#25: Hard Truths About Physical Rehabilitation (And What You Can Do About it)

As the old saying goes, life isn't all sunshine and rainbows. And this can feel especially true when you're injured or dealing with a physical condition that causes pain or prevents you from moving in ways you otherwise need to.

The world can feel a bit (or a lot) darker and grittier when we have to find a way to face what we're up against, which typically involves battling back through various facets of physical rehabilitation. The the fact of the matter is that this can be incredibly hard to do (for various reasons). Sure, there's times when a bit of rest is all that's needed, but there are unfortunately many times and scenarios where some seriously inconvenient and ugly truths will be presented to us as we embark on our road to recovery.

So, in this episode, I'm covering some of the more common, ugly truths about the process of grinding through your physical rehab, along with various action steps that you can take for each one.

My hope is that by the end of this episode, you'll feel a bit more armed up for how you can grind through the hard truths that are often presented to us when we're trying to heal and recover from what ails us, allowing you to crush your rehab and get back to the life you want to be living.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

0:00 - Intro

7:37 - The problem to solve & the quick takeaway

13:10 - Things to keep in mind with this episode

16:53 - Ain’t no pause buttons when you’re injured

26:36 - The importance of accepting your reality

34:03 - Dealing with emotions

38:53 - The required investments with physical rehabilitation

42:43 - Changing priorities when you’re injured

50:02 - The need for deep patience (physical & mental)

