experience but rather layered and complex suggests a more differentiated view to help make meaning accessible for people (in sport) who might find it difficult to describe what meaning in their life and sport globally feels like and explore why and when it got lost. In this sense, each dimension can function as a search engine for people’s judgments about experienced meaningfulness, so that when asked whether they perceive life, work or in the case of athletes, sport, as meaningful, they may look for evidence in these dimensions.

Second, the dimensions render meaning a psychological quality which goes beyond the individual. Judgements of meaningfulness always require a reference located outside of the individual, since meaning is context-related, relational, and culturally embedded (Ronkainen & Nesti, 2019). More specifically, coherence creates a sense of temporal connection between the past, present and possible future. Significance entails the evaluation of one’s life and sport in the grand scheme of things, widening the perspective even more. Purpose, often used interchangeably with the notion of meaning in everyday language, stresses the idea of reaching beyond oneself, contributing to a larger cause, having a societal impact. This context and cultural relatedness become especially important when seeking to understand why some environments and times in an athlete’s career might be more conducive to meaning than others. In addition, it underlines the concept’s suitability for a holistic (i.e., whole person, whole development, whole environment; Stambulova et al., 2021) perspective on athletes in transition, positing that they cannot and should not be looked at in isolation.

How can meaning be "achieved"?

Basic psychological needs as pathways to meaning

According to many studies, for people to experience psychological flourishing and meaningfulness, their basic psychological needs (BPN) for competence, relatedness, and autonomy must be met (Martela et al., 2017). The awareness that BPN is relevant to mental health and well-being in competitive sport is uncontested in our field but has yet to be explicitly connected with the experience of meaning. Consider the words of Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, a rising star of Norwegian alpine skiing, whose retirement two days before the season opening race in 2023 left his teammates and close ones in shock. How could he throw away his promising future when everything was going so well for him? In the press conference, Braathen tearfully explained that entering the world stage in skiing was "the day I lost my freedom and only after quitting, "for the first time in years, I feel free and everyone who knows me, they know that it’s my freedom that leads me to happiness" (Eurosport, 0:16:39). Braathen seemingly experienced such lack of autonomy, and freedom to choose and author his athletic career and life that he sacrificed his possible future in sport for it. This exemplifies how the need for autonomy can easily be frustrated by the often-rigid structures and inherent requirements of elite sport.

Martela et al. (2017) found that beneficence (contribution) predicted meaningfulness additionally and independently of the three BPN, suggesting that being part of something larger than oneself and giving back can represent alternative routes to derive meaning. Remarkably, tennis star Nick Kyrgios, publicly branded as the bad boy of tennis, recently recounted in a podcast (Shetty, 2023) how, when standing on the hotel balcony considering committing suicide during a major tournament, one thought saved him. It was the idea of playing tennis for others, for sick children and people who might have saved up all their money to watch players like him. For Kyrgios, having a positive impact in the life of others made his own life meaningful and worth living again.

Sources of meaning

In meaning in life scholarship, sources of meaning represent basic orientations that motivate people’s dedication to specific goals and worldviews. As building blocks of a person’ s subjective meaning system, they allow people to derive meaning when their goals and actions are aligned. In simpler terms, sources can explain why people like to engage in particular life domains, and where they enjoy investing energy. Various sources of meaning such as generativity, care, religiosity, harmony, creativity, development, achievement, and connectedness to nature have been identified through psychological studies (Schnell, 2021). Importantly, sources of meaning must carry sufficient variety, breadth, and depth to be conducive to people’s mental and physical health. This is, because as researchers have shown (e.g., Schnell, 2021; Thoits, 2003), when sources are numerous, diverse, and existentially profound enough, they will motivate a person to invest in different life spheres, to realize multiple identities and thus offering various opportunities to experience life as meaningful. Even though sources in sport have yet to be systematically investigated in our discipline, it can be assumed that this knowledge is transferable: if athletes possess multiple sources of meaning in sport, they can relate to their athletic life domain in manifold ways, avoiding a single orientation on performance and achievement, often closely linked to an exclusive athletic identity (Beckmann, 2023). Therefore, particularly in times of transitions, when personal meaning systems become questioned and single sources cannot be actualized anymore (Vos & Vitali, 2018), it may be beneficial to raise athletes’ awareness that they can still find meaning in sport through alternative sources (for example when they are unable to live out their achievement source after athletic retirement, but could always find meaning in sport and life through focusing on their personal development in sport when evolving from competitor to exerciser).

Personally favored sources can change considerably during transitions or following critical life events (Schnell, 2021). In the growth following adversity literature in sport, it has been observed how sport could take on different meanings, for example, become a sanctuary for athletes (Howells et al., 2017). For the most successful skier of all times, Mikaela Shiffrin, meaning in sport was transformed by her father’s fatal accident and the ensuing months of grieving. Ski racing, previously an arena for personal achievement, challenge, and self-knowledge for Mikaela, developed into a place of healing and refuge for her where she could find consolation after her come-back (Layden, 2021). Inside her sport, the world remained coherent, significant, oriented, and belonging, and through this a place where she could find meaning.

