Dysfunction and pain are two topics that sit very close to my heart. After being in competitions for more than 15 years my body was wracked with injuries. Pick a body part and at some point, it's probably been broken, dislocated, torn, or pulled at some point in my career. I wanted to take some time to talk about the psychology of recovering from chronic pain as it can be a tough obstacle to overcome.
Often when I work with clients first starting they anticipate the ability to go from 100% pain to no pain. I always pose the question "If you've been in pain for 15 years do you think it's reasonable for it to be gone in 10 minutes?" "What are reasonable expectations when looking at a pain timeline?"
1. Your timeline is yours. If you're actively working on a chronic dysfunction issue your recovery is 100% on your ability to work on said issue. How long it takes for your brain to re-program the correct patterns for movement without pain is dependent on how much time you're willing to work and the quality of that work based on previous experience. The more active you are, the more likely you'll recover.
2. If you've been in chronic pain for multiple months it's normal to have symptoms of depression or full blow depression. If your brain starts to accept pain as your normal state of being most people tend to compromise and accept that life IS pain. This is a bit of a distorted worldview and has an impact on your environment. Recognizing the symptoms of depression and associating your workouts with improvement is vital to breaking this component.
3. Pain removal is not binary. As stated above you can't expect to go from being in full-blown pain to zero just because you did a few basic movements. We are trying to reset and reprogram how your body has been taught to move. Re-training and repatterning are far harder than any type of basic training; so go easy on yourself and be patient.
When it comes to success in dealing with chronic dysfunction we need to have reasonable expectations such as "Do you feel better than yesterday?" or "Do you feel better after the workout?". We need to have the patience to recognize that our mind is going to play tricks on us during this process; that's why it's so important that patience in conjunction with discipline leads to desired results.
Be good to yourself everyone, and chip away at the problems one day at a time. I'm providing additional info below for those looking for additional help on the psychology of recovering from a sports injury but there are plenty of great resources out there to assist. Good luck with your recovery!
Commentaires