Implementing ‘Guided Imagery’ Method in Psycho-Corrective Work With Athletes With Anxiety

Abstract

This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncsa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. SUMMARYThe article is devoted to the approbation of 'Guided Imagery' techniques (katathym-imaginative psychotherapy) in athletes' anxiety correction in psychological provision of athletic activity. The necessity of such a research is derived from the fact that athlete's trait anxiety characterizes a strong propensity to perceive a wide range of situations as threatening, reacting on such situations with anxious state. State anxiety is characterized by tension, restlessness, and nervousness. High level of state anxiety triggers difficulty concentrating, sometimes with fine motor coordination disruption. Very high level of trait anxiety directly correlates with the presence of neurotic conflict, with emotional and neurotic collapses, and with psychosomatic disorders, that, in turns, can lead to lowering the athlete's performance, or, even, can lead to the athlete's career termination.The article reveals the meaning of the notion of anxiety in sports activity, the need for corrective work for high level trait and state anxiety was analyzed. Chosen psychotherapeutic approach for corrective work was