Frankl (2006) posited three categories of values as ways of finding meaning: (a) creative (i.e., producing something through work or a deed, e.g., when a gymnast and a choreographer design a new routine together, skillfully merging complex movements and music into a harmonic performance); (b) experiential (i.e., mindfully experiencing something or encountering someone, e.g., when a swimmer feels in sync with the water and savors every moment); and (c) attitudinal values (i.e., choosing how to relate to adverse conditions, e.g., when an athlete decides to compete despite the recent death of a close one). Even when deprived of their creative or experiential values, the attitudinal pathway will always remain available for people to find meaning. Frankl’s personal story as survivor of four concentration camps powerfully demonstrates how personal attitude can empower individuals to face the difficulties and sufferings, which are inevitably part of human life, with a courageous stance. It is these attitudinal values that allow people to discover opportunities for self-transformation and growth in phases of crises (Frankl, 2006).

The case

In the following, I present the key aspects of an applied case, providing a case study description of how meaning may be integrated into SPP practice for transition work. This illustration aims to display how practice and research can continually inform each other and come together in the scientist practitioner perspective (Schinke et al., 2024). My client approved the manuscript, and several aspects of the case were slightly altered for confidentiality.

Situation and context

My middle-aged client, a former athlete, was head coach, in charge of the overall coordination of a national team and personally coaching two male athletes, pseudonymized Peter and Dan, both in their mid-twenties, and competing against each other to represent their country in the next Olympic Games. I had been working with my client on a regular basis since he had entered the coaching position seven years ago and we had developed a strong therapeutic alliance. He had witnessed how my SPP working philosophy was progressively leaning on existential principles, rooted in a holistic view of human beings where well-being and performance in sport are intricately linked and cannot be understood or addressed independently (Ronkainen & Nesti, 2019). In line with existential approaches, I regarded my client as active and responsible human being and depending on the envisioned consultation goals and my client’s needs, my support was delivered adaptively in a client- or practitioner-led style (Schulenberg et al., 2008). My client’s own coaching philosophy, an ongoing topic in our work, had evolved in parallel to mine, which helped our rapport building and ensured mutual trust. As a result of our discussions on existential notions of freedom of choice and personal responsibility, my client was aware that he valued autonomy and self-determined commitment in his athletes. His relationship with both athletes was trusting, he was attuned to their individual ways of approaching elite sport and cared to support each one individually while also keeping the entire national team united. In my long-term involvement, I had observed the athletes at training and in competition and knew them through my client’s in-session reflections. They had grown up, traveled, and raced together for 10 years. Each of them had participated in one previous Olympic Games and they knew that despite performing equally well, only one of them would receive a spot due to the international quota allocation. The two approached their career (and life) very differently: While Peter valued structure, planned months in advance and regarded performance and results as pay-off for his investment, Dan displayed a seemingly carefree attitude, enjoying alternative sports on the side, going on adventure trips whenever possible during the race season and was known for his adaptive, playful, and passionate style in the practice of his sport. In the past, my client had often asked me for advice on how to best support Dan, in what he called his "pure and uncorrupted" attitude toward sport. My client interpreted that this attitude concealed how much Dan’s athletic engagement truly meant to the athlete. Thanks to my client’s shared reflections, I felt that I knew Dan quite well, even though I did not consult with him directly.

The incident

At the time of the incident, Peter had secured the Olympic spot in the last race of the season and the entire team had had four weeks off before gathering again for a training camp at the Olympic Games’ location. My coach-client received a message from Dan stating that he was not going to join the team for the camp. Since he was only the replacement athlete for the Games, he would rather go to a different location and train more freely. After consulting with his employer, the federation, my client contacted Dan, to tell him that he needed to come because the national funding scheme required all athletes to attend all official training camps in the lead up to the Games. Dan became emotional. Anger, sadness, frustration led him to shout and cry that he felt "imprisoned" during these training camps. With no escape from the competition venue, Dan felt " forced" to take part despite knowing that it wouldn’t be good for him "as a person". He shouted, "If I can’t do it my way, it doesn’t make any sense anymore", and ended the call by threatening to retire from racing all together if pressured into camps. After this call, my client contacted me because the federation consequently warned to withdraw funding if Dan did not comply, showing no understanding for the "drama". My client asked for my advice not knowing what to do in this dilemma situation between wanting to support Dan in his individual choice and fulfilling the federation’s policies.

