What Living With Stage 4 Endometriosis Taught Me About Being an Athlete
I have stage 4 endometriosis. That means I live with a long-term, chronic, incurable health condition one that I can only manage, never eliminate according to some consultants.
I want to start there, plainly and clearly, because too often conditions like endometriosis are wrapped in euphemism and minimised into footnotes. It is not a footnote. For millions of women, it is the backdrop to every training session, every competition, every decision about whether the body can show up today.
And for me, it became the lens through which I began to understand something crucial about psychological support in sport and exercise.
The Constant Mental Battle
When you're dealing with something long-term in your body, there is a mental battle that runs alongside everything else. It is relentless, and it is exhausting in a way that is hard to describe if you haven't lived it.
The questions don't stop. Will this stop me from doing what I love? Will people understand what I'm going through? How do I keep showing up when my body feels like it's working against me?
There were moments in building my practice where the pain made me genuinely question whether I could create the career I wanted. There is a particular kind of grief that comes with having a body that doesn't cooperate, that feels unpredictable, that lets you down at the worst possible moments, that requires you to make decisions that others around you simply don't have to make.
When sport or exercise is part of who you are, losing access to it, even temporarily, can be devastating in ways that go far beyond the physical.
What Nobody in the Changing Room Talks About
Here is something I think about a lot: women in sport are still navigating their health in environments that were not designed with them in mind.
When a female athlete says that her period is so painful she cannot get up, cannot train, cannot play, cannot perform, that experience is frequently minimised in male-dominated sporting environments. She might be told to push through. She might be looked at with confusion. She might feel pressure to pretend the pain isn't happening because the alternative is too complicated to explain.
For those living with endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, PCOS, or other conditions that affect the menstrual cycle, this experience is not occasional. It is ongoing. And the psychological weight of managing a chronic condition in a space that doesn't fully understand it is enormous.
When there's no room to acknowledge what your body is going through, you carry it alone. And carrying it alone has a cost.
Injury, Illness, and Identity
My experience with endometriosis changed how I see athletes.
Not just female athletes. All athletes who are navigating something their body is doing that feels outside of their control: long-term injury, chronic illness, unexpected health diagnoses, the slow grief of a body that can no longer do what it once could.
These experiences don't just affect performance. They affect identity. They raise the same questions I've asked myself: who am I if I can't do this? What does this mean for my future? Am I still an athlete if I can't train the way I want to?
The psychological support that athletes need during these periods goes beyond injury rehab protocols and return-to-play timelines. It requires someone who understands the emotional side of trying to rebuild trust in a body that has felt like it's let you down.
Why This Space Exists
Women's health in sport is still under-researched, under-discussed, and under-supported. The conversations that need to happen about menstrual health, chronic conditions, the physical and psychological toll of managing a female body in performance environments are still happening too quietly, in too few spaces.
This blog is one of those spaces.
It's for the female athlete who has trained through pain she couldn't explain. For the young woman who felt like her body was a problem to be managed rather than understood. For anyone who has navigated a chronic condition in a fitness environment and felt invisible doing it.
I'm not writing from a position of having all the answers. I'm writing from lived experience, from professional training, and from the firm belief that these conversations matter and that breaking the silence around them is the first step toward changing something.
You are not too sensitive. You are not making it up. Your body's experience deserves to be taken seriously in sport, and everywhere else.
If this resonated, stick around. This space was made for you.
Author Bio
Stephanie Wright is a Sport and Exercise Psychologist in training and founder of The Wright Mindset, a practice built on the belief that psychological support should be accessible, early, and judgment-free. She works at the intersection of performance, identity, wellbeing, and health, supporting athletes, young people, and women navigating chronic health conditions in sport and beyond. You can follow her journey on Instagram at @thewrightmindsetHQ or explore her services.
References
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Zondervan, K. T., Becker, C. M., & Missmer, S. A. (2020). Endometriosis. New England Journal of Medicine, 382(13), 1244–1256.
