Ottawa’s newest Olympian struggled with depression during rough year preceding Rio 2016 Games

By Dan Plouffe

Erika Seltenreich-Hodgson is one of the best swimmers in the world, but for days upon hard days, she could hardly stay afloat.

The Ottawa native would be in the midst of her lengths at the national team training centre in Vancouver when she’d abruptly break down crying in the middle of the pool.

“I’d be swimming and my heart rate would be increasing and my breathing would be increasing and all of a sudden, my quicker breathing would turn into crying,” recounts Seltenreich-Hodgson, explaining that the trigger was taking breaths at the same rate as sobbing. “I’d be in workouts, I’d be swimming really poorly, and then I’d get down on myself about swimming poorly, and then I’d get down on myself about getting down on myself.

“It was just this continuous spiral downwards of negative thoughts.”

Seltenreich-Hodgson was enduring the worst part of her struggle with depression.

“Deep down, I really like swimming,” underlines the Nepean-Kanata Barracudas and Greater Ottawa Kingfish product who’s made a lifelong commitment to early-morning practices and intense training. “Yes, it hurts and you’re tired, but for the first 19 years of my life – the part of it without depression – I could still find at least a sense of motivation to be there. Knowing that I’m there for a purpose, knowing that I want to be there because what I want to do is going to be reflective of what I’m doing in the pool at that time in practice.

“I totally lost sight of that last year. I didn’t even know if I wanted to keep swimming for the end of the year. I didn’t think I could make the (Olympic) team. I just kept getting down on myself for everything I was doing. Everything was negative.

“I wouldn’t leave the workout and say, ‘OK, tomorrow is another day.’ It was, ‘tomorrow is another day that I also won’t want to come out and train.’”

Seltenreich-Hodgson’s mental health challenges led to the first true plunge in performance of her career. The 2011 world junior bronze medallist was coming off an outstanding Commonwealth Games debut at Glasgow 2014, finishing just off the podium in the women’s 200-metre and 400-metre individual medley.

Seltenreich-Hodgson set new personal-best marks by a wide margin at the event – times she wouldn’t approach again in the next two years.

It was an exhausting season full of travel, and full of schoolwork. The University of British Columbia student maintained a full course load while also embarking on a new level of training intensity with the national team.

In the past, Seltenreich-Hodgson had experienced days or even a full week of feeling down after writing her final exams, but this time it lingered for several months.

“That’s when I realized that this is not normal, it’s still happening,” recounts the 2014 Canadian university swimmer of the year. “There is a difference between not wanting to go from being tired and sore, and just lacking the motivation to want to do anything but lie in bed.

“It wasn’t only swimming I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to talk to anyone or have a social life. It was basically everything. Even the things I normally would have liked like going out for dinner. I didn’t want to get out of bed and put real clothes on.

“It affected everything I loved to do, made me disinterested in it.”

That’s when Seltenreich-Hodgson sought help from the Vancouver high-performance centre’s psychologist, who identified her symptoms as depression.

“It was actually a relief knowing what was wrong,” recalls the 21-year-old from Barrhaven. “Having depression wasn’t an amazing thing to find out obviously, and it wasn’t something I completely knew how to handle just because I had a name for it, but it at least made me understand more what I was going through.”

Seltenreich-Hodgson – who says she’s glad to share her story in hopes that others with similar symptoms of depression may seek help – has learned through her struggle that mental illnesses can have varying degrees to them.

“Due to the fact that my symptoms weren’t suicidal, I wouldn’t really have put my finger on it,” she explains. “I didn’t realize there was a depression that is less than that. When we learn about mental health, it’s always the extreme.”

Getting help from a psychologist was “immensely” valuable, Seltenreich-Hodgson notes.

“I didn’t realize how much talking about it helps, like talking to my friends to get a better understanding,” she adds. “Even if you don’t know why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling, just getting it off your chest and having them know that you’re not OK at that time can really help.

“Having people around you understand that there isn’t something they can do to fix your mood. Having a friend to just be with you when you’re upset, or sad, or emotionless, it helps just having support.

“I think support was the biggest thing for me, having people who stuck by me while this was happening.”

Seltenreich-Hodgson also received exercises from her psychologist and strategies to employ when she’d begin to experience the hyperventilation-type breathing that would lead to the crying attacks.

