A deeper look into the lives and minds of athletes. This episode of Conversations with Clients, we speak to Marissa, who based her entire identity on being an elite athlete. She played both hockey and lacrosse since she was in kindergarten and went on to play both at the varsity level. She was only 14 when she realized that something wasn’t right and spent the rest of her athletic career dealing with mental health issues feeling like she had nobody to talk to. She didn’t want to be seen as weak to her coaches and teammates and the sport psychologists didn’t quite understand the life of an athlete. Marissa was part of the team that brought SAMHI (student athlete mental health initiative) to her university and she is now in a mission to create a career helping young athletes cope with the pressures that nobody else could quite understand.