Annie Guglia isn’t new to the skateboarding scene. A Canadian National Champion and frontrunner for the Canadian Olympic Team who has been skating for more than two decades now and has achieved a lot during her skateboarding career including many trophies and medals, shares with us her own unique relationship with competitions. A relationship that left her at the crossroads of redefining her love for skateboarding and quitting The Olympics altogether. We finally gain some palpable insight into what the words mental health mean to a skater with everything on the line. One thing’s for certain, as a role model and one of the fiercest competition skaters on the planet, nothing is stopping her.
Interview by Zane Foley
Photography by Ryan Lebel
Published in April 2021
What inspired you to amplify the Mental Health conversation in Skateboarding?
It’s relatively new that I’ve been talking about mental health. I think the reason for that is it’s new for me as a person too. Several people in my personal life are struggling with mental health issues right now. That’s the first reason. The second reason is The Olympics. The Olympics brought a whole new level of, honestly, a bunch of stress and anxiety. It brought a lot of positive things too but it’s the first time in my life where I myself personally had mental health issues. I found myself realizing, if I kept going how I was going, I was going to have a burnout or I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had to focus on my mental health as much as my physical health.
When did you know your mental health was being affected by competition skating?
There is a pre-Covid era and post-Covid era, [laughs]. Pre-Covid was more about managing stress during competition. I started reading books about mental toughness for athletes. That’s somewhat a new world for skateboarders. I didn’t really know about the mental side of training before The Olympics. Usually I perform really well in competitions and then with The Olympics, the extra pressure of having to perform is insanely stressful. I remember this one competition before Covid in particular. I’m getting a lot of media attention for Team Canada. I’m at this contest, it’s the first National Championship I think, no wait, the second National Championship and in the practice all the media was trying to interview me. But keep in mind we only have one hour of practice. They were coming onto the course asking me questions for interviews and I couldn’t focus. I just cracked and left the skatepark and I drove to another park to practice. I just had to skate somewhere else – it was just too much pressure. It was so crazy. Luckily, I came back and I skated really well. It ended up being a really nice time but that was the first time I realized how important the mental side of competition skating is.
The Olympics were obviously postponed and nearly fell apart. How did that challenge your Mental Health?
Thankfully, I was on a really good path last March [2020]. I won the Canadian National Championship and I had been really healthy since coming back from an ankle injury in 2019. Then Covid hit. At first, we didn’t even know if the Olympics would be postponed. It was like, “Okay, there’s going to be a little break.” It was really stressful because we were in quarantine and people from other countries were still training. There was this bubble I was in. I was just training and being stuck at home, literally only skating in front of my house. Honestly, when the Olympics got postponed, it probably wasn’t a very popular opinion but I was relieved. I finally had time to take a break. For the past two years I was training, training, training. I said, “You know what, I need a break. I’ll take the whole summer off and not go back to training.” Training means go skating obviously but this whole past year there were a lot of ups and downs. Some days I had really good days but it was the first time in my life where I had times that I wanted to quit.
You wanted to quit The Olympics?
There was just too much stress. At a certain point, I remember January of this year, I sat down with my parents and said to them: “I think I want to quit The Olympics. It’s too much stress.” I thought I was falling out of love with skateboarding. I didn’t even want to skate anymore. I’ve been skating for twenty years, I love it, it’s my passion. So why do I feel like I have to force myself to skate everyday? I finally said, “You know what, I think the competition side is not for me right now.” I started seeing my sports psychologist and I realized it was more about trying to find the reason why I am doing The Olympics and try to find a sense of purpose. It’s still true, I love skating. It’s just that when it’s only about stress it’s no longer fun. It’s just about reframing why I was doing all this stuff.
You said you felt like you were falling out of love with skateboarding?
I remember one day, can’t say exactly when but I was in my home gym at my house. I think it was right after I had a zoom meeting with my sports psychologist. I remember asking myself If I still love skateboarding or is it something that I should stop caring so much about and just do it maybe once in a while like how a lot of people do. Because it’s my life.
What did you contemplate when assessing your love for skateboarding?