57:57 - The physical side of pain

1:02:08 - Understanding (or lack thereof) from others

1:03:53 - The key takeaways for this episode

1:05:44 - A small & quick request

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Ask anyone who's gone through extensive physical rehabilitation for an injury or condition, and they'll tell you that it's anything other than sunshine and rainbows. Nasty physical issues and ailments are often not pretty to get through, neither physically nor emotionally. The fact of the matter is that physical rehabilitation often has some ugly and hard truths to it, even if there's optimal outcomes on the other side. So in this episode, we're looking at what some of the more common, ugly, and hard truths are with this whole physical rehabilitation thing, and we're looking at specific action steps that you can take with each one. And this will help to ensure that you stand the best chance at experiencing optimal outcomes for what you're up against. So let's talk about it. Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to the Strength Resurgence podcast. This is episode number 25, where we're talking all about hard truths about physical rehabilitation. It's one of those ones where it kind of sounds like maybe it's gonna be a bit of a downer episode, but I don't want anyone to perceive it that way. Um, it's more about helping to kind of arm everyone out there who's going up against physical injuries and tough physical conditions, just arming them with more knowledge and insight about how you need to kind of tackle this whole process. So a lot of great valuable information, I think we're going to get into with this episode. Um, with that being said, real quick, if you don't know me, just to let you know, my name's Jim, and I am a physical therapist, strength and conditioning specialist, and just this geeky guy who loves the human body and loves health and wellness and helping others experience more optimal physical abilities within their lives. And so this podcast is one of the many things that I've created to help give back and share some of my knowledge and expertise uh with the world. And, you know, this is all about just helping to give people general information. If anything I say that you feel helps point you in the right direction, uh that's wonderful. And I'm certainly not trying to give anyone direct medical advice here, but I love this stuff so much and I'm honored that you're spending some time with me because there's a lot of podcasts you'd be listening to, and I really want this to feel like a personal experience, uh, which is why I always start these episodes real quick with letting you know a fun little random fact about me. Because hey, I'm just a normal dude, um just like anyone else out there, and I like kind of creating strong connections with individuals. So, to help to get you to know me a bit more as we kick off this episode, fun fact about me is that I love mixing cottage cheese with pineapple. Uh, it might sound gross, but it's really, really good stuff. I've had friends and colleagues in the past who thought that I was pretty crazy for suggesting such a thing, and then they tried it, and they kind of say, Where has this been my whole life? This is fantastic. So uh cottage cheese and pineapple. Great little snack if you ever want to try something super, super tasty. Sounds weird, I know, but give it a try. Uh if you like uh the taste of pineapple and you like some extra protein in there as well, could be a good thing to try. Okay, so fun little fact about me out of the way. Let's now talk about what's in this episode and what we're going over and hopefully give you a whole bunch of action steps that might be appropriate for those who need a bit of insight around working through some of this physical rehabilitation stuff in knowing that there might be a bit of a battle ahead. So I'm gonna give you the contents real quick of the episode, and then we'll really dissect it all and go from there. We're gonna talk about the fact that there's no pause buttons when it comes to injuries and conditions and how uh how life unfolds throughout all of that. And then we'll talk about facing reality. I'll give you more information on that as we get to it. And then we'll talk about the reality of emotions, because emotions are kind of a big central component in this whole physical rehabilitation process for a lot of reasons. And then we'll talk about what I like to call the required investments of this whole process of working through an injury or working through a dysfunction or a physical condition within your body or a specific physical ailment, uh, whatever it's gonna be. We'll talk about briefly then the physical side of pain, because I think anyone who's ever you know had some type of injury or condition with their body can certainly appreciate the fact that physical pain is not a pleasant thing to go through by any means. And then we'll talk about the concept around shifting priorities. We'll break that all down, give you some insight around what that means and the action steps to take with that. We'll also talk about the need for deep patience, which I myself am again being ever so reminded of as I work through my own injury. Uh, one or two of episodes ago on this podcast, I let you guys know that I'm dealing with a couple of broken ribs, slowly getting better, uh, still quite painful, quite limited in what I can do. And this whole recovery thing never goes as quick as we want. But we'll chat about that need for deep patience, and then we'll talk about being aware of the understanding or lack of understanding, for that matter, uh, from others as you work through your condition of what you're up against. It's a lot of good stuff that we'll get into. But real quick, I wanted to throw a quote at you just for kind of getting you mentally tuned in here, maybe get the kind of the gears turning in your head around the whole concept. So we're gonna go through here. So this was a quote I wasn't too familiar with until I was putting this particular episode together, and really like this one. Uh, it's by Joseph B. Uh Werthlin. Uh, and I don't know who he is, but I know that he's got a good quote, because if this one is actually from him, which certainly going to say that it probably is, although you never know on the internet, let's be honest. Um I quite like this quote. So the quote says that as you overcome adversity in your life, you will become stronger, and then you'll be better able to help others, those who are working in their turn to find a safe harbor from the storms that rage about them. I really like that quote because I think that quote gets at the kind of heart and soul of a lot of what my previous episodes on this podcast have been about, uh, where we're I'm suggesting that if we're going to go through something, you know, difficult in life, and on this podcast, I'm always referring to uh physical injuries and aches and pains, physical conditions, that type of stuff. But anything for that matter, difficult in general, that makes life more challenging, I've mentioned quite a few times that you become uniquely qualified as you work your way through that, so that you can then be take that unique qualification and use it to help others who are one day uh going to be going through what you've gone through or are up against what you are currently up against for that matter. And I think that's a beautiful thing because if we're gonna go through something difficult in life, might as well take it and use it in a way that not only we get something positive out of it, but we can use it to enrich the lives of others, speak a bit of life into them, uh, you know, really give them more hope, let them know that someone else out there gets it, right? That someone out there certainly knows how brutal uh certain challenges and specific conditions can be. So uh as we get going along here, let's talk really quickly about the main problem that we're trying to solve, just to really kind of make sure we're all kind of grounded and in kind of the same starting point