Every athlete carries a highlight reel.
The research is in. ACEs — Adverse Childhood Experiences — are compressing athletic performance right now, not just decades later. Harvard published in JAMA Network Open that NFL players with four or more ACEs were 48% more likely to screen positive for dementia. At the collegiate level, nearly two thirds of athletes report at least one ACE. That weight shows up on the field before it ever shows up in a clinic.
What the Research Shows
Somewhere between 5 and 25 out of every 100 athletes will develop anxiety, depression, or PTSD after an adverse event. Those symptoms do not stay home when players show up to practice. They show up too — quietly compressing what athletes are able to think, decide, and do under pressure.
The hesitation after the missed throw. The player who cannot reset after a turnover. The rookie with undeniable talent who disappears in the fourth quarter.
That is not a character problem. That is a neurological one.
Standard trauma therapies — EMDR, CPT, Prolonged Exposure — help approximately 57 out of 100 people. Target 2 Zero clears close to 100%, in 86% less time. Zero dissociation events.
Treatment. Prevention. Performance. One Protocol.
As a treatment — A single trauma target clears in as little as 15 minutes. A lifetime of accumulated ACEs and performance failures resolves in approximately three hours. 84% reduction in PTSD symptoms. 83% reduction in CPTSD. No verbal disclosure. No re-traumatization.
🔹 As a preventive application — Every player on the roster can be trained to self-administer T2Z. Before stress consolidates. Before the ACE becomes the reason a career ends early. A hard loss. A high-pressure moment. The player uses T2Z before they leave the locker room. The nervous system resets. The memory does not take root.
🔹 As a performance enhancement — As a performance enhancement tool, T2Z clears the accumulated stress and unresolved experience athletes carry — not only significant adverse events, but the ordinary weight of high-stakes failures, close losses, and moments that did not go the way they were supposed to. What I am seeing in my work suggests a 2 to 30% increase in overall performance following deployment. In a league where the margin is measured in inches and seconds, that number matters.
This is why a stadium can hold a failed play. A stretch of road can hold a crash. A golf course can hold a shanked shot in front of a crowd. The brain is not being dramatic. It is being precise. It stored the sensory detail of the worst moment, and it has been protecting you ever since — by firing a warning every time something close enough shows up in your environment. Target 2 Zero works because it goes directly to that stored detail and reduces its resolution until it can no longer function as a tripwire. Not months of managing symptoms. 5 minutes. The crowd becomes just the crowd again. And Steph Curry need not have his crooked smile to sink a free throw.
Proven Under Pressure
In 2022 I deployed T2Z to 91 mental health professionals across 23 group Zoom sessions during the opening months of the war in Ukraine — under active bombardment, not in a clinic. Mean stress reduction of 91.3%. Effect size of 3.85. p < .001. Zero dissociation events.
If it holds there, it holds in the locker room.
Two manuscripts are currently in peer review. Six IRB-approved studies. Four Completed. Two collecting data.
The T2Z Performance System for Teams
Target 2 Zero is available as a proprietary performance training for athletic programs and organizations. Not a clinical program dropped into a locker room — a structured, tiered deployment designed for high-performance environments.
— Every player trained in self-administration for daily stress recovery
— Peer support embedded in the team culture at the second tier
— Licensed clinical intervention available at the third tier for anything that needs deeper work
Everyone operating within their role. No gaps. No bottlenecks. No waiting
The Ceiling Is Not Fixed
What we call a performance ceiling in high-pressure athletic environments is often the ceiling that ACEs and unprocessed stress have set — not the ceiling of what the athlete is actually capable of.
Those are two very different ceilings.
Clear the impact. Raise the ceiling. Target 2 Zero.
Let’s Talk
Every program is different. Pricing scales with the level of play and the scope of deployment — and the right starting point is a conversation, not a form.
If you are a coach, athletic director, performance staff, or team executive who wants to understand what T2Z looks like for your program, book a time to talk directly with Scarlett.