I was in my gym and I was lying down and I started looking around the room. I saw the three trophies for the Canadian National Championship I won. I remembered all these events and said to myself, “That was so much fun.” There’s so much stress when it’s happening but then when you think about it after, it was all so much fun. All my friends skate. My grandparents came. I was thinking about all these events and my run and how well it went, the good parts of all this. Then I was looking at when I was on the cover of King Magazine in 2019. I remember thinking, “That is so sick, I made it on the cover of a magazine, [laughs].” Then I started crying because I saw this board on my wall that says, quit your day job. It had everyone’s signature on it from the contest. I was looking at all these milestones of my skate path and I said, “I love skateboarding so much. This is not the problem.”
Did you ever find out what was ‘the problem’ or what was causing you to put your love for skateboarding in jeopardy?
The problem is not that I don’t love skateboarding but it’s the fact that it had become the only way that I pay my rent. Maybe there’s a way to connect. Maybe it doesn’t have to be the only thing that I do. The other thing too, is I began to realize I was losing motivation towards The Olympic goal itself because of Covid. You know how it is. You want to be a part of the Opening Ceremony and go watch other sports and do all these cool things. For me, one thing that was really important was when I started training for The Olympics, was that I wanted to have fun throughout the process. You know that quote? Happiness is not the destination, it’s the journey. Don’t focus too much on the end result, try and appreciate the whole process. Right now, the whole process sucks, [laughs]. Everything is cancelled and we can’t be with people. I didn’t even have access to a skatepark for months. If and when we were going to The Olympics, we would get there five days in advance and leave the day after and not be able to see the other sports. It lost its glory and so I was asking, why am I even doing this? But that’s when I realized I was doing it for myself. I want to be able to say I did it for me. Not to go around telling other people but to tell myself I did it. I just had to reframe it so that I would be proud of myself and not necessarily care if it’s not exactly how I thought it would be.
Based on your experiences, what would you say to our fellow skateboarders who find their love for skateboarding in jeopardy?
Sometimes, as long as we think we can keep going, we’ll keep going instead of taking a break. If you feel unmotivated or depressed, it is a sign before anything else happens. That’s what I realized when seeing people close to me battling mental health basically hit a wall. For me, I know I am feeling those signs even before I hit a wall, so I try to take care of them before. I don’t want to say it’s not normal but “Why am I feeling unmotivated to skate? When it’s the one thing that I love?” So yeah, that was definitely a sign, [laughs] and something all skaters should think about.
Was a sport’s psychologist something you had supplied to you through The Olympics or was it something you had to pursue on your own?
Since it’s a part of my training as an Olympic athlete, I have access to a sports psychologist and I don’t have to worry about paying for it. That’s awesome because honestly, that’s what got me through these past three months. Now I am in better mental shape than I have ever been in my life to be honest.
Skateboarding often expects skaters to be happy because they are quote: living the dream. Do you ever feel the general skate population dismisses the feelings of high-level competition skaters?
That’s one of the reasons why it took me so long to talk about mental health. People online say, “You have no reason to feel bad.” As if on paper I have no reason to feel that much anxiety or feel depressed some weeks. As if I don’t have a good enough reason because I’m living the dream. I thought my feelings were not valid for a very long time. I felt like I should not be doing this [speaking out on mental health]. I don’t have a valid reason so people are not going to understand if I’m not feeling well or so I can’t feel bad. I love that you asked this question because it’s so true.
How can we do a better job of validating the mental health of skateboarders?
It starts with talking about mental health because no matter what you’re feeling, feelings are subjective. It’s important to not suppress them no matter what they are. Accept what you’re going through or how you’re feeling. For a long time, I didn’t accept the fact that I was anxious. I’m an anxious person and I am way more introverted than I ever thought I was. I’m not really sure where I am going with this [laughs].
Was there someone who helped validate your feelings on Mental Health?
I really want to talk about Jed Anderson. He’s a snowboarder who had an interview where he talked about anxiety and OCD. His story and mine are basically the same thing. Nobody knew he was not doing well because he felt like he couldn’t talk about not being okay. He was a professional snowboarder living the dream. The same thing with skateboarding. He is one of the reasons why I felt comfortable talking about my mental health and my feelings on Instagram. After reading his interview I realized how important it is to talk about mental health because it can help other people too.