as we work through this. So the problem to solve here is ultimately that you know, recovering from a painful injury or a debilitating condition, it's rarely a pretty process, uh, you know, visually or certainly metaphorically. Um, you know, among many other things, it can be quite overwhelming and even emotionally and physically draining. If you've never had to work through something extremely difficult uh involving serious injuries or really debilitating physical conditions, um, you know, I certainly hope that uh it stays that way, that you never have to work through that. But if you have, then I think you can relate to that statement. Or maybe you know someone who could certainly relate to that statement. Maybe you've seen what they've gone through and you've seen what they've experienced. And so, in knowing that this is you know not a pretty process, um, the question really becomes well, how do we lessen the impact of the ugly reality that often arises when we work through these adverse uh circumstances, uh particularly involving the physical rehabilitation process? That's the main problem that we're really going after here. And so I'll kind of give you the 10,000-foot overview answer here in a moment, but real quick, I want to ask you a question. And so the question that kind of came to mind here as I was putting this episode together was you know, what types of situations in your past have you felt uh to be overwhelming as you were working through something challenging? It could be an injury or physical condition, but you know anything else in general, a financial struggle, uh, an emotional struggle, a loss of a loved one, or anything like that. So if you mentally latch on to maybe something that you felt in your past to have been overwhelming, my my question becomes, you know, why did that specifically make you feel that way? And I'm not asking that question because I'm trying to um, you know, really give you a perfect answer for why you felt that way. I I don't know. Uh I don't know you, I don't know that condition that you're thinking of. But it's I think it's important to ask ourselves these types of questions. Why am I feeling this way about this particular struggle? What is it that makes me feel that I'm being overwhelmed or that I'm being quite frustrated? Uh, I think a lot of these questions that we can ask ourselves and reflect upon can then help to kind of ground us in how we take our next steps to uh orient ourselves and then get ourselves out of the situation we're in, even if it just means to help us feel a little bit less overwhelmed. So that's my question for you. Now, the big takeaway that uh we'll kind of just wrap all of this up in and then really pick it apart from there, is ultimately that you know it's it's certainly okay to acknowledge the difficulties that are involved with physical rehabilitation. Uh, we're all human. Uh, me as a physical therapist working in the clinic all the time, I see this play out firsthand with a lot of individuals who um I'm fortunate enough to get to treat, always honored to treat individuals who are going through challenging circumstances. And, you know, we're we're all humans. We all have uh limits with stuff. And sometimes, you know, a simple injury is a simple injury. You roll your ankle, okay, it's sore, it's annoying, but two weeks later, I'll be fine, I'll be good. But, you know, there's times where things get much heavier than that from uh rehabilitation standpoints, right? And so being honest with ourselves about our situation, it's certainly a healthy thing and it's quite necessary. And I would say that it's likely the starting point when attempting to make our recovery. If we if we can't really be honest about how we're feeling and accept what's happened and what what we're now having to find ourselves up against, uh it's difficult to move forward from that point and ultimately walk that recovery road that we need to go down. And so, that being said, if we know and can accept the hard truths about the injury and recovery process, then I personally believe that we stand a much better chance at optimizing recovery than if we can't accept them. And so once we can accept these things, we can ultimately then, in one way or another, find a way to lean into the process and kind of ultimately grind it out, right? That process of, okay, we we got to find a way to overcome this pain. We have to find a way to start moving better, to regain some functional capacity, uh, to improve some aspect of uh my physical well-being. And grinding out might not be pretty, but we have to, I think we have to start with that acceptance. And this, none of this, from the acceptance part to the working the way through the physical rehabilitation and putting in the time and the effort with exercises or uh you know all these other interventions that might need to take place, they don't have to be pretty. They just have to work. And I don't think I don't think it's you know kind of necessarily healthy to think that uh this has to be a pretty process. I think sometimes we've got to accept that it's gonna be gritty and ugly and messy, and we just gotta go for it anyways. But with that being said, as we move along here, uh there's a couple of things that I want you as a listener to keep in mind. There's uh a few things that I think are worth mentioning here, just so uh we're kind of all on the same page uh in in a certain way, or at least so that everyone kind of knows the angles and the lenses that I'm viewing this particular topic and episode through. So one of the things here is that much of the discussion that that I'm generating here it pertains to the more kind of serious or involved injuries or conditions that uh people can find themselves up against. Because, you know, you you you can you can play a sport, and oh, I jammed my finger and now I got a sore finger and it's it's a little stiff and sore. Okay. So I mean, maybe you need a bit of physical rehabilitation for that. But what I'm really getting at here is for those of you out there who are just really feeling like, man, you're your back is up against the wall, right? You're you're pushed into the corner, and you have to now find a way to kind of fight your way forward because maybe you've got two broken legs right now, or maybe you're laying in a hospital bed as the doctors discuss what type of big surgery they're gonna have to do to help you with an injury you've just had. And that's kind of where my mind is going with a lot of this, or maybe it's hey, I don't have a sudden orthopedic injury. I wasn't in a horrible car crash, but I've just gotten a Parkinson's diagnosis, and now I have to figure out how I'm gonna move forward metaphorically here with my my life situation and and what my future looks like. So that's kind of where I'm going or kind of uh coming from as we talk about all this. But that being said, I absolutely want to acknowledge that hard is hard. And by that I mean if something is difficult for you from an injury uh recovery standpoint, something feels a bit overwhelming, then it's not about comparing your situation to someone else's. I think hard is hard. If it's hard for you, it's hard for you. If it's hard for me, it's hard for me. And we just leave it at that. I don't think there's really any room in this physical recovery rehabilitation stuff that I certainly do as a living. I don't think there's any room for comparison. Uh, I just I don't believe that's healthy. I don't believe that uh honors maybe ourselves or our fellow humans that we're quote unquote comparing ourselves to. So please keep in mind that if if you're struggling with anything, whether it's you know, you feel it's a minor thing or someone else perceives it to be a minor thing, if it's hard for you, it's hard for you. And we're gonna leave it at that, um, just so that we're all we're all kind of on the same page here. So different life situations and circumstances for all of us. And we really need to take that into account uh when we generate this whole discussion. Because you could have two people