The Normalizing of Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods has been in the news since November 2009,when he crashed his car, leading to an unraveling of his personal life, his marriage, and ultimately his golf game. Society has always been interested in the lives of great talents. While great athletes are enormously entertaining, each of us can learn something about our own greatness by studying the greats.
The Tiger Woods story is about fame and fortune, great talent, sexual scandal, image making and breaking, and the role of sexual addiction treatment.
Image and Reality
Tiger was playing with a putter before he could walk. He first gained national attention on a talk show when he beat the famed comedian and avid golfer Bob Hope in a putting contest, when Tiger was only three years old. Very early on, the world reflected back to Tiger the image of “a child prodigy with greatness to come.”
We are a mixture of what we do, how we feel, and who we are at the core. We also carry images of who we think we are. Clearly Tiger Woods has always been a great golfer. His inner image is that of a champion. Society has reflected back to Tiger the image of a champion. Until late last year, his performance and his image about himself and his performance were one and the same.
After his minor car wreck, the public began to learn that the married Tiger Woods had a number of mistresses, who began to come out of the woodwork. Media scrutiny led to a massive collapse of Tiger’s image of himself as well as society’s image of him. The collapse of his self-image was too great and changed his sense of who he is. Collapse of his image led to fears about his marriage, golf, and endorsements. Rehab was a choice, which gave Tiger space from the pressure, and time to resurrect his image. Unfortunately, collapse of the image, thus far, has led to collapse of the “inner champion.”
When Tiger returned to the tour at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia (April 2010), he commented at the end of the first day that he was feeling “normal” for the first time in years, and that, through his rehab for sex addiction, on the putting green he was a lot more even-tempered. He said that he felt less of the intense highs . . .”and was controlling his temper. When I heard Tiger happily say that he felt “less of the lows and the intense highs,” I imagined a psychiatrist asking him specific questions to see if has bipolar illness.
I understood the change in Tiger’s emotional expression as a danger sign. In the past, when Tiger left the putting green, he left his emotions there also, so that he remained in the moment. For each new t-shot, Tiger was in the moment. He had felt his emotions (high or low), had expressed them, and then let go of his emotions. I was concerned that Tiger had begun to shut off his emotions, and the consequences were likely to be disastrous. Feeling and expressing emotion and then being able to leave it behind and drop back into the “now” is what we strive for, and it was part of what made Tiger a champion.
The Inner Champion
As soon as I heard Tiger’s brief comments after the Masters, I said to myself, “The inner champion is crumbling. The Tiger that knew he could win any tournament, no matter what, is crumbling. It is almost impossible to create a champion out of a good or great player who does not have the core of a champion. It is possible to dismantle a champion’s core, and once that core is broken, it cannot be repaired.
Some experts believe Tiger Woods’ 2010 play a sign of someone under tremendous stress. I don’t think so. It’s much more severe.
Let’s start with a little perspective. Basketball great, Wilt Chamberlain, claimed to having had 20,000 sexual encounters…with different women. I recall interviews by male newscasters, and late night TV hosts. The newscasters’ attitude seemed to be a mix of amazement, and an irrepressible smile on the male newscasters’ faces. I often felt that some newscasters were jealous. Wilt never married. The point is that Tiger’s demise revolves around sexual affairs with numerous women.
We are watching the “normalizing” of Tiger. Tiger now looks like so many celebrities being treated for their “sex addiction.” He is “owning up” to his transgressions. ”I can imagine that during 3 months of rehab, at some point Tiger stood up and said, “I am a sex addict,” and everyone applauded to hear him start to become like every other addict in treatment. While Tiger may have looked at rehab as a way of salvaging his image and his marriage, I believe he eventually bought into the addiction model.
I believe he eventually agreed that he was too emotional on the golf course, too arrogant, not friendly enough with fans, and basically in need of huge changes. The belief of 12-step programs is that addictions are not curable. If Tiger bought into that belief, it will have lasting, lifelong consequences, unless he discards that belief. With all the talk about sex addiction, the American Psychiatric Association does not recognize sex addiction as a valid diagnosis.
At the US Open (June 2010) in Pebble Beach, CA, at the end of the first day, in which he played poorly, Tiger complained to the press about the poor conditions of the golf course. Champions do not blame anything or anyone. They blame themselves. His last tournament was the PGA tournament in Whistling Straits, Wisconsin in August. The “champion” did not show up. TV commentators said, “There’s a big mis-match here. Tiger says he is pleased with how his game is coming along, but in every single aspect of the sport, he has played worse than dozens of top players.”
