The Psychology of Dynasty Ownership, Session Four: Couples Therapy

Jeremy Schwob Posted On April 19, 2020

Editor’s Note: If you missed this series last year, click here for session one, here for session two and here for session three. This article is also written by Jeremy Schwob, one of our Member Corner writers. This is Session Four: “Dynasty Couples Therapy: Attempting to resolve a fractured relationship with your player.”

“The manners that apply specifically during courtship come to be replaced over the course of a relationship by a different set of manners, embodying the residual pettiness, complaining and faultfinding of childhood.“ – Aaron T. Beck

Consider the amount of time members of the dynasty community spend researching players to find their next ideal college prospect or an NFL player who is under the radar, seeking out players to acquire in trades, and exasperating over disappointments in our lineup. With this extensive commitment to players, it does not seem like much of a stretch to consider these connections to players as “a relationship.” While we sometimes hold the good feelings of the relationship, we can often fall into a negative cycle of perceptions about the player that tarnishes the relationship.

Following up on my previous article about biases and the formation of “dynasty depression,” you may have identified a pattern of negative thoughts and feelings against a certain player, which may or may not have been driven by a personal experience with them. Previously, I only encouraged you to identity these biases and some of the roots leading to such a perspective on the player. Now, I urge you to confront this relationship and seek resolution. In this session, I’ll take you and a player to couples therapy to find an harmonious outcome to the existing conflict. Is it trying to repair the relationship by lowering previous expectations? Is it staying together for the kids (keeping them to not yet requiring starting lineup pressure from rookies)? Or is this relationship over?

Couples Therapy

When you hear the term “couples therapy,” you may immediately think about a last-ditch effort used to save a relationship – that is not actually what we are talking about. While that can be a purpose, couples therapy does not assume the relationship is good or that the survival of the relationship is the primary goal. That structure may be more in line with the goals of marriage and family therapy. However, the goal here is to increase understanding of automatic negative thought patterns that are tainting the view of the relationship or attitude to a player. By then developing more adaptive thought processes and communication strategies, an amicable solution is desired. Therefore, severing the relationship remains an option.

Generally, most couples therapy is CBT-oriented focusing on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward the other. Couples therapy is often approached to deal with either relationship distress or for further treating a partner with some form of psychopathology. For example, some couples therapies for PTSD are as effective as individual therapies because they address avoidance behaviors the partner accommodates and helps maintain the disorder. Of course, couples therapies will often need to combine both in cases where psychopathology deteriorates relationship quality over time.

Couples often say that they want couples therapy to help with communication. This can branch into communicating to provide support or communicating to problem solve. The method in either case is the development of healthier, more effective communication skills that can improve understanding and respect in the relationship. Couples therapy will then also include a range of other dynamics and considerations. Though, for the purposes of our dynasty couples therapy we will focus on these qualities of problem and effective communication. While some of the dyadic and conversational structure is not possible with the player not being able to provide responses, we can closely examine the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors we as dynasty owners are projecting on the relationship.

A variety of “relationship” situations may bring you to couples therapy with our player. However, the underlying issue will be that you hold a bias against your player which may have developed into full-blown dynasty depression. As a reminder, this is where you have generalized a perceived player flaw into their entire essence, preventing you from attributing any positive perceptions or feelings of gratification about owning a player. You must work constructively to determine how to begin respecting the relationship again on a basic level. Again, enter this process without the expectation of a particular outcome. You may be choosing from (a) adjusting your view of the player and turning the corner in the relationship going forward, (b) retaining a working relationship for the kids (i.e., for the purpose of the team) or until the kids go off to college (i.e., until a perceived value increase at a later date), or (c) reaching a decisive decision to part ways and completely sever the relationship (i.e., selling for whatever pieces can be returned).

Problem Communication

We can start to address these situations by first attending to and understanding problem communication. Below is a list of terms, each signifying a different aspect of problem communication applied to dynasty.

Truth – You insist your opinion on a player is right and the other person’s perspective is wrong.
Blame – You say the problem is the player’s fault.
Martyrdom – You claim you’re an innocent victim of player underperformance.
Extremes – You imply a particular player trait or outcome exists in either “always” or “never.”
Hopelessness – You give up on the player and insist there is no longer upside.
Demandingness – You feel you are entitled to better performance from a player.
Denial – You insist you don’t feel angry, frustrated, disappointed in a player when you really do.
Self-blame – Instead of addressing the problem that may be more process oriented, you turn the blame inward and make yourself feel worse.
Sarcasm – Your words or tone convey tension or hostility which you aren’t openly acknowledging.
Scapegoating – You suggest the player has “a problem” and you’re uninvolved in the conflictual feelings.
Defensiveness – You refuse to admit any wrong-doing or imperfection.
Diversion – Instead of addressing your current feelings, you list grievances about past injustices.

Do any of these resonate with you as something you may not have recognized you were doing? Maybe you even have caught yourself communicating with your player this way at times. It is important to be brutally honest with ourselves here, because we have a way of justifying our biases and associated problem communication strategies.

These can play well into the dynasty framework of bias against a player. For instance, claiming you’re an innocent victim (martyrdom) can lead you to statements like “injuries always happen to me” or “my other league members are so lucky with their rookie picks.” You may also work in extremes especially when you’re frustrated. When your perspective has changed toward a player, you could start to think or even say phrases like “stop throwing him the ball, he always drops it.” Blame, demandingness, and denial would also be expected to be fairly common ways of placing problems on the player instead of introspecting and finding that the owner is the source of these emotions. Finally, diversion is a trap one can fall into while feeling like you are using “evidence.” In reality, you are likely choosing things that support your airing of grievances.

