In my experience the first phases of an injury are denial, wallow and rage. Just kidding. But only sort of. Because there is a lot of truth in those made-up phases. When you are working on your wellness goals and an injury comes along, there is a lot of fear that it will throw you off track and that fear leads us down the wrong path.
Denial
If I can ignore the problem and muscle my way through, it’ll all be a-okay. Nope. That is not truth. That is lie upon lie. When we ignore a physical injury, just like an emotional hurt, it festers. It gets bigger and we make the problem worse. There’s an old movie I like with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline called “French Kiss,” a great rom-com from the 90s. And there is a line in there where when he doesn’t want to talk about his family problems, she says, “when we don’t deal with our problems they fester. Fester, fester, fester. Rot, rot, rot.” And while that is funny and I quote it on the regular, it’s true. When we don’t address something, it doesn’t magically go away, it festers.
So, we need to address it and if that means, resting the injury, we rest it. And if it means going to a professional for medical treatment, we do that too.
Wallow
Again, it seems silly, but how many of us have allowed a sidelining injury to take us to a place of apathy? I sure have. “Well, I can’t do xyz, so I might as well blow off all the other things I was doing to feel better.” It’s appealing to stay in my jammies and watch my favorite show surrounded by my favorite chocolates. To wallow in self-pity. To become my very own Eeyore. When we do this, it can be so hard to pull out of. And I’m not saying it’s not okay to do this…to a point. But don’t let it be where you stay. Take the day to feel bad, to wallow, but then keep moving forward in what you can do. If it’s a shoulder injury, you can still go for a walk. If it’s a back injury, I can still choose to eat my veggies. And so on.
Rage
After the wallow tends to come rage or anger. We become angry with our limitations, with our goals being put on the backburner, with ourselves. It can be one way to get back up on the horse, using that rage-induced motivation, but when we are working from a place of anger, there tends to be others who end up hurt. And we hurt them. With our words and our actions, we hurt them.
At the end of the day, none of these choices help us. None of them make us heal any faster. And none of them keep us moving forward on our wellness journey. My advice, when faced with an injury, is to rest. To slow down and do what you can to heal. And to continue forward in whatever small ways you can. Take heart from Isaiah 40:31, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Wait upon the Lord, rest your body and He will restore you.
Go in grace and God bless,
Colleen
