Athletes, Pressure and the Courage to Be Human ~ Dr. Kimberly O’Brien on Mental Health, Performance, and Self-Trust
Theresa Hubbard, LMFT
Today I’m joined by Dr. Kimberly O’Brien, a clinician, researcher, author, former athlete, and founder of Unlimited Resilience — a mental health practice designed for athletes by athletes.
Kim works with high school and college athletes, teams, parents, and organizations across the country on mental health, mental skills, resilience, leadership, and suicide prevention. She is also the co-author of *Mentality Wins: The Athlete’s Playbook for Thriving in Sport and Life*, which offers athletes practical tools for building focus, confidence, resilience, and sustainable success — not only in sport, but in life.
What I appreciate deeply about Kim’s work is that she understands athletes as whole people.
Not simply bodies that perform.
Not simply competitors who win or lose.
Not simply disciplined people who should be able to push through.
But human beings with pressure, longing, fear, identity, relationships, pain, purpose, and the need to belong to themselves even while belonging to a team.
In this conversation, Kim and I explore the parts of athletic life that often remain unseen: depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, grief, identity loss, leadership pressure, family dynamics, and the belief that struggle has to be hidden in order to be respected.
Kim shares honestly about her own experience as an athlete, including playing hockey at Harvard, becoming a captain, wrestling with inadequacy and pressure, and eventually finding her way into social work, suicide prevention, and athlete mental health.
We talk about what happens when performance becomes tied to identity, why athletes may feel pressure to appear strong even when they are suffering, and how healing often begins when someone is given permission to tell the truth about what they are carrying.
This episode is also about presence — the kind of presence that does not rush to fix, rescue, or advise, but can sit with someone in their hardest moments and allow them to be fully human.
Because athletes do not only need tools to perform better.
They need spaces where they can stop pretending they are okay.
They need people who understand that toughness and tenderness can coexist.
And they need permission to know that their worth is not measured only by what they can achieve.
ABOUT DR. KIMBERLY O’BRIEN
Dr. Kimberly O’Brien is a clinician, researcher, author, former athlete, and founder of Unlimited Resilience, a mental health practice designed for athletes by athletes.
She works with high school and college athletes, individuals, teams, parents, and organizations on mental health, mental skills, resilience, leadership, and suicide prevention.
Kim is also the co-author of *Mentality Wins: The Athlete’s Playbook for Thriving in Sport and Life*, a book created to help athletes build focus, confidence, resilience, and sustainable success in both sport and life.
Her work is grounded in a deep respect for athletes as whole people — people who deserve support not only in how they perform, but in how they live, struggle, grow, connect, and heal.
ABOUT THERESA HUBBARD
Theresa Hubbard, LMFT, is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and founder of Kansas City Neuroplasticity Institute in Liberty, Missouri. She is the host of the My Inner Knowing podcast, where she explores self-trust, nervous system regulation, relationships, trauma healing, embodiment, and the process of learning to listen inwardly with more honesty and compassion.
Learn more:[www.myinnerknowing.com](http://www.myinnerknowing.com)[www.theresahubbard.com](http://www.theresahubbard.com)[www.kcnpi.com](http://www.kcnpi.com)
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