who have a broken ankle, let's say, but maybe one person says, Yeah, broke my ankle playing basketball, but hey, I got a desk job, so really not that big of a deal. I'll just use my crutches and kind of sit down at my desk, and you know, I'll be fine. But then you have someone maybe who's got that same ankle break, but um, they they're in the the trades and they have a physical job. And so that looks a little bit more overwhelming for them because they need to be standing and walking and moving around, and that broken ankle is creating a lot of difficulty for them. I think that's the importance that we need to keep in mind here is not just the injury itself, but the life circumstances that we all find ourselves in with this stuff. So please keep that in mind. But the first thing, now that I've gotten that spiel out of the way, is to talk about that there's really no pause buttons uh with life, which is the first hard truth that we're going to discuss before I give you some of these action steps here. So the first hard truth here, if you are injured, you have terrible pain, you have a debilitating injury, you know that there's gonna be a long road to recovery ahead. The hard truth about all of this is that life doesn't stop just because you're injured or in pain, or maybe you're struggling with you know a particular condition. So it's an ugly truth, but it's reality. You know, if life had this pause button, I tell them, I tell my patients all the time, if you could just hit pause and everything in your life, you know, having to pay your bills, having to look after uh family members, have to, you know, work a job, whatever, if that could all go on pause for the six, eight, twelve, twenty-four weeks, whatever that you need to focus on rehab and get your life back on track, it'd be a lot easier. But unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Maybe you can get paid time off from work, but you still have family members you have to look after. Other ones are counting on you and depending on you. It makes for a pretty uh tough situation and certainly a hard truth. So we need to find ways to keep moving throughout daily life despite what we're up against. Um, and I think the word that most aptly sums up how a lot of people I've um treated and experienced uh treating in these situations, I think the word that they would choose would be overwhelming. It's certainly one that feels appropriate when I think about it, but that's not the only way uh to describe it. But if we have that hard truth, you know, I just can't hit can't hit a pause button here, um, knowing that there's a couple action steps that maybe we need to consider taking. And so number one, and you'll hear me mention this a few times with other action steps, with other hard, difficult, uh, ugly truths that we need to accept, uh, the first action step is you know, maybe as best we can, we need to develop a support network. Again, if you have a sore elbow because you played a bit too much tennis, probably don't need to develop a support network. But if you've been in a horrible car crash, or um you know you've thrown out your back and you can barely move, um, or you're like me, you broke a couple of ribs and things are getting really difficult to stay on top of because of the pain or the limited ability you have for movement or for functional capacity. Well, developing a support network can be a powerful step. And that can be something as simple as seeing if your next-door neighbor can help you with a couple of uh simple little tasks uh when needed, or uh having a loved one simply um do one or two more things around the house for you just to make life a bit easier for you. So, support network that's kind of a big term in terms of how we can define it, but just whether it's one or multiple people who can help you in some capacity, help help you physically move around, help you uh to stay supported or uplifted mentally in some capacity. Support network is always a very great, uh powerful step to take. I've been very fortunate with the last couple of weeks of a couple of broken ribs that I'm working through. Uh the first week was awful. I mean, it was it was horrendous. And the actual morning, the first morning after I broke my ribs, I didn't know if I could get out of bed. I almost thought I would have to call someone to help me out. But I was chatting with my neighbor via text, and it was wonderful because they texted me a question about you know an issue that they were having that said, yeah, you know, you know, us physios can help you with this physical thing that you have going on. I said, I'd you know, I'd like to help out right now, but I'm dealing with a couple of broken ribs, but one of my colleagues can look after you. And uh right away my neighbor texted back, oh, you know, if there's anything I can do for you, if I can grab some groceries for you or anything, please let me know. And very wonderful um thing that just you know made me feel very grateful and just reminded me the importance and the power of a support network. Now, another action step you can take because life doesn't have any pause buttons, is simply if if you're feeling overwhelmed, start kind of, whether you just do it in your head or even on a piece of paper or on your notes app, on your phone or whatever, start to prioritize your tasks and activities so that if you're gonna have to still find a way to get things done, you know which ones are most important and you go after those ones and kind of put other ones on the back burner, so to speak. And this is important because if you have a limited functional capacity, either because pain is getting in the way or your body physically won't let you do things that you need to do, well, you need to think about now you can't do everything, but if there's certain ones that you have to do, those ones take priorities over others. And that'll look different for us all. Uh, uh like again, an example here with me that the first week especially, you know, I couldn't bend over. Uh, I I could was having a hard enough time just staying up walking and taking a deep breath or two. And so right away, I have to start going, okay, the the normal tasks and activities around, let's say, the house that I take care of or have to stay on top of. I started making changes in my priorities. Okay, keeping the house quite as tidy and um, you know, vacuuming and picking stuff up off the floor just wasn't the priority because one, I couldn't do it, or if I could, it would hurt like crazy. And so I had to prioritize things a bit differently, where I knew certain tasks would take longer, where okay, if I was gonna go to the grocery store, I was gonna have to make sure that I knew that it would take more time to do that, and that I would have to go, okay, well, I'm not gonna be able to carry a whole lot of groceries in through the front door from the car. So I have to go, okay, what are the most important things for me to buy and bring back just so I can at least kind of keep some food in the refrigerator? So maybe it's a silly example, but I would encourage you to prioritize what most needs to be done and to stay on top of and what's most important and what can wait or what doesn't need to get done as urgently or as frequently. If you can prioritize, uh it's a pretty powerful action step. And then closely related to that is simply to pace yourself with any activities that you do have to do. And that could be as simple as pacing yourself around the house as you move from the kitchen to the living room, or maybe it's pacing yourself uh with uh just simply walking from point A to point B. So what I've had to do uh past couple weeks, especially build in more time to you know going from point A to point B because I've not been walking very quickly over the last week or two. And especially when we're still kind of in early spring here up in Canada, and the ground has been really icy in a couple of spots and uh kind of scary to walk over ice and slippery surfaces when you're dealing with a couple of busted ribs. And so, you know, simply had