It's natural to feel deeply psychologically impacted by sports injury and frustrated by the recovery process.

It's important to attend to the mental and emotional aspects of injury recovery in addition to the physical.

Sports injury recovery involves trusting the process and responding intentionally.

Values clarification, flexible thinking, emotional awareness, and establishing new routines can help.

Speaking from my experience, both as a clinical psychologist and as an ultrarunner, sports injuries are rough on mental health. Injury does not just affect the body; it also impacts identity, routine, and mood.

Running may be exercise, but it’s so much more than that:

A way to practice mindfulness

Social time with friends

Adventure and exploration

Avenue for self-growth

With that in mind, it’s only natural to feel deeply psychologically affected by injury.

Why is it so hard to trust the rehabilitation process?

Recovering from a sports injury involves uncertainty:

Uncertainty of the outcome (what will this look like once I’m recovered?)

Uncertainty of the timeline (how long will it take to get back there?)

Uncertainty around future reinjury (will this happen again?)

Athletes tend to be very goal-driven, perfectionistic, and extreme people who like results, linear progress, and concrete action steps.

Athletes don’t tend to love uncertainty. Athletes don’t love that at all.

With that in mind, of course, anxiety spikes during a sports injury.

Humans are natural “fixers”—we........

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