The Springboard Effect:

How Springboard Diving Mirrors the Journey Through Psychotherapy

As the end of my career as a clinician approaches, I have become increasingly interested in all that contributes to an exceptional and highly skilled therapist. As with many careers, I believe my profession is a calling, contributed to by a combination of personality, interests, strengths, and life experiences. Each major life choice we make places us on a new and different trajectory that oftentimes was not initially predicted. As we increasingly become aware, usually later than earlier, our life experiences and choices converge to an increased integration and a sense of purpose. The following essay illustrates how two, seemingly unconnected experiences each contain related skillsets that I am just now appreciating.

At first glance, psychotherapy and springboard diving may seem like very unrelated pursuits, one unfolding in the quiet intimacy of a therapist’s office, the other performed in front of crowds. Yet beneath their surface differences lies a shared process of personal transformation. Both require vulnerability, trust in a guide, disciplined repetition, and a willingness to confront fear, which can hold us all back and keep us “stuck.” Whether one is diving into a pool or into the psyche, the goal is not simply performance or insight, but actual learning and change, an integration of body, mind, and spirit.

Beginnings: The Courage to Step Forward

The starting point in both psychotherapy and diving is deceptively simple: showing up. In diving, a student must stand before the instructor, with little or no background on how to proceed. In psychotherapy, a client similarly steps into a strange office, in a vulnerable position, laying bare emotions, trauma, or confusion in the presence of another. In both cases, the first act is a leap of courage.

During my junior year of college, I had previously not been doing well academically, and caused by, from what I recall, the usual teenage “distractions,” but I increasingly became fascinated by psychology. In addition, a recent switch in major from architecture to psychology coincided with competing as the sole member of the university’s men’s springboard diving team that year. When the springboard diving instructor for the PE department suddenly resigned, the opportunity to teach the beginning diving class fell into place. With no prior experience teaching the course, I accepted the job with the assumption it would simply be a chance to share athletic skills and refine my abilities. What wasn’t yet clear was that this experience marked the quiet beginning of a career in psychotherapy. Though the first psychotherapy client session was still over three years away, the diving board had already become an early clinic, and those beginner students, the first clients.

Each beginning diving student arrived with a unique combination of excitement and fear, some exhilarated, others visibly paralyzed. It amazes me even today, why anyone would take a course that elicited so much fear. I learned to watch their body language closely, to listen between the lines, to know when to push and when to back off. I was teaching springboard diving, but I was really learning how to create trust, safety, track progress, and encourage risk. These would become the very foundations of good therapy.

Trust: The Essential Golden Key to Any Healthy Relationship

I will always remember the first day of class. I was somewhat confident in my own diving abilities, but not in teaching. I was “winging it,” yet I knew I had to at least appear confident. After taking role and giving them a brief introduction to springboard diving, I asked them to ‘line up next to the diving board,” and they did it! That was the first time in my life that I requested anyone to do anything, let alone a group of people, and they complied without question. My students were demonstrating that they experienced an automatic, basic level of trust in me, and assumed I knew what I was doing.

I quickly observed that not all of the students demonstrated a high level of trust, not only in myself, but also in themselves. I also assumed that the more outgoing and confident students would improve at a quicker pace than the quieter and more unassuming student. This was not the case. There was not a 100% correlation between athletic ability and risk taking. Everyone was different, and experienced and expressed fear differently.

Most athletic sports require a certain amount of physical coordination and abilities, as well as the risk of some injury if the student makes a mistake. Springboard diving, however, like gymnastics or ice skating, contain a much higher degree of risk of injury if the student makes a mistake, and diving requires a very unique risk of entering the water from sometimes an extreme height, while upside down, defying our basic human survival instincts. With psychotherapy, the risks and fears are not so immediately objective and evident, yet can be experienced by an individual as just as powerful, if not more so.

Each student was unique in their athletic abilities, coordination, self-confidence, and trust in me as their instructor. One benefit of this class, as opposed to when I would teach an academic course, was that I was able to address each individual student, one at a time. Each relationship was very different, as well as the degree of their progress. Interestingly, regarding heightened emotions and group dynamics, I noticed in every class, the students would quickly bond with each other and become each other’s cheerleaders to encourage them on.