“I really like to read,” notes the John McCrae Secondary School grad. “As soon as I would feel that feeling coming on, I would say, ‘OK, think of five random books.’ I’d start listing books and authors in my head, and just taking my mind off of the breathing and feeling bad about myself – the things that would start the downward spiral from continuing to spiral.

“It didn’t always help, but some days I would also be able to flip it around.”

Getting the spark back

Although her performance in the pool was certainly connected to her mood, it didn’t help the devoted athlete to be swimming poorly at the same time she was trying to recover.

Thanks to her years of training and having reached such a high level, however, the dip wasn’t as damaging as it could have been. Seltenreich-Hodgson was improving from her lowest point come the 2015 national team trials, though she was still far from her form of summer 2014.

Her performance at the trials wasn’t quite good enough to make the grade for Canada’s World Championships squad, but she was able to maintain her position on the national team and qualified to swim the 200 m IM at home for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games.

“That gave me just enough motivation to know that I still have something special in me,” reflects the 16th-place finisher from the 2013 World Championships. “I got a little bit of the spark back. That was an incredibly important moment for me.

“I was pretty close to making worlds, and having the chance to represent my country on home soil was such a relief and I was very happy to be able to do that.

“I just kind of proved to myself that no matter what happens to me, I am a racer and I guess it just reinforced my confidence a little bit.”

Seltenreich-Hodgson was disappointed in her 5th-place swim at the Pan Ams, which led to another down period.

“Once you go through depression, it’s not like it’s gone forever. It can come back,” she signals.

Though Seltenreich-Hodgson now feels much more capable of handling emotions and understanding why she feels certain ways, her mental health remains an ongoing battle.

A major test of that strength lay ahead in 2016, with the Canadian Olympic team trials set for Apr. 5-10 back in Toronto.

“This year I did a full 180, but there was still a little voice in the back of my head telling me that everything that happened last year was just going to keep happening,” recalls Seltenreich-Hodgson.

Her first race of the competition offered another hurdle. With a maximum of two Olympic berths available per event, she was up against a pair of very strong Canadian athletes who will contend for a spot in the women’s 400 m IM Olympic final, Sydney Pickrem and Emily Overholt.

Seltenreich-Hodgson was on a faster pace than her personal-best time at the 200 m mark and led the race after 300, but was gassed for the final freestyle leg and slipped to 3rd.

“I went for it 100%,” notes the athlete who placed 4th in two events at the 2012 Olympic trials as a 16-year-old.  “I was still pretty proud of myself when I finished that. The result wasn’t what I wanted, but the effort was everything I could have wanted.”

So the Olympic qualification quest would then all come down to her final race, the 200 IM.

“I remember being more nervous for it than I’ve ever felt in my entire life,” indicates Seltenreich-Hodgson, who was wheezing, lightheaded and felt like throwing up 15 minutes before the race.

“Just the fact that it’s the Olympics – this is probably my one chance. I didn’t make it in 2012, and four years is a long time. I don’t know if I can physically or mentally keep on swimming that long, and I do want to start my after-swimming life.

“This is kind of it for me for certainty.”

At the end of the race, there were tears in the pool again, but this time for a different reason. Seltenreich-Hodgson had finished in 2nd place by a safe margin and she was overcome with joy.

“I was beside myself with excitement. I’m pretty sure I cried. The pictures make it look like I did,” laughs the Rio 2016-nominated athlete. “I feel like I had every emotion in the book – except for sadness. Relief, excitement, just knowing that everything I’d gone through the past couple years led to this moment.

“And the fact I overcame the things that I did and I pushed myself past the hard times and I proved to myself and also everyone else that was there that I could do it.

“I mean, this dream that I had since I was 10 and started swimming. I can’t really explain it. There was not just one emotion, it was just everything at once. It was an amazing feeling, and a little overwhelming too, but it was everything I could have hoped for.”

Before the biggest race of Seltenreich-Hodgson’s career, there had been 2 or 3 minutes where her positive thoughts took over, when she took pride in having done all within her power to make it there, and felt at peace with whatever outcome was about to take place.

“The fact that I made the team this year wasn’t the make or break of my happiness,” she underlines. “Regardless of the result, I’m very, very happy with where I am in my life. I am so much happier. I know myself a lot better. I know my mind and my emotions a lot better than even before I had depression.

“Making it was absolutely the icing on top of the cake though. I’m ecstatic about that.”