Burned Out Swimmer

Over the years I've grown gradually less and less enthusiastic about swimming. It's gotten to the point that I dread every swim practice. I just find swimming so stressful, hard, painful, and discouraging. I used to be pretty decent at swimming, but have only plateaued. I don't think this is the only reason why I dislike swimming so much though. It's more of the physical pain that each practice causes. I don't even want to try that hard anymore. When I see the main set, I feel a cold, immobilizing slab of ice just slide down my insides and am utterly numbed. People always tell me that swimming's for you. That you need to try, and what you put in is what you get out. These supposedly encouraging statements are all founded on the assumption that I have some desire to excel at swimming. True, I do like succeeding, but I just don't want to have to undergo the physical torture to reach it. Further, I hear a lot about the satisfaction you get after practices, and how your self-confidence increases when you finish a hard set. It takes all the self-discipline I have to avoid scoffing out loud at these. Very rarely do I receive that sort of "satisfaction". More often, I just feel a profound sense of relief that I finished the practice, only to be replaced by dread that I have 24 hours until the next session, and then the cycle restarts itself. As for the "get out what you put in" statement, I find it perfectly ridiculous. I feel no incentive to put myself through practice to succeed. A few years ago, before I started hating swimming, I busted my gut at every practice. The result? The same or worse times. I watched as kids who cheated in practice and never dropped continuously. Even if hard work actually leads to better times, I still wouldn't want to swim. I just don't feel like anything I could get out ofswimming is enough to assuage my growing dislike of swimming. Nothing has really helped stem my lessening interest in swimming. I switched teams, and that helped for a while, but then I sank back down to even lower depths of dread. Despite all this, I still want to learn to love swimming again. After all, I have toswim to keep fit (and my parents are adamant that I continue it), and I might as well like it if I have to do it. How do I overcome this?