When you discuss your mental health online you recognize the duality of it. You speak of the ups and the downs. How are you able to maintain this type of clarity and always strive to see the bright side of things?
It’s a process. There’s always going to be ups and downs. That’s the thing we have to realize: nothing is permanent. It’s never going to always be up and it’s never going to always be down. Even more so, you’re not your ups and downs. That’s something I try and remind myself of all the time. Try and be aware if you’re having a really good time, try and make the most of it because it’s not always going to be like that. And if you’re having a bad time, it’s the same thing; the good is going to come back around. For me, that’s an important thing to realize and hopefully make other people realize too. That’s how life works. It’s like skateboarding. You’re not going to skate your best everyday but when you do, make sure you’re enjoying it and you realize it and you’re thankful for it. Like yesterday, I had a really good skate session and I was enjoying it. I was so hyped. I was even thinking about it when I got back home, today was a good day. Thank you skateboarding.
There was one thing you wrote on your Instagram, subjective feeling of happiness: can you expand on what that statement means?
For the past year, I have been trying to be more mindful of my mental health situation. Luckily, I am stable but I realized I was more vulnerable than I thought. I started reading books and listening to audio books. One of the books, Projecting Feelings of Happiness, we kinda talked about it: but if everyone thinks you’re happy, it’s subjective. Even if I should react in a positive way, I might not. That’s something for me that I have been thinking about a lot lately. “Why, if everyone thinks I should be happy, why am I not happy?” Then I realized happiness is just one part of well-being. Happiness is not the whole thing. For well-being, one of the books I read, it’s called Flourish. It talks about happiness and its distinction from well-being. Happiness is positive emotions but it’s also your engagement. As in, “Are you really engaged with what you are doing? Do you feel like you’re in control or are you always anxious about what’s happening?” Then there’s relationships, reachings, and accomplishments. All of this plays a role in your well-being. It’s important to realize you can’t fabricate happiness. Some people think, “When I have this, I’ll finally be happy.” But that’s not how it works. That’s just going to be a pattern for you to reach for something else and you’re never going to find it.
Is that what you meant when you wrote on your Instagram post discussing mental health: “being stuck in unhelpful thought patterns?”
It’s something that I realized–we’re all stuck, [laughs]. We all have thought patterns in our head. For example, I always take things personal. Well, I don’t always do but one of my patterns is, let’s say, someone is not feeling so well or acts sad towards me, I take responsibility for other people’s unhappiness. If one of my friends is feeling down, I’ll start feeling down. I’ll ask, “What can I do to help?” I’ll feel responsible. At a certain point, it’s nice to have empathy obviously, but it becomes draining for someone who is always taking everything personally. Another thing that I do is called Analysis Paralysis. I analyze way too much and I get stressed and can’t make decisions. These are both things I try to work on.
Speaking from your own experiences, how can we encourage skaters to work on their mental health?
It’s like when you hurt an ankle and you have to work on rehab. But that’s the thing-we don’t even need to have a mental health issue or something to work on. It’s like working out. For me, seeing a sports psychologist is like going to the gym. You don’t need to be out of shape to work out. It’s something you do to stay in shape. Just knowing about the concept of improving your mental health can really help. Even if people don’t want to go to a psychologist, just reading books about mental health can really help. Since the beginning of 2021, I’ve read 14 books, [laughs]. That’s because I discovered audiobooks so I have been listening to a lot of them about mental health. For me, just having the concepts really helps me. I’m a very academic person, so having the concepts is what helps me to grow in my thinking. It’s mental but it’s also physical. I read books about anatomy and physiology and stuff like that.
Social media and mental health are generally on opposite sides of the conversation: how have you been able to use social media as a tool for nurturing it when so many others succumb to the opposite?
I think a lot of people use social media to subconsciously compare themselves to others. One of the things that I try to do is, as soon as I am on social media and I start to have negative feelings, I’ll just stop myself right there and I’ll stop scrolling. I try to use social media as a source of inspiration and motivation. I’ll watch other girls skate but if I start to feel anxious or if I have a really bad skate day and I see a lot of girls learning tricks; sometimes I’ll get anxious. I’ll stop scrolling and I’ll do yoga or I’ll do something else because I don’t want to be in a situation where I see other people like a threat. I just want to be able to use social media and be hyped off what other people are doing. I want to use my platform to try and inspire other people way more than be conceded or for things that are otherwise negative.