to pace everything that I was gonna do uh and and walk at a ridiculously slow speed on the ice. But it was all in the name of knowing that I couldn't afford uh to have a quick little slip and try and catch myself and correct myself because that would have felt horrible. And if I had gone to the ground, um taken a fall at that point, you know, EMS probably would have had to have come and scooped me up off the ground. I think I would have been in too much pain. So start to think about ways that you can pace yourself with things that you still have to do. You know, we've prioritized, we've figured out what those most important tasks and activities are to do. Now, how do you pace yourself with that so you don't over-exert yourself? You don't make your pain worse, you don't uh use up more energy than maybe what you have. You know, if you're coming out of a pretty bad injury, sometimes it's not just the pain that holds you back, but that limited overall energy or that overall capacity to move your body. So pacing yourself is an important action step to take as well. And then again, you can plan ahead and try and anticipate what you'll be up against uh for the day, or plan and anticipate uh, you know, how the week is going to unfold. Because if you can start to plan ahead, I think that just that can give you more confidence of seeing how you're going to get through the week with less pain, with less likelihood of re-aggravation of uh your injury or your condition. And you can start to anticipate as well. So you know, a simple example here would be if you're someone who you're having to spend a lot of time at home and you're on the couch a lot because can't move, there's too much pain. Well, when you do get up and you think about, okay, maybe you have a landline in your house with a you know a phone, if it's not just your cell phone, make sure you got that thing right by you so you don't have to try and just get up and move across the room too quickly uh to answer the phone in time, especially if you're expecting an important phone call, right? If you're anticipating an important phone call, plan ahead and you say, I'm gonna keep the phone right beside me. Or even something simple as, hey, there's little things that I need to use throughout the day. And if I can have them close by my side so that I can move less and I can avoid more pain from this nasty uh pain that happens when I move, then you're making life easier on yourself. So that was the first ugly truth that we need to accept. And then the second one is really just about accepting the reality of the situation that you're you're finding yourself in. So the hard truth here is that accepting the current reality of our situation can certainly be incredibly challenging. And in accepting this or attempting to accept it can sometimes feel rather dark. Uh, I've definitely seen this with patients, and I've had patients over years who some have done really good with it, others not so much. And it's it doesn't need to be anything that needs to be done right away. I I want to make that clear. Um I think sometimes when we talk about accepting things, uh, it's kind of like forgiving others. Okay, if you're working towards forgiving someone or you're working at uh accepting your situation, accepting your reality, it doesn't need to necessarily take place right away. It it can take time to work through that, to to be able to ultimately forgive someone or to ultimately accept what has taken place. I'm not gonna sit here and say that you need to do it as quickly as you can, or that it needs to be one of these things that everyone has to do it by the same amount of time. Because again, different situations, different life circumstances. But my hope would be that you could work towards accepting the reality. And maybe that's not something you do on your own. Maybe you get a professional counselor or therapist to help you out with that, uh, or you talk about it with a loved one or a pastor or someone that you confide in. I think that can be a pretty important thing, too. And so that kind of leads me into the action steps here of what you can do for accepting the reality of what you're up against, what's taken place, and the path that you now need to walk to start to make an attempt to recover. So that first action step, again, just like the last one, is develop a support network. People you trust and confide in, people who are there to listen and support you in some capacity. Again, it can be uh professional help and guidance or just personal support and guidance from a loved one. I think you just need to ultimately have someone who you feel you can ultimately confide in. And then you need to give yourself time with this. So when I mentioned a moment ago, for some people, accepting that reality, maybe they can do it right away. For other people, maybe it takes weeks or months or a year or more. Uh it's gonna be different for us all, but uh give yourself time with this rather than just try and force yourself to accept it when deep, deep down, maybe maybe you're just not quite ready. So I think what I'm trying to say there is another action step that you just need to be honest with yourself, with how you're feeling with everything that you're up against here. And I think it's so important to be honest with ourselves because I I think if if we're not, then we're just deceiving ourselves. And I think that just kind of winds up creating situations that become more difficult and challenging to work through than they need to be. And then, of course, I think perhaps maybe one of the most important ones here for an action step is to give yourself grace with all of this. Um, you know, maybe you're in a situation and you're feeling like, hey, this is because I messed something up. This is my fault, this is my wrongdoing, or you know, I'm I'm a dummy for uh winding up in this situation. I think just give yourself grace. Again, maybe that takes a professional counselor or psychologist to help you work through that. But just giving yourself grace, I think ultimately does not just our our body good, but I think you know, our spirit and our mind, our mental health, I think it does good for all domains of our health and wellness, just to know that we're human and none of us are doing things perfectly, and and that's okay. If we're making our best attempts, then uh, you know, what else can we do, right? So give yourself grace with all of this. So if we talk about this whole acceptance thing a bit a bit more, uh let's unpack it a little bit here, just so we understand the power of what it can do for us. So there's a there's a couple of key things that are worth mentioning here. Um and so ultimately it's worth knowing that acceptance allows for a couple of things. And the first one I'll say is that it allows for breaking the cycle of denial and resistance. So ultimately, it allows for individuals to really stop fighting reality, which is a key step in preventing emotional turmoil that can otherwise kind of worsen our current mental health struggles. So fighting reality is not a healthy thing to do. I think there's a lot of uh mental health and psychological research around that. So when we when we have this acceptance thing going for us, one of the first things we do is we break that cycle of denial and resistance. Now, another thing is we we foster accountability and change. And so now that we've kind of gotten through this whole uh denial aspect, well, now that opens the door. It's kind of like the bridge for being able to say, okay, I'm responsible for the next steps I take and for the and it's gonna allow for change to take place. And then another powerful one when it comes to acceptance is simply to reduce shame and guilt. And that kind of I think goes back to the whole grace thing that we were talking about, where it's so important to work on anything that is causing us this shame and guilt, because that that holds us back mentally and I think even spiritually. And when we when we accept what we're up against, we gain more of a personal element of freedom, which