The Role of the Guide: Coach and Therapist

Both psychotherapy and diving hinge on the relationship with a guide, a coach in one, a therapist in the other. Each must combine technical expertise with emotional sensitivity. In diving, the coach helps shape and train a body in motion; in therapy, the therapist helps navigate a mind in motion and growth. Both professions require attunement to the inner life of the learner. And as other teachers witness as well, every student experiences a very different and unique learning process.

Years later, in the therapy room, I would again witness that familiar tension: clients poised on the edge of emotional disclosure, paralyzed by fear of rejection, judgment, or simply the unknown. It would be ineffective to just simply tell the student or client what to do. This is where the degree of trust they are developing in you as a coach or therapist will make all the difference. The same patience, encouragement, and timing I practiced on the pool deck would serve me just as powerfully in psychotherapy. A statement I frequently make in psychotherapy is, “I can see that you definitely have a foot on the gas pedal, but it appears you have the other foot on the brake. I wonder what the function or purpose of your brake is?”

Fear and Resistance: Internal Obstacles/Defenses

Fear is central in both diving and therapy. For the diver, it is the fear of physical harm or humiliation. For the therapy client, it is often fear of emotional pain, vulnerability, or change. Resistance and defenses can appear suddenly in both: a diver balking mid-approach, or a client shutting down in the middle of an insight. In both domains, fear signals the potential threshold of transformation.

What I discovered as a diving instructor was that performance and fear were inextricably linked. A technically capable student might suddenly freeze on the board when asked to attempt a new dive. The fear wasn’t always about the dive, it might stem from embarrassment, trauma, or deeper insecurities, and of course, avoiding the belly flop. It was there that I began practicing the therapist’s art of “holding space” for someone’s hesitation without attempting to rush them past it.

Teaching diving also introduced me into working with PTSD or victims of trauma. As much as I was learning how powerful a motivator fear was, I was very much aware of the power of pain. It stops us dead in our tracks, it causes us to retreat, and as time passes, fear will increase, leading to paralysis. The proverb, “it’s important to get back up on the horse,” is a very wise one. When injured, physically or emotionally, it is crucial to get back up as soon as possible and “move” forward. If I ever wiped out on dive and did not immediately get back up on the board and do at least some parts of that dive, I would be unable to attempt that dive in the future. Oftentimes, when a client frequently uses the term “stuck” in their descriptions, I will suggest, “let’s go for a walk.”

As a diving coach, I learned that you cannot shame or aggressively force someone past their fear. You must walk with them toward it. You break it down. You simplify the movement. You celebrate the small progress. These same lessons have shaped how I guide clients in therapy today, whether they’re confronting trauma, loss, patterns of self-sabotage, or simply bad habits.

Technique and Repetition: The Path to Mastery

Despite their emotional layers, both diving and therapy are crafts. Both start with goal setting. In diving, there's a sequence of technical development, forward jumps, forward dives, back jumps, and so on. In therapy, there's a framework, cognitive restructuring, emotional processing, behavioral experimentation and change. But neither domain is about robotic execution. Growth requires presence and integration, not just practice. By the way, this is an example where AI would prove insufficient.

As I taught beginners to dive, I saw the power of repetition and feedback. Sometimes the mistakes are frustrating, sometimes very painful. Sometimes a student would land flat (belly or back flop) three times in a row, then suddenly find the connection. As with therapy, there must be sufficient motivation to continue, a strong enough “why.” Again, as much as fear can stop us in our tracks, pain can as well. In therapy, change is just as nonlinear. A client may cycle through the same pattern for weeks, or in some cases, months, before one moment of clarity shifts everything.

Both processes ask the same question: Can you show up again, even after falling short?

The Physics of the Psyche: Parallels Between Diving and Psychotherapy

Though physics and psychotherapy seem worlds apart, the physical laws governing springboard diving find surprising parallels in the emotional and psychological principles that shape therapy. Both disciplines, at their core, are concerned with motion, force, resistance, and transformation.

Getting started is always the hardest part. The law of inertia states that “an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion.” With diving, standing on the board is comfortable, but nothing changes until you move. With therapy, it takes courage to start therapy and make that first appointment. Emotional inertia often holds us in place until something, a crisis, a realization, or a longing, pushes us to take the first step.

In diving, Newton’s Third Law, “every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” is relatively objective, for example explaining trajectory or how to initiate a twisting dive. This is mirrored in therapy through relational dynamics. A client’s emotional push (disclosure, resistance, anger) often elicits a counter-response (countertransference) from the therapist. The therapeutic alliance depends on managing this reciprocal energy with care, not control.