Tiger began to focus more on his technique, spending time with a couple of golf pros to improve his swing. They are off track. Tiger Woods has played golf since age 3. He has practiced and competed enough so that his body holds the memory of how to do everything incredibly well. The problem is not with technique. The problem is not simple stress. You cannot treat a champion the same as everybody else. If you begin to pull out one thread, and then another, encouraging that person to make major changes in core beliefs, you can dismantle everything that makes a champion who he is. However, if Tiger can reconnect to the “tiger within,” all the technical aspects of the sport will fall back into place rather quickly.
I do not think you can take a great athlete, like Tiger Woods, and dissect out “all the problems” without risking a calamity. Tiger has sat in group therapy. He has confessed to his “ignorance, to his rudeness, and his callous sexual behavior that “has hurt so many.” (His words). The greatness that is Tiger Woods is the totality of his being, and that champion identity must stay intact. You can’t pull out one thread and then another without risking damaging a super-talent.
Tiger Woods has become “pathologized” by addiction experts who have concluded that he is a sex addict. Tiger has bought in to the whole rehab model. He does seem more mellow. He seemed tranquil, disappointed but tranquil, after not making the cut in a recent tournament. He was not overly upset with the most mediocre performances in his career.
Getting Back in the Flow
In order to be successful in peak performance, there has to be a normal “internal flow.” Energies swirl within us ——vital energy (chi), sexual energy, emotions, thoughts, and an ocean of internal sensation. The new Tiger does not seem “authentic.” I’d like to see him just get angry, and show it.
Tiger appears to be living from images and expectations and is now cut off from the normal flow of his energies and emotions. He has followed treatment recommendations for sex addiction, and now has lost the spark. His emotional expressions lack depth and don’t connect.
Sex Addicts Anonymous
An addiction is an acquired physiological dependence upon a foreign substance that serves no biological need. That dependence results in withdrawal symptoms if the foreign substance is withheld. An addiction causes: 1) physical harm to oneself or other, 2) significant emotional problems, and/or 3) work-related problems. Alcoholism fits those criteria for addiction. “Excessive sexuality” does not fit those criteria.
If withdrawal does not cause illness, it is not an addiction. A man who causes pain to his wife because he fools around is generally concerned about not getting caught. Tiger Woods and others like him are having sexual experiences that do not cause them physical or mental illness. Years of extramarital affairs did not impair Tiger’s skills as a golfer.
Twelve-step programs believe that you are always an addict and can never have a taste of your addictive substance ever again in life. The rule of sex addicts anonymous (SAA) is that, “A person can have sex only with their wife or partner, and no one else…including oneself.” Are not these messages strange? I’ve described some of the dangers of SA diagnosis and treatment, but there clearly are people with genuine sex addictions.
Letting the Tiger Run
If I could meet with Tiger Woods, here’s what I’d say:
1. Addiction experts have diagnosed you with “sexual addiction.” They have worked to make you “normal,” just like the rest of us normal people. Give up the idea that you are sick. If a person spends a significant amount of time in the mental health system, they “will” be diagnosed.
If a person comes to believe that their diagnosis is real, they are unlikely to escape that mind-set. It is very unlikely that I would give you a diagnosis. I would leave no stone unturned, but my goal would not be mainly to find out what is wrong with you. I’m more interested in removing the obstacles to what is great.
2. You need to reconnect with all of your energies and emotions. Forget about your golf swing. Let’s help you reconnect to the killer instinct, and get everything flowing again. Forget about the images and others’ perceptions of you. Stop caring so much about what the media and the public think of you.
3. Discard the mental-health system and the sex addiction mentality. You are not sick. If you were a single man, no one would even take notice of the number of lovers you’ve been with. If the number of sexual partners were truly a sign of mental health or illness, Wilt Chamberlain would have been permanently kept in a psychiatric hospital.
Tiger Wood’s self-image has cracked and is morphing into something new. His golf performance has deteriorated, because of the collapse of the image, along with the many layers of damage done by treatment for a fictional sex addiction. He needs to learn to live from the heart again, from who he is, and what he loves, accepting parts of himself that society has rejected. A stalking tiger is not concerned about what anybody thinks. It acts on instinct. Tiger Woods must learn how to tap back into the stalking tiger.
David Gersten, M.D. practices Nutritional Medicine and Integrative Psychiatry out of his Encinitas office and can be reached at 760-633-3063. Please feel free to access 1,000 on-line pages about holistic health, amino acids, and nutritional therapy at www.aminoacidpower.com and www.imagerynet.com.