Every single athlete out there will tell you that dealing with injuries is really tough. After all, you are faced with a lack of trust that appears in the body that helped you during the past years. That is why the injury is harder to deal with at a psychological level. When you get injured because of someone else you call a specialist. When you need to solve some body injuries, you go to the doctor for a rehab plan. When you have financial problems, bankruptcy can help you get free of bills. This is the easy part. The mental recovery is what is very tough to deal with. How can you deal with this? Here are some important suggestions to remember.
Maintain The Professional Athletic Identity
The common suggestion you will hear is to distance yourself from the sport. You are often told to do something else as you recover. Unfortunately, this can only make the mental hardship worse. What you have to do is to immerse yourself in the sport you did. There are so many things you can do. For instance, you can still go to competitions to support your friends. You should never lose the community your life revolved around simply because you are injured.
It should be added that all the energy you put into training for competitions can easily be put into your recovery. Basically, recovery becomes that sport that you did. You will then find it so much easier to go through rehab and stick to the plan that is recommended by professionals.
Joy As The Main Focus Instead Of Pain
Never try to deny the grief and suggestion that you feel as you are hurt. At the same time, direct your attention towards things that are more positive. You can easily have fun and nobody will blame you if you look for joy. For many this is just a cliché but it does do wonders. Some athletes actually keep gratitude journals in order to help them deal with the problems they were faced with during recovery.
The struggle will end when you manage to practice gratitude. You are injured but there are surely so many things that you have in your life and that you can be grateful for. This should be your focus, not the pain that you feel as you work hard to recover.
Daily Practice
When you work out you feel great, similarly to taking drugs for addicts. As you get injured, it is normal to end up feeling really bad. Since you cannot do the things that often make you feel great you are faced with huge problems.
As an athlete, a great thing you can do is to remain active, as much as you can, based on confines created by your injury. This can be as simple as doing water aerobics.
Focus On Moving Forward
The natural response is to keep thinking about when you come back to sports and how this can be done. A much better response is to think about how you can move forward. Make this a priority during recovery and you will notice that everything will work better and you will actually get back to sports faster.