just makes the path forward that much easier to go through. And then again, when we have acceptance for where we're at and what we're up against, um it ultimately is you know it encourages our commitment to treatment. So it provides mental fortitude needed to engage with therapy and other support systems. So that's really powerful because no one really should be walking this whole recovery road um alone by themselves. And so when we feel uh a bit more encouraged to be committed to what we're gonna have to go through with the treatment we need, uh it's easier to engage with others and ask for help. And then another one with acceptance, as it pertains to the key roles of what this can do for helping us to move forward with our recovery, is it can it helps us to differentiate what can be changed. So it helps an individual identify uh what can be controlled, such as our behaviors uh or the treatments that we're going through versus what can't. So we can't control the past, we can't control the actions of others. And so this allows us to focus and uh channel our energy in the right ways that we need to. So that's just simply a way of saying that this whole acceptance thing is very important and very powerful to do when we're trying to orient ourselves in how where do we go next? How do we pursue the next step to take for optimizing our situation? And then on the emotional front, talking about dealing with emotions, there's a hard truth here. This is another hard truth that we need to quickly talk about is that physical rehabilitation can be very emotional. And sometimes you just have to go through your go-through when dealing with emotions. So it's a quote I've heard a lot of people say over the years, and I quite like it. I think it's a bit of a squishy quote in that we can all take it to mean something different. But I perceive it to be going through your go-through. To go through your go-through simply means that there's no other way but accepting that you're just gonna have to know that these emotions are here. You're gonna have to let them kind of run their course, you're gonna have to honor them, not let them overtake your life or um cause you to feel ultimate despair and hopelessness, but to acknowledge them and know that you're just gonna have to deal with them and ride them out. I think that's kind of how I interpret it. And so there's a lot of research around this stuff, and I'm not an expert on it. I've read a lot of it and I found it to be quite intriguing and um very, very fascinating. And that research shows that when we suppress our emotions or deny how we feel, we ultimately just kind of make things worse for ourselves. And they found this on neurophysiological levels and even uh physiologic levels pertaining to uh how it kind of changes the hormonal environment within the body, um, you know, the functioning of the brain and these really other kind of nuanced uh things that can take place, but ultimately have very kind of powerful adverse responses into our ability to cope, uh, to make good judgment, uh, and our body's ability ultimately to heal itself. So uh you certainly have to work through your emotions, uh, but do it in positive and healthy ways rather than just uh suppress them or let them kind of flat out run you over. And so the action steps here, uh the first one is simply to acknowledge how you feel. This is where with the therapists I've worked with over the years uh for you know personal uh mental health counseling, that's been an important step in all of it, no matter which therapist I've worked with, is to acknowledge how we feel so that we kind of gain a better awareness of maybe why we're feeling that way, or to take some weight off our shoulders and knowing that, hey, I'm validated in how I feel, uh, but I'm not gonna let that kind of over overrun me. And so that you know, that kind of ties into the other action step of finding a counselor or maybe a pastor or again, someone who's qualified to work with you as it pertains to the emotional side of things or the spiritual side of things for that matter. Finding someone just in these other action steps is very important. I don't think anyone should be going through such difficult circumstances by themselves. And maybe that's even just a support group online, uh, other people going through your condition where uh you guys can just chat online about how you're feeling or uh what you know you've personally experienced, what they've personally experienced, so that um you just remind yourself you're not alone with all this, and other people can help you from an emotional state by maybe even just remember you're not alone. You're not going through this by yourself. Or another action step is to find healthy outlets. Find those things that you love to do that can help you regulate and deal with stress, or things that make you feel better, things that take your mind off of the difficulties and the negative aspects of what you're up against. And you find things that just help you to emotionally uh regulate yourself better, to clear your head a bit more. That could be something as simple as going for a walk outdoors, if that's something that you can do or like to do. It could be getting back into a hobby of painting or drawing or journaling or anything else that is a healthy way of dealing with and tolerating the stresses and the emotions that you're up against. And then again, paying attention to how you feel is another really important action step. This is something that I learned far too late on my own through my years of working through a lot of mental health challenges that I've been up against, where it's been pretty eye-opening for me to realize that I never was paying attention to how I felt. And I look back on that, and I could have done a lot of better things for myself if I had simply been more in tune with what my uh emotional state was, because then I could have started to orient myself better in ways to take more action for what it was that I was dealing with and what I was up against. And then another ugly truth as we keep moving along here, uh hard truth, but we need to accept it, is that physical rehabilitation uh it can be demanding and require investments from multiple resources. Anytime that you're up against something serious or significant and it's not a quick fix, uh we we know that there's gonna be required investments that need to take place. So a big one as an example is time. We know that the commitment to overcoming physical conditions, it can require an immense and extensive investment with time attending appointments and working with a physical therapist, uh, performing your exercise rehabilitation exercises, either in a clinic or at home, or both for that matter. There's a lot of time that needs to be invested into that. Uh, I've seen a lot of patients over the years who they've been through horrible, horrible, traumatic stuff. And the amount of time they've had to put in in the clinic and at home on their own is nothing short of extensive. And those patients and other people in those situations who are still finding a way to do that and make it happen have my ultimate, ultimate respect because that is not an easy thing to deal with and go through when you've got all the other aspects of life that you still have to manage and sort out and deal with. And another investment that we can talk about is energy, because both physical and emotional energy can be taxed to your limits uh when you work your way through this recovery process. And you know, an immense amount of energy and effort uh is often required to create the changes needed to overcome your particular situation. And again, we're talking physical energy as you have to put in physical work to make your body heal and get the most out of the recovery process. But the energy in terms of just working through emotions, when you are emotionally exhausted or um, you know, just feeling feeling again, kind of that overwhelmed feeling of feeling like you don't have anything left to give, but you know you got to dig deep and find a way to make