You wrote how the Pandemic gave you time to grow. Was this meant for you as a skater or you and your mental health?
I think it’s really all three. Myself personally, myself as a skater and my mental health. All of it, the whole package. But mostly mental health I would say just because it’s the first time I’ve been self-challenged. I thought writing my master thesis was hard, [laughs], but this past year with Covid and the Olympics being postponed, that’s been really hard. It weighed on me more than I thought. I like to think that I was able to detach from it, if it mattered that much. But it really did affect my mental health. I have been working for three years to get to The Olympics. For it to be postponed and for me to feel relief for it being postponed, it made me think. “Why would I be relieved and why would I think that it’s fine to wait another year?”
How did you mentally grow during the pandemic?
With Covid, quarantine and social distancing and stuff, it gave me the time. It forced me to slow down. I’m always doing something and I stopped being in that state of always looking for something to do right now and having lists. I would make these lists: do this, do this, do this, do this, and then go to bed and wake up and have another list. I think with Covid, all the lists sorta blended and disappeared into each other and it forced me to slow down. Ultimately, that was a really good thing. Before, when I thought that I was more of an extrovert, I was always exhausted. It can be exhausting to always be spending time with people. Especially because I always want to be a motivator. It’s draining for me because I am always trying to help people and to be a good role model for skateboarders or try and be happy all the time. I realized from not seeing people for weeks and months, I am able to come back and see things and do things only for me and not always give, give, give to other people. That’s something that I really needed and I didn’t really know before. It helps me to give in a more efficient way. I don’t know if that makes sense, [laughs]. But I have time to cultivate my own happiness.
It’s like how can you help someone fully realize themselves if you’re not fully realized or if you’re not solid in your foundation, how can you help strengthen someone else?
That’s exactly what I mean. I think for a long time, I was giving away more than I was giving to myself. Then, after a while, you don’t know why but you’re always exhausted when you’re around people. You’re giving away so much and your battery is dead. Then you’re just giving the very few moments left for yourself. You can’t recharge in just one night. I feel like I recharged my whole battery during quarantine, [laughs]. And now it’s fully functioning.
As someone amplifying the mental health conversation in skateboarding, what responses or interactions have you had with skateboarders online?
It’s been a general support, the reaction. Honestly, it was pretty terrifying to start posting about my mental health because I thought people would think it wasn’t legit. The first time when I said I went through a phase where I wasn’t feeling good about The Olympics, I was even scared to tell my parents. But my parents love me unconditionally and know that, but I was just scared. I was scared for myselt. That my feelings weren’t valid. That’s something that obviously is wrong but thankfully the people who follow me are really cool. I don’t really have a lot of haters on my profile but when you get posted on other media, then it’s different depending on the media. I didn’t really have any negative feedback, like at all. Actually a lot of people wrote to me in private, saying, “Thank you for sharing this. This is going to help me so much.” l am not going to give names but Pro skaters even. I did the same thing with Jed when he wrote that in his interview. I wrote to him and I told him, “You have no idea how much this is helping me right now. Thank you so much for sharing this.” I hope that people would feel the same way when I write about my mental health.
Do you ever feel like there’s something you can’t post online?
It’s funny, one thing that comes to mind. This whole winter in Montreal, we have snow and so you can’t skate outside for 4-5 months of the year. With Covid all the indoor skateparks were closed so for like two months I didn’t have access to a skatepark. Then, starting in January 2021, I could skate an indoor skatepark only I had access to. Literally just for me to train for The Olympics. I would skate every day alone for three months. Honestly, it sounds awesome, but after 2-3 weeks it was super unmotivating. To skate alone for three months trying to learn new tricks and huck down rails and stairs and stuff like that. I got really bored. And it’s weird to think about because obviously I can’t say that to people who can’t even skate right now. But that’s the kind of thing where I have to be honest and say, “Well that’s how I feel.” I’m sure if you locked someone in a skatepark for five months, no friends, no anything, they would feel the same. That’s not what skateboarding is to me. It’s cool I can practice and I love skateboarding but it’s not true for me to say that I wanted to go skating every single day.