Some of these statements may look familiar as outcomes of the “dynasty depression” mechanism. Once you recognize these negative perceptions patterns about a player are overemphasized and may result in problem communication strategies, the real work can then be done. You must work to develop more beneficial, effective communication skills with our player.

Effective Communication

Moving forward, it is important to supplant the identified problem communication with techniques to improve such internal communication. Self-expression skills are important to attend to your personal emotional experience in a more beneficial way. By removing the burden on the player we can recalibrate our perception without shaming ourselves in the process. One way to do this is through the use of “I feel” statements. Saying “I feel frustrated by this outcome, but it does not change my opinion of the player” is a more constructive method than using “you” statements toward the player. Placing blame with “you are worthless” or “you are not helping my team” only retains and intensifies the biased, depressed view toward the player. Another self-expression method is called stroking. This technique encourages you to find something genuinely positive to say to the player, even in the heat of the moment. This conveys respect, despite the circumstances that have brought on the situational anger. This can also help circumvent such feelings from festering into stronger, longer-lasting negative emotions.

A particular listening skill called the disarming technique can be adapted for our purposes to be one of self-reflection and can also help reboot our communication with a player. This involves accepting the player’s performance or what is occurring for the player as truth, even if you feel convinced that what is happening in wrong, unreasonable, irrational, or unfair. This can help to remove your particular expectations from the equation by heightening the focus on what is actually occurring. We may hold too high (or low) of expectations for a player for a given weekly performance, then justify away the result to serve our bias. We may generalize the single data point with a response like “of course, I knew that was going to happen because it does every time I start him.” Conversely, you may explain the result away as “a fluke.” In either case, your bias prevents you from objectively assuming the outcome should be taken as truth. Disarming yourself from your perceptions can allow you to both stay the course through a temporary rough patch, or on a longer scale it can help you get out from under a player for which you repeatedly provide excuses.

Exercise
Communication record

Player: Select the particular player you have identified a bias for or against.
Situation: Describe the situation(s) that led to the formation of this bias or negative attitude toward the player.
Response: What was your exact response or chain of responses? What was going through your mind? What feelings were being produced?
Assessment: Did you use any forms of problem communication? Did things improve or worsen? (e.g., Did your roster get improve or worsen? Did you gain or lose value at the time? What about in retrospect?).
Substitution: Practice utilizing an effective communication strategy. What would you have done differently? Importantly, how can that help you going forward?

An easy way to fall back into maladaptive patterns is to rely on short, targeted questions, with yes/no responses.

Do I see this player like I used to? No. Do they have as much perceived value than they used to? No.
Do I enjoy owning this player anymore? No.
Am I confident starting them? No.

And so on… Instead, work toward open-ended questions that can better establish the current value they do have to your roster:

Where do I see them in terms of overall value on my team?
Where do I see their positional value on my team?
How many other players do I see as descending assets?
How many players would I drop before this player?
What realistically would need to occur for them to increase in perceive value?
What production would I need to see over what period of time to feel confident starting them?
What would need to change in order to want them to remain on my roster going forward?

This last one especially can help quantify some of the degree of you bias. If the player requires 1,300 yards and eight touchdowns to change your opinion, the bias may be stronger than your originally thought.

Positive biases toward a player

We have primarily examined biases against a player to this point. However, it may also be important to examine relationships where we are overly committed to a player. In these instances, we again are the source of the problem in the relationship. Maybe we are assuming the “too clingy” role and it skews our perspective on other trying to acquire the player. I’m always a strong advocate for owning players who you enjoy owning. Though, it is important for us to have healthy boundaries to ensure that we are not inhibited from accepting a strong trade offer due to our relationship with the player.

It is a little trickier to conduct this exercise while considering a player with which you are infatuated. There are some important questions you could ask to help better see where this positive bias may reside, including (again, notice the open-ended structure to the questions):

If the player’s production declined this coming year, how would my value of the player change?
What about my perspective on the player would change if he was on a different NFL team?
How would my relationship with the player change if they were on someone else’s dynasty roster?
What types of players, picks, or the combination of the two would you need to trade this player?

If these questions are difficult to even consider, that may be an indication the player has more sentimental value to you, which can be problematic.

Amicable outcome

As I mentioned earlier, couples therapy holds no implicit assumption of a particular outcome. There is no prescribed notion that after this exercise, your desire to roster a player must change. What hopefully has changed is your understanding of existing biases in at least one player. Further, you may be able to identify such internal negative communication patterns are not isolated to this relationship. Ultimately, if negative attitudes toward the player cannot be overcome despite increased awareness of such a bias, then a separation may be necessary. If this is your determination, ensure that you use effective communication strategies during this split, as this will allow for some distance from making an emotionally charged, biased, and likely regrettable decision.

Dynasty is a game that entails many swings of emotion, and unique bonds with and stances against players that can feel incredibly robust. Understand that these “relationships” are driven solely by our perceptions. Therefore, it is important to assert genuine effort and honestly to uncover biases hiding within and address them before they erupt in detrimental ways.

Author
Recent Posts

Jeremy Schwob

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

Jeremy is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at Penn State. He is an avid fan of St. Louis sports and the Dayton Flyers. You can find him advocating for wide receivers and pushing that value is misused as fact on Twitter.