it happen. And then, of course, there's the the investment of finances a lot of the times. Um, you know, sometimes treatments will be covered based on uh the condition or the injury that's taken place and the overall situation that you are in. Um, but sometimes things aren't covered. So the cost for evaluations and attending appointments and maybe for rehabilitative equipment or devices, uh, or the cost for adjunctive therapies. So maybe not just physical therapy, but chiropractic or massage or again, personal uh psychological counseling if you're working through PTSD because you have um PTSD from a car crash or anything like that. This can absolutely add up and tax financial resources. And it's something that I can absolutely relate to when dealing with um, you know, times where I've had to seek out a lot of mental health counseling. It's not a cheap endeavor by any means, and it's it's certainly worth it, but it adds more stress into the situation when money's already tight and now you just know it's gonna get even tighter. That's it's not an easy situation to be in it, but that's the hard truth. So I think it might be helpful to look at these kind of ugly truths as investments. Maybe that's a helpful thing to do, and that the dividends will come, okay? Healing and health and better emotional states and more energy, that's gonna come, but it's an investment in dividends, kind of the rewards of the returns on those investments take time. And another hard truth here, and I think it sounds quite evident and obvious to people when we talk about it, but it's absolutely worth mentioning, is that physical rehabilitation, it'll force you to make hard decisions regarding your priorities. Because priorities will absolutely have to change as you kind of work to go through physical rehabilitation. If you've had horrible, horrible traumatic injury or pain or a debilitating condition that kind of incapacitates you from being able to do what you want to do. Um, because you really can't do all the things you want to or need to uh when you're experiencing these things. So uh priorities, as I kind of alluded to with one of the action steps prior, uh priorities kind of need to be examined and you need to uh you need to know that priorities will have to change. But the the good news with that, as we look at the action steps here for what to do about this hard truth, is I would say we start by keeping the big picture in mind that okay, my priorities need to change, but it's not these priorities don't change forever. As time goes on, we can maybe get back to a more normalized state of priorities. Um sometimes, again, there has to be a new normal that. comes along after a terrible injury. But I would really frame this up by okay, it's going to be tough to change these priorities, but it's not a forever thing. And if you know it's not forever, then you can certainly get through it. And a second action step here, and I think this one's very important, is to what I call, you know, or I've termed here, avoid the guilt trap. Because I think sometimes we don't want to change our priorities because we're going to feel guilty. Feel guilty about kind of these changes we need to make. And I think that can look vastly different in so many ways, but an example that comes to mind is if it's hard for you to move or it's very painful for you to move, and maybe you have a loved one who says, hey, you know, I can I can do extra housework, I can take the kids to soccer practice. And maybe those are things that you normally do, you might feel guilty that, you know, your loved one or a family member or friend is doing all this extra work when you're not able to. But remember, priorities have to change if you do want to get better. And if that loved one or that friend is volunteering their time and energy to help you out, don't feel guilty about that. Chances are one day maybe you can frame it up that you'll do the same for them or you'll you'll pay it forward and do the same of what they're doing for you, you'll do for someone else in the future. But that guilt trap, I think it can it can lead us to a tricky situation where maybe we we feel guilty so we don't change our priorities. And so then maybe we overexert ourselves in some capacity and pain becomes worse where we prolong our recovery or we you know thinking about prolonging recovery hey I'm too busy to work on my rehabilitation or go to I'm too busy going to my appointment right now because I have to take care of these other things. And maybe you do have to take care of those other things but if you don't or you can find a workaround then I would say you know try and do that but avoid the guilt trap and don't feel guilty about that. You have to look out for yourself if you're going to look out for other people. That's just the way it goes. And then another action step here if you if you have all these things that are important to you you have to know what you value. And I'm talking about this in the the upcoming episode that I'm working on here where knowing what you value will help you to kind of prioritize what needs to take place, uh what can get put on the back burner, how important something is versus something that's not what you value most needs to stay at the top and everything else can get pushed to the side or put on the back burner for a bit. And again, as I kind of alluded to before if you can plan some of the stuff out in advance knowing which things are going to have to shift around which priorities are going to have to temporarily change that makes it easier rather than kind of getting caught off guard or all of a sudden feeling overwhelmed because you feel you have to do all these things and you don't you don't know how you're going to get through it because you haven't prioritized in advance. And so I thought I'd give you just a couple examples here as I've been working my way for about four weeks now with a couple of these broken ribs that I got. You know these are just a couple of things that have happened over the last couple weeks but I've already had to miss some social events due to not worsening my pain. And this was particularly true in the first week which was very very painful. And it's not that I didn't want to go to these social events. It's just that the magnitude of importance to them was not nearly as important as me knowing that I can rest up a bit more and I can avoid worsening my pain by staying at home and taking it easy rather than just sucking it up and powering through a night of extra pain and discomfort as I'm moving all around, you know, at these social functions. Now perhaps if they were really, really significant social functions or events, you know again then that would have been a different priority if it was a close friend getting married or you know the the funeral of a loved one for sure that would have been something I still would have attended and I probably would have powered through that. But these simple social events were nowhere near as important enough as me just saying hey guys I'm you know I I can't make tonight I'm I'm not up to it. And you know people understood right and then another one was kind of the second week where um it was still a little too painful for me to drive and that was simply because trying to do a quick shoulder check or rotate my torso felt horrible. And it was something that I didn't want to have to all of a sudden do quick shoulder check or turn or slam on the brakes and have the seatbelt just press into me because that would have been pretty pretty awful. And so because of that you know I basically said that told my parents whom I normally go over to their place on Sundays to have dinner with them I said I I can't make it tonight not because I don't want to be with you guys but safety of not just myself on the road but other people that's more of a priority than uh spending a dinner with my folks because I get to do that every week. Again, maybe things are different if I only get to see my parents once a year or something like that. But the safety of others on the road if I couldn't