The intervention

My client was soon able to articulate his desired outcome, and we agreed that the consultation goal was to clearly communicate the federation’s expectations to Dan whilst making him feel heard, understood, and valued independent of how he was going to decide about his camp participation. I decided to draw on my theoretical knowledge to educate my client on meaning, a concept which could explain why for Dan the situation appeared so grave. My intention was to enable my client to speak with Dan in ways that would resonate with the profoundness of his experiences and sensitize him to the idea that his commencing post-Olympic transition could be a chance to reevaluate what was meaningful for him in sport and life. Through the therapeutic techniques of education and interpretation (Prochaska & Norcross, 1994), I intended to model behavior for my client which he could ultimately reflect in his coaching with Dan. This was inspired by Frankl’s work which emphasized that by showing compassion, solidarity, and genuine interest, even a lay person can assist a fellow human being to find meaning if this search is not pathological, in which case a clinician is required (Frankl, 2006). To show my client that Dan’s reaction could be viewed through the concept of meaning, I mentioned empirical findings indicating that athletes who feel that they have to do their sport (i.e., constrained commitment) instead of wanting to stay engaged on their own terms (i.e., enthusiastic commitment) were more likely to search for meaning in it (Luzzeri & Chow, 2020). I explained that Dan’s need for autonomy, the ‘carotid artery’ for his personal meaning, had been severed. We hypothesized together that Dan, feeling obliged to comply with the team policy, was urged to approach his sport in a sanitized, overly structured fashion, meanwhile for him, his sport represented freedom and self-exploration (as sources of meaning). Consequently, the experienced coercion deprived Dan of his meaning in sport. To tap into additional pathways of meaning, my client and I decided to suggest Dan to approach his camp participation as an opportunity to give back to the program (contribution) and to be appreciated as a valued member of the team (relatedness). To acknowledge the crucial role of autonomy in reestablishing a sense of meaningfulness, we further listed options for Dan to decide by himself, for example, which training sessions he would attend and openly planned the session structures with him. To enable my client to discuss meaning more concretely with Dan, I drew on Martela and Steger’s (2022) Three Dimensional Meaning in Life Scale by adapting questions (e.g., coherence: "Can you easily make sense of your sport, and why or why not?", purpose: "Do you have a set of core goals that give your sport a sense of direction? And if so, what are they?") to address each dimension of meaning separately. Finally, in case Dan wasn’t susceptible to any of the above-mentioned meaning-informed discussion points, my client wanted to introduce Frankl’s three value-categories and the power of attitudinal values to him. His intention was to make Dan aware that through assuming attitudinal values toward unalterable circumstances, he would have the freedom to choose how to respond to the situation and grow from the challenge.

Outcomes

I discussed the above with my coach-client in two 60-minute sessions, following which he felt equipped with an array of meaning-related conversational aids and prepared to inform Dan in an empathetic albeit determined way that the federation’s policy was undebatable, but that there was plenty of room for him to craft its implementation. My client called Dan and led the conversation as planned. Dan felt understood and thanked my client for his genuine interest and warmth. He did not seem surprised that my client used meaning terminology since this was much in line with his usual, person-oriented leadership style. Discussing meaning was perceived as natural and authentic and not, as could be the case in different personal constellations, an awkward or seemingly dramatized issue. Even though Dan stood by his decision to skip the training camp (despite having to pay a monetary fine to the federation), he wanted to reevaluate his relationship with racing. In the end, he planned to attend all following camps "refreshed" and "ready to be there for the team" and jokingly labeled this phase his "pre-post-Olympic transition", a term he had coined with my client. At the time of writing, my client felt that the bond between Dan and him had been strengthened by the incident and the clarifying conversation.

Discussion of the case

A major factor for the intervention’s effectiveness was my client’s receptiveness to the topic of meaning. We had talked about existential notions before the incident with Dan occurred and I sensed that my client could be attuned to the concept and that his trusting relationship with the athletes could allow him to address the topic with Dan. While the secondary goal was to let Dan freely but responsibly decide by himself how he wanted to proceed in his athletic engagement and value his uniqueness as person in line with an existential approach, our primary consultation objective was to enable my client to communicate the federation’s expectations empathically to the transitioning athlete. My client was ultimately happy about the (primary and secondary) outcome, but he remarked that he "wouldn’t have touched on Dan’s relationship with elite sport a week before the world championships", out of fear "to confuse him" in his commitment. The timing of introducing meaning in practice can thus be crucial since coaches might be reluctant to address athletes’ broader life issues shortly before major competitions but might be open to the idea when trying to support their athletes during phases of transitions.

Recommendations and conclusion

Meaning is no panacea, and SPPs should not force it into conversations with clients. However, witnessing how a person experiences meaninglessness can be overwhelming and intimidating. By offering guidance on addressing this existential concern competently, I hope to assist fellow SPPs to feel better equipped next time they are confronted with a client’s, a fellow human being’s, or even their own search for meaning which might more often than not occur during times of transitions.

Through meaning-based practice SPPs can assist clients to become more resourceful to successfully navigate transitions. To maximize clients’ chances to find their meaning in sport and life, SPPs may use knowledge about its dimensions, pathways, and sources to discuss meaning in as much detail as possible. During transitions (e.g., when becoming the Olympic reserve), personal sources of meaning can change considerably (e.g., sport can evolve from being an arena for personal achievement to a place for spending time with teammates). SPPs should proactively explore this change with athletes to discover how new possibilities emerge to derive meaning in sport. Addressing meaning can complement or substitute identity work to support the client holistically especially during the athletic retirement transition. To guide their practice, SPPs could engage with existing meaning-oriented interventions from psychotherapy and counseling psychology (for a review see Vos & Vitali, 2018).

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my client for allowing me to present his case and Helena Hlasová for proofreading the article. I also thank the reviewers for their insightful and stimulating feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

There is no data set associated with this article.