Have you received any negative feedback from a mental health post?
The only time I got hate is when I said something along the lines of: “Trying to find a way to entertain myself in an empty skatepark.” People were saying I had no right to feel unmotivated for skating alone for two months. I thought, “Woah. Okay, kinda true.” But there’s always going to be people who are going to hate and you got to get used to it at some point. If you’re not doing anything, then nobody is going to hate. But if you’re doing something, if you’re doing anything you’re prone to having people hate on what you’re doing. As long as more people love what you’re doing than hating [laughs]. We learn that through skating too.
As a role model, have you had mental health conversations with your skate-students? What do some of those conversations sound like?
I have a really cool experience on that note. In one of the high schools I worked at they had a skatepark and I was a mentor for kids that wanted to come skate after school. They were mostly skaters who came to skate after school. One thing I realized was, it’s not just conversations about mental health but also using skateboarding as a self-development tool. For example, with one of the groups, they’re all teenagers in high school and some of them have rage issues. They would always get mad and throw their boards or throw their helmets. I’ve been trying to help them with that because yeah, it’s okay to get mad sometimes but if you can’t back tail the hip at the skatepark without warming up first, you know, that’s normal. I’ll tell them to do some pivots or stalls first, “Why not get back to the playful side of skating and then maybe you can try that backtail?” I know they can back tail but some people need that guidance. It was really cool to have that role, working there for three years. I see them now, they still skate. They’re not kids anymore but I remember them being at the skatepark and telling their friend like, “Hey, you’re so gay.” I said to them once, “You know who else is gay? Me.” And they’re saying, Oh, shit.” [laughs]. They don’t know that they are with a gay skater. Then I show them Brian Anderson’s parts and they’re saying, “What-that guy’s gay? He doesn’t look gay.” I get to tell them, “That’s not how being gay works.” Just having those conversations with kids is just really cool too because they are open minded. We talked a lot about mental health too. We talked about how some of them can get injured and get depressed and things of that nature. Having those for helping people feel better. conversations is important. I like using skateboarding as a tool for helping people feel better.
What are we all doing on our skateboards if not attempting to find happiness?
Exactly, but there’s sometimes when, let’s say if you’re skating and you get sad or you get mad; basically the thing that you are supposed to have to help deal with that stuff, isn’t making you happy right now. It’s important to realize that skateboarding doesn’t make you happy itself but you make yourself happy by skateboarding. And then you can use skateboarding as a way to materialize your happiness. If you’re happy and you go skate, you’re going to be happy skating but if you’re sad and you go skate, sometimes it helps obviously because just moving and doing something else can really help; but sometimes you can rage more. That’s something you can work on because I don’t think it’s good to be raging and skating, [laughs]. That’s how you get hurt.
A mad skater is a bad skater?
Yes, exactly. A lot of people think it’s cool to rage and throw your board. But usually it’s when you focus and when you calm down that you land your trick.
If you had a button that would change one thing what would it be and would you push it?
If I had a button and I could change one thing, it would be people, [laughs]. It would be people who hate on other people. When someone is reposted on big skate media and some people will comment hate. For example last week someone commented about me saying, “She’s the best girl skater but she’s worse than all the guys I know,” something like that. It’s comments like these if I could press a button where that person would say that to their daughter. “Oh, your daughter likes drawing? You just told your daughter she draws badly and that she is never going to be good enough.” Because that’s what you’re telling me and telling the kids who watch me or who think I’m cool. They see all these hate comments from people who say I’m not good enough or that these girls are never going to be good enough because all the boys are better. People don’t see the full scope of what they are saying on the internet. In that button, people would understand what they are doing. Yes, I would push it.
Thank you Annie, anything to add before we wrap if up?
One of the things I think is really positive about women in skateboarding right now, is when I look at kids like Rayssa Leal. She’s only 13-years old and so good at skating. I just hope that, when I watch her and young girls like her, I’m hopeful that they won’t have to deal with the hate I’ve dealt with. Because they are going to be as good as the guys [sic] and it just takes visibility and opportunity and stuff like that. I hope that one day, that it’s not going to be hated on.
Well it will be and because of skateboarders like you Annie.
Thank you so much.
IG: @nnieguglia
