From Olympian to Educator:
Dr. Nicole Forester’s Journey in Mental Health
Written by Lucas Yang | Edited by Isabella Della Ganna & Marc Louie
Dr. Nicole Forrester offers a unique perspective on mental health in sport. She is a former Olympian and an eight-time Canadian Track and Field Champion, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, and a mental performance consultant.
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Her background as a world-class track and field athlete, combined with her academic expertise, provides multiple avenues for exploring mental health in athletics.
Looking back on her early days of competition, Forrester doesn’t hold back when she describes her struggle with managing mental pressures.
“I sucked at it,” she said.
Video provided by Dr. Nicole Forrester
Like many athletes, Forrester excelled in practice but found her training ability never translated to competition. This realization prompted her to seek support for the mental challenges she was experiencing.
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She sought help in sports psychologist Peter Jensen, who had years of experience working with athletes in Forrester’s position.
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With Jensen’s guidance, Forrester was able to change her perspective on competition.
“I went from not performing well at competitions to living for big competitions,” she said.
Through this work, Forrester learned self-regulation — a skill that allowed her to gain control over her mental state.
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“If you are able to self-regulate, then you are going places,” she said.
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Given her experiences with the highs and lows of mental health in sports, it’s only fitting that she now works as a mental performance consultant. Forrester also holds advanced degrees in Kinesiology and Sports Psychology from the University of Michigan and the University of Texas.
“The interest in sport psych kinda became organic,” she said.
Photo by Björn S
Optimal performance is what every elite athlete strives for. Goal-setting, though it might seem mundane, is what Forrester describes as essential in an athlete’s journey. She believes that setting process-oriented goals helps athletes focus on the journey rather than the outcome.
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As cliché as it sounds, Forrester also identifies confidence as crucial to an athlete’s success. Many athletes encounter self-doubt throughout their careers, but having the awareness to recognize one’s strengths can build confidence, which, in turn, can counter self-doubt.
“When I hear self-doubt, I hear lack of confidence. So it’s all about combating that self-doubt with confidence,” she said.
Forrester highlights the fact that a lot of the work and struggles that go into an athlete’s journey with mental health happen behind the scenes. The grind and effort that goes into the early morning workouts or extra training sessions often go unnoticed, and this is where an athlete’s health mentally can deteriorate.
A background in academia also allows her to examine the aspects of an athlete’s mental health that might not be so obvious to the everyday individual.
With brand deals and sponsorships becoming widespread across professional and even amateur sports with the inception of name, image, likeness (NIL), a lot of athletes are encountering the mental struggle of presenting and maintaining a certain image to increase their brand value.
The incorporation of NIL makes Forrester believe that it is an extra mental struggle that athletes now have to balance with the struggles that they have on the court.
“People have to keep in mind that there’s a brand these athletes have to present, which can be difficult,” she says.
This opens up a whole new landscape that athletes have to navigate. Add that on top of social media, and athletes’ struggles with mental health can come from factors beyond their sport.
“Social media has changed everything,” Forrester says.
In this day and age, social media becomes a contributing factor in an athlete’s journey with mental health. But what’s also important are the inflection points in an athlete’s career where these struggles might make themselves known. Whether these inflection points are caused by social media or other factors, for Forrester, dealing with mental health is also about being aware of when and what can cause these inflection points.
There’s the stress and anxiety that comes before competition, the real-time pressure of live competition, but also the depression that can come post-competition. Being aware of these inflection points won’t necessarily prevent the struggles of mental health, but it just may prepare you for the storm ahead.
Forrester emphasizes that retirement in an athlete’s career can often be an inflection point, where they might start to see depression. Forrester’s advice on this matter is simple: “Get help, and plan.”
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Luckily, Forrester was able to avoid this depression by focusing on her academic pursuits, but she also claims that she planned her retirement ahead of time—four years, for that matter—avoiding any shock she might have put on herself.
Photo by Athletics Canada
“Your easiest way to transition out of sport is to plan ahead,” she says.
The way sports have always been is that physical health trumps mental health. But the ever-changing climate is starting to value mental health just as much as physical health in athletes. Again, she points to social media as an essential factor in this landscape change.
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Social media can be a distraction, provide confidence, but can also undermine performance. This is an element in an athlete’s current mental health journey that is make or break for their mental health.
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Forrester hopes that this change in landscape can help people see the struggles that others are experiencing. A quote comes to mind from Dale Carnegie, which represents the approach that Forrester believes we should all be taking in addressing mental health:
“Treat everybody that you meet like their heart might be breaking because it just might be.”