Anxiety should not be play downed in any respect. Anxiety is not fear. It is a physiological state that kids and adults often mistake for danger and doom. Anyone experiencing anxiety, be it socially or during sports, may not know what it is. When you don't know what anxiety is, it begins to control your life. If your kids are anxious on the ice let them know it's normal. There are a lot of things that can be done to help them.
Here is an interesting article about Johan Franzen and how his life was affected by social anxiety. Here is the original link:
http://blog.mlive.com/snapshots/2009/11/aftonbladet_red_wings_forward.html
Detroit's Johan Franzén on the anxiety that threatened his career
DETROIT. Johan Franzén has been a wonderful breakthrough player in the NHL, has a newly written contract worth nearly 300 million [Swedish Kronor] and is celebrated star of the Detroit Red Wings.
The paradox is that he now stands in the middle of the spotlight, where his biggest demons have always existed.
For there was a time when extreme shyness and stage fright was about to stop his whole career.
Then he ran and hid after the matches, when he skipped school lectures and paid team mates in Linköping for speaking in his place.
"The only place I felt safe was on the ice," he says.
Johan Franzén calls it sheer terror.
The fear to face others and make speeches, meet the media after the games and move to new surroundings
"I've always been shy and the first season here, I was almost afraid to score. Then I knew I would be interviewed afterward. It was almost as if I shot at the post instead, but only almost. But it was never so, I went and chased the goal if we led the game. I don't now, either."
Few have known Johan Franzén's problems back home in Sweden and it is only now he has come past the worst fears.
'Here in the NHL you are, of course, thrown straight into it. There is no way out, so I had to try to work it through. And confrontation is what works best for all anxiety, "he says.
During his years in Linköping the players would give speeches in different contexts, but Franzen managed to always shirk his obligations.
"I would simply pay someone else on the team from my own pocket. I simply simply pay someone else on the team from their own pockets. I simply can't do it."
That he can now openly talk about it shows that he is well on the road.
"But it's still the case that I prefer to slip out of the locker room before reporters allowed into the locker room."
The extreme shame is why Johan Franzén received such a late breakthrough.
He was a star even during TV-Pucken tournaments in Småland, but when those responsible for the boy's team called afterward to invite him to a preparatory hockey school he turned them down.
HV-71 managed to attract him to the hockey school in Jönköping, but he did not remain in town very long.
"I really didn't enjoy it and would very truant from school. The times we were asked to give speeches to the class, I couldn't think of anything else. I kept myself away from lessons until the task was over. I just couldn't do it. I used to leave school at lunch and splinter off and go to the public skating rink instead. It was there that I felt safe. Eventually I moved back home. But I still think it was a good choice, and that it was better for me to play senior hockey at home than junior hockey with HV-71.
In small Landsbro he had friends, family and security.
In Myresjö a few miles away, he had the soccer team.
"I played in the boys' league until I was seventeen. I was a goalkeeper, even though I thought it was really boring to be in goal. I really hated it at some practices. But the coach wanted me to stay there and so I did."
He then continued with soccer as a forward in Landsbro until he was nineteen, which is almost unique for a Swedish hockey player in the NHL.
"But that last year, with some of my childhood friends on the soccer team, was actually one of my most fun times with sport so far. We played just because it was fun."
The same winter scored incredible 23 goals in just ten games in the Boro [hockey] team in Division III. The rumors spread over Swedish hockey.
Then something happened which is also relatively unknown and could have stopped the career of the then 19-year-old Franzen.
He skated into a referee in a game and got a year off from hockey.
"But we appealed and got it down to ten months," he says.
What actually happened?
"I was angry and went after the referee and shouted, and when he stopped and put his hands at his sides I kept skating."
Franzen shows himself showing a referee's sign of misconduct when he tells us.
"I argued the whole time that I couldn't stop. I still claim that," he says and bursts into a smile.
But after the season he began the climb upward.
Coach Torgny Bendelin managed to get him to move to the Premier Division with Tranås in 1999-2000 and when Torgny moved to Linköping a year later, Franzen followed.
A Linköping team that was playing in the Allsvenskan that season.
"I had offers from HV-71 and it was in the Eliteserien at the time, but Bendelin managed to persuade me to stay with Linköpings Hockey Club," he says.
In Linköping, also came the breakthrough, when LHC returned to the Eliteserien the same season. Back to stay.
"To get to the Eliteserien with Linköping is the most fun thing I have experienced in hockey, second to my Stanley Cup title here in Detroit."
Yet Johan Franzén continued to be an anonymous Swedish player, a hard-working defensive forward who enjoyed success in that role. He joined the squad as a characteristic hard-worker and debuted at the World Championships in 2005.
"But that's also played a big part in my development. And it was a role I liked because I did not receive all the attention."
But most people were probably surprised when he went to Detroit later that year, when Detroit drafted him as a 24-year-old in 2004. He was picked relatively high also for an over-aged player - number 97 in the third round.
And in Detroit began the transformation to the "new" Johan Franzén.
Power forward, scorer, the star.
The Swede who scored nine goals in just four games in the playoff series against Colorado in 2008 and broke legend Gordie Howe's 59-year-old club record.
"It's the craziest thing I have ever experienced. Everything went in the net. I remember one of the goals, when their goalie covered the entire case. But somehow I managed to get the puck on edge when I shot so the puck slid throughthe one small gap that existed between the goalie pads, "he says.
"But when I first came here I started from the bottom to earn a spot and worked on the parts of my game I was worse at. But the mentality here is very different than back home in Sweden and we are trying constantly to improve the skills you have. At home, no one ever said I had a good shot. Here teammates Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby said to me almost immediately, that, "You are so big and you have a great shot and should use it more. Go to the net and shoot!"
"That was how it started. Then both Tomas Holmström and Daniel Cleary got injured and then I could take that role and stand in front of goal in the power play. When pucks started to go in. Since then I have accustomed myself to a culture where you are looking for a hero in each game. In the end, you want to be the hero yourself."
You could say that Franzen succeeded in that case.
While he has not become accustomed to one hundred percent of the new heroic role yet, even if the worst shame disappeared.
And while other NHL millionaires build huge houses all over Sweden, in Småland, Franzén's dream house is only 80 square [260 square feet]
"It's on a lake almost as far into the woods as you can get. And away t is situated on a lake almost as far into the woods you can get. And away from all to avoid visits," he says.
But it is noticeable that, at the same time, he's started to enjoy his new role a little bit.
Otherwise, he has never told his story so openly.
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