When you get hurt, be it getting hurt in an accident that wasn’t your fault or some kind of sports injury, there’s a lot more that goes into your recovery than just healing your body. Many times, especially for traumatic injuries or injuries that require a long time for healing, there’s a big mental impact that you need to face as well.
To help you in getting through this tough time, here are three tips for dealing with the mental part of recovering from an injury.
Move How You Can
In most cases, when you get hurt, it’s not your entire body that’s impacted by the injury. This is ideal because then you’re able to still do something for yourself and can try to cope with leading your life as normally as you can while you’re recovering.
As part of this recovery, you’ll likely have to do some kind of physical therapy to get yourself back to the strength or flexibility that you had before. But along with rebuilding your body, moving can also help your mind recover as well. Especially if you feel like your mood is being affected by your injury and you’re feeling particularly down, finding ways to get your body moving, even if it’s just a small part and for a short while, can really help with your mental health.
Set Goals For Yourself
Even with smaller injuries, there can be a long road of recovery before you’re back to your full strength. So to help keep yourself from getting discouraged about the process, it can be helpful to set goals for yourself in order to have something to look forward to and to keep yourself moving in a positive direction.
When you set your goals for recovery after an injury, you must ensure that you’re being realistic and that you’re not trying to push yourself too much, too soon. If you’re needing help setting realistic goals, loop your doctor or physical therapist into this conversation and come up with some goals together.
Turn To Others For Support
Even with just a minor injury, there may be things that you can no longer do so well on your own. So to help you get through this time, it’s useful to have people that you can turn to for help and who can offer you the care that you need.
In addition to this type of care, it’s also important to turn to those around you for the mental and emotional support you might need during this time. Make sure you’re reaching out to friends and family members and that you’re being transparent about what your mental and emotional needs are so that they can help you meet those needs to the best of their ability.
If you’ve sustained an injury that you’ll be recovering from for a while, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you with the mental part of that recovery as well.
