How Football Season Teaches Me About Mental Health

Every fall, life takes on a different rhythm. Saturdays mean Gamecocks football and Sundays are all about the Eagles. For me, football isn’t just a sport I watch. It’s a season-long reminder of resilience, identity, and community.

Lesson 1: Resilience, learn to keep showing up. If you’re a Gamecocks fan, you already know what resilience feels like. Each season has its highs and lows. Hopeful wins followed by tough losses. And still, we keep showing up.

Mental health works in a similar way. Healing isn’t about winning every single week. It’s about showing up for yourself even when things feel hard. Progress rarely looks perfect. What matters is that you stay in it and keep believing things can get better.

Lesson 2: Identity is more than wins and losses. Football is tied to identity in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it. When I wear my Gamecocks gear, I feel connected to where I came from and to the people I love who share that history. When I cheer for the Eagles, I think of the friendships I’ve built through the years… but we are 2025 Super Bowl Champions.

In therapy, identity often shows up as a big question. Who am I outside of my struggles? What do I have to hold onto when life is messy? Just like a team is more than a record, our worth isn’t measured by our hardest days.

Lesson 3: We’re not alone. One of the best parts of football is how it pulls people together. Standing in a stadium with thousands of strangers who suddenly feel like family. Texting friends during every big play. It reminds me that we’re not built to do life alone. Mental health can feel isolating, but healing often comes when we let others in. Whether that’s therapy, family, or friends… we need people who can sit with us in both the wins and the losses.

Lesson 4: Seasons end. Every football fan knows the ache that comes when the season ends in February. What am I supposed to do with myself on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays? It can almost feel like a depressive episode. My closest friends know I’ll need a new fixation (hello, ADHD brain).

Life can feel the same way. Graduating from therapy or reaching a new chapter in your healing can bring that same question: what’s next for me? The routine changes. The structure feels different. It can feel like a loss.

But just like football fans know the Super Bowl isn’t the true end, there’s always something new ahead. (Hello March Madness and golf.. go Heels and Justin Thomas). In life, it might be a new goal, a new stage of growth, or just a new way of showing up for yourself. Endings make space for beginnings.

If you’d like to explore your new “season” of therapy, reach out to schedule a consultation.