The conservation of energy in diving, where potential becomes kinetic and vice versa, parallels how psychic energy shifts in therapy. Pain buried deep within (potential energy) may be safely released (kinetic energy) through insight, expression, and integration. Like a diver gathering momentum at the board’s edge, clients often build toward emotional breakthroughs gradually.

Momentum and resistance also play central roles. Divers use torque and body position to control spin; in therapy, clients shift mental “position” through insight and emotional flexibility. Resistance, again, whether fear of a backward dive or fear of vulnerability, often signals the potential threshold of growth in both fields. When confronted with resistance, I try to experience encouragement that I am probably “over the target.”

Finally, the diver’s entry into the water reflects therapy’s goal: smooth integration, at times, things “seem” to effortlessly come together. I frequently ask a diver after they gathered enough confidence to do their first back dive, or a couple coming in for their second session and reporting they had “a good week,” with,” how hard was that?” The most common response is “it was a lot easier than I thought.”

Body, Mind, and Spirit: Integrated Selves

Diving, by nature, is exemplified in teaching balance, muscle awareness, and kinesthetic awareness. But as I learned in my psychology courses, and later through clinical work, the mind is no less physical. Emotions are often stored in the body: a tight chest, a racing heart, a clenched jaw. The diving board became a place where I witnessed this mind-body connection long before I had the vocabulary to name it.

Later, in somatic-focused therapy approaches, I would witness how clients often needed to move, walk, breathe, or weep their way through insights that talk alone couldn’t reach. My early experience as a diver and coach gave me a deep respect for the wisdom of the body, its “symptoms,” and its role in healing.

But even beyond the physical and the psychological, diving and therapy often touch something deeper: the spiritual. There is a quiet, sacred quality to moments of breakthrough, whether it’s the stillness before a dive or the silence following a client’s realization. When body, mind, and spirit align, even briefly, there is a sense of wholeness that transcends technique or insight. In those moments, healing becomes not just about fixing what is broken, but reconnecting with something greater, something within and beyond the self. I am always amazed, and very pleased at the times within therapy, when seemingly out of the blue, the subject of God comes up. I have also been known to periodically make the sign of the cross just before attempting a difficult dive.

Setbacks and Feedback Loops

Mistakes are inevitable. Sometimes mistakes or failures can be very painful. A diver hits the water horizontal. A client regresses into old habits, or does damage to a relationship. In both arenas, progress depends not on avoiding failure, but on how failure is processed. The coach and therapist alike are mirrors, helping the individual interpret setbacks not as defeat, but as information or steps, something to learn from.

This is why encouragement matters so deeply in both fields. I remember how much confidence a beginner diver gained from a simple, "You're getting closer." In therapy, those words might sound like, "You're doing hard work, and it's showing." Change is slow and often invisible. But a good guide helps the person see the growth they cannot yet see in themselves. I often have clients rate symptoms on a Likert scale (1 – 10), so in the near future, they can better discern the improvement they have made. For example, if a couple could bring their average “marital happiness” from the present 5 to an average of 7, that would be a success.

The Goal: Integration, Not Perfection

Ultimately, both diving and therapy are about the process of becoming whole. For a diver, it's the moment when body and mind align mid-air and the water greets them more smoothly, seemingly effortlessly. For the therapy client, it’s when insight meets behavior, when self-awareness leads to real change. Neither is about perfection. Both are about integration.

When I look back now, I realize that the springboard was never just a sport for me, it helped me to develop courage and to mature. And it has always been fun. Every hesitation on the board mirrored the doubts clients would bring years later into the therapy room. And every breakthrough in the air anticipated the deeper leaps of healing and growth yet to come.

Conclusion: The Courage to Keep Leaping

To dive off a springboard or into the human heart and mind requires the same brave posture: humility, discipline, and the courage to risk. Both paths teach us that transformation is not achieved in one giant leap, but through a series of deliberate, repeated steps toward wholeness. Whether you're standing at the edge of a board or across from a therapist, the invitation is the same: trust the process, face the fear, and leap anyway. With each dive, and each session, you build strength, clarity, resilience, and even grace.

Neither process ends with a gold medal or a "fixed" psyche. The diver may retire, but the lessons of self-discipline, resilience, and courage when needed, remain. The therapy client may end their sessions after the presenting problems have been alleviated, but also carries forward new tools for living a life of renewed purpose and meaning, increased intimacy, and continued growth.