• Home
•  »  Resources
•  »  Thought Design
•  » Injuries

 

Injuries: Friend or Foe?

You Decide!

 

Responding to Injury | Recognizing Opportunity
Healing Through Visualization

Believe it or not, injuries can be a blessing in disguise. Having had my share of injuries, I can honestly say that each has taught me valuable psychological and physical lessons. Many athletes, when faced with an injury, may feel anger, frustration, depression, helplessness, anxiety, confusion or envy. When unable to physically train, it becomes easy to get plagued by negative emotions and thoughts. You may ask yourself: What do I do with all the free time? How could I let this happen when I was just reaching my peak shape?

Responding to Injury

Sometimes, those who have trouble "switching gears," may resort to ineffective coping strategies, such as over or under-eating, increased alcohol/drug usage, risk-taking behaviors or negative self-talk. A common reaction to injury is to catastrophize the situation. When we are hurt, it is easy to say to ourselves: I don't know if I will be able to run at that level again. How will I ever get back into the kind of shape I was in? I don't have enough time to get back into shape to qualify for that race. In fact, feelings of guilt and self-directed anger increase your body's stress hormones, whereby impeding the healing process.

Psychologically, injuries can be much like the loss of a loved one. You may find yourself remembering how hard you worked and how long it took to arrive at your pre-injury fitness level. You may need to grieve the loss of your fitness and acknowledge or express the emotions triggered by the injury, while realizing that they too will pass.

Recognizing Opportunity

Despite all the emotional fallout, the best thing about injuries is that they provide you with opportunities to re-examine and possibly improve upon your lifestyle and training habits, athletic goals, beliefs and self-concept. If you reflect back into your training and daily life, you can usually find a place where you were not mindful of your body's physical and emotional signals or of how you managed family and work stress or sleep and nutritional requirements, all of which effect your body's ability to optimally train and recover. If you are willing to look inward, you may find that you experience "secondary gains" from being injured. You may feel relief now because you are off the hook to take on a stressful or challenging situation or race. You may experience increased sympathy and attention from others. Without awareness and resolution, these secondary gains can slow your healing significantly.

Remember, this can become a perfect time to examine personal traits and beliefs about why you run and what higher purpose your running serves you and others. Do you push yourself and train in order to prove a point to some critical or harsh inner voice? Do you have a hard time expressing emotions and your anger arises in the form of tight muscles during training? Do you hold tightly to the belief that you should be able to take care of full-time work and family requirements, sleep five hours a night and squeeze in one well-balanced meal while still running 60-70 miles a week? Do you have a hard time asking for the help you need or "taking care of yourself?" These beliefs and situations can be precursors to injury. You must remember that your body has an inner wisdom and can tell you exactly what you need to do to stay healthy. And now that you are injured, it can tell you what needs to be done to fully recover. Your task, though difficult at times, is to listen to it carefully and remain nonjudgmental. So, when the next injury occurs, minor or major, as it inevitably will, I challenge you to "make friends" with it. Listen to what it wants to teach you. Take this "time out" from physical training to learn about the "person" inside the runner.

Healing Through Visualization and Affirmations

Apart from physical therapy and medications, with which we are all very familiar, we can focus our mind on healing our injuries through visualization and positive affirmations. In the last article, I explored how injuries can become a time for evaluating our lifestyle, beliefs and training. We are now given an opportunity, should we accept it, to tune into our bodies in ways we may have avoided. We may be reminded of physical and mental weaknesses in need of our attention. We may be awakened from subconscious beliefs of invincibility and needs to "be all" and "do all" for those in our lives. If we listen and "look" inward, we can facilitate healing as well as prevent future injuries and illnesses.

The first stage of healing is to fully understand your injury in terms of its meaning to you and your attitude toward it, as I discussed in the last newsletter. This is best done by structuring some time each day for relaxation and visualization designed to "get to know" your injury. First, become fully relaxed. Then become aware of the injured area by visualizing its size and its boundaries. Ask it what it is feeling, needs to heal and wants to tell you. Listen carefully with an open heart. Some responses might be: " You'll never be rid of me." " You can be angry with me." " It's all right to ask for help." " Take better care of me." "You are more upset then you know." Also during this visualization, be aware of any sounds, sights, feelings, tastes or smells you associate with your injury. Imagine looking at your body's reflection in a pond and notice how it appears. Different? Distorted or Exaggerated? Is it expressing any emotions? Finally, use your creativity and allow your mind to come up with a symbolic image of your injury. Perhaps a stress fracture appears as a broken toothpick (fragile and weak) or a strained hamstring appears as a rope tied in knots or a rubber band stretched to its limit (tension and inflexibility). Don't worry if you don't get clear images or responses initially. Do these visualizations once or twice a day until you begin to get some images and answers.

The second stage of healing involves visualizing the "healing process." See your body physically repairing the injured tissues or bones. Imagine little fingers knitting together tissue cells and muscles fibers or building bridges between broken bones. Visualize an army of white blood cells marching to the infection or injury ready to rebuild or repair. Imagine hands kneading injured muscles or tendons like dough to increase flexibility and blood flow or applying a "powerful healing ointment" to the injured area. Imagine warm or cooling sensations of the ointment penetrating deeply into the area of concern. You can also visualize ways that your physical therapy or medications are facilitating healing in the same way as above.

Finish with a vision of the future and a few positive affirmations. This vision can be a picture of you gradually regaining strength and skills, managing stress and life in a healthier manner and eventually returning to your previous fitness level. As you finish, repeat several affirmations that are resolutions for areas of psychological growth and a complete, fast recovery. Examples might be: " I forgive myself for getting hurt." "I am kind to my body, it is my friend." "I have all I need to heal and be injury-free." "I am keeping my spirits up and my stress down." Remember: negative emotions are counterproductive and by relaxing and visualizing, your blood pressure, hormones, respiratory and immune systems can relax and start facilitating recovery.

Liza York, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist in Longmont. She provides clinical and sport psychological services to children through adults. She has worked with recreational to national level athletes. For consultation call: (970) 231-7021 or email.