really shoulder check or do anything like that and then my safety too of course that was more important than an evening dinner. Now thankfully my parents actually drove over and actually picked me up and I got to sit in the back seat and we did get to have dinner together as they drove me to their place and back. But those are just two personal examples that have happened in the last week or two where are those big big sacrifices and big shifting of priorities in the grand scheme of things? Probably not but I feel it's important to try and give you guys examples of knowing that we all go through these things and they it looks different for each one of us. And then one more hard truth we're going to talk about here and I think this is incredibly important and again I've been relearning it myself over the past four weeks now is the hard truth that physical rehabilitation will force you to slow down and have deep patience even if you actually don't have any patience. And that need for deep patience that's going to be an incredibly important one as you work through what you're up against. So that will be both a physical patience and a mental or emotional patience as well. I think a lot of times you're going to need them both. And again if we think about kind of to what I've been going through patience of the fact that for me just to do what would normally be a three minute walk to the bus stop in the mornings for me for the first week was probably about a seven or eight minute walk. Not fun to have to walk that slow to know that it'd take me forever to go downstairs and upstairs but knowing that I'd have to be patient with that. So that's physical patience but then also the mental patience. I miss doing my physical activities right now. I want to get back into jujitsu and roll around on the mats with uh with my buddies. And so I'm going and I'm watching classes when I'm certainly not participating and man that's that's agonizing to do that. I just want to push through some discomfort right now and roll on the mats but I know that's not the right thing to do. But this healing thing will never go as fast as we want it to. But I think it's important that we know that there needs to be a need for patience with what you're up against. So what does that look like then for the action steps that we need to take well just like the the last one we were talking about I think it starts with the big picture this this isn't forever what you're up against. Knowing that I think if we frame it where we know what we're up against isn't forever, it's a lot less daunting and a lot less overwhelming to get through. And then I think in the process of patience and kind of working to acquire patience and hold on to that patience, I think we can work on our gratitude as well and be grateful for maybe in some capacity what we're learning or what we're relearning or discovering in in the moments of having to slow things down physically or mentally or emotionally. And that's a tough thing to do certainly for me. I am finding that there is a lot of gratitude for me having to slow things down and uh and it's easy to miss these things but if you work on it and you take a minute to slow yourself down mentally and dwell on the positives I think you can find some good things. And a good example was the other week as I worked or went to work I was waiting for the bus and the bus pulls up and just taking a big step onto getting on the bus was extremely painful. And poor bus driver saw that and you know she was she's a sweetheart. She said take your time I won't get the bus moving until you're sitting down and that took a handful of seconds for me to walk to the seat and slowly sit down. And on the way off the bus, you know they're like, hey do you want me to can I help you out in any way say no no that's okay. I said just don't ever break your ribs, whatever you do. And then the next morning or maybe it was the day after but one or two days after um it was the it was that same bus driver again. And I get on the bus and I'm moving a bit quicker. And she says it looks like you're in less pain than um when I saw you last time and I said yeah you know still a long ways to go but I'm not where I want to be but I'm certainly not where I used to be and she was such a sweetheart because as we were kind of going along the bus route there weren't really any other people on the bus. And so we just started talking and talked about all sorts of stuff and um and it was very I think for me it was very heartwarming for not only realizing that someone was having a conversation with me but was showing that they cared about me. And that gave me a lot of gratitude. And I I want that feeling that I felt with that to be exposed to you that um you can some really cool things can be discovered and if you find those and dwell on them I think I think that's good for the mind the body and the spirit and the fact of the matter is I wouldn't have had this wonderful conversation with this wonderful bus driver if I hadn't been in pain. And I'm going to get through this and I know that. And but I probably never would have had that conversation and I wouldn't have learned about um you know her daughter that she has in swim class or um what she you know she wants to do for herself one day in the future I wouldn't have known that and and I can look back on that and go, I got to know another human being with goals and aspirations and uh who's a devoted mother I wouldn't have gotten to know that if it wasn't for the fact that I was in pain and uh they were looking after me. You know we wouldn't have had that conversation. So there's there's gratitude on this or in this and I would say work on that as best you can. And I'd also say on that regard that the other action step to take here is to work on mindfulness. Which mindfulness is simply just taking a step back and being grounded into the moment. Uh I struggle with anxiety so my my brain is always you know five days 10 days 10 years into the future rather than being present in the moment. And so the mindfulness of okay what am I feeling and why am I feeling this way and what are my thoughts and and grounding myself in the current present moment. I've been doing that even before this injury and that's been very helpful in a lot of ways. And it helps because if you need to have patience and you find yourself struggling with that, your emotions can get dysregulated and thoughts can get dysregulated and if you can pull it all back to the moment of where you're at by being mindful helps us to uh I think frame things more accurately and keep ourselves under control and keep ourselves collected a bit better. And then of course one more action step it's a great one you can do at any time anywhere for all these ugly hard truths that you're gonna perhaps find yourself up against is to breathe deep and to meditate. So deep breathing calms the nervous system down a lot of different ways to deep breathe diaphragmatic breathing and what we call box breathing and all these other different techniques I won't get into that but if you want to learn more about it Google it and kind of read up on deep breathing helps to calm the nervous system helps to optimize the hormonal status within us does some great things slows the heart rate down drops blood pressure very very powerful stuff. And then with that deep breathing you can also choose to meditate and meditate doesn't necessarily have to be a spiritual thing I think it can be if you want but even just thinking about you know particular thoughts or visualizing healthy relaxing things for you again helps to calm down the body and when the body is less dysregulated when your heart rate is lower when your nervous system is a bit more under control it makes recovery easier and anything that we can do to make this recovery process more optimal I think is a pretty is a pretty ideal step or action step to take. So there's a quote that I like that kind of sums all that up the quote says that patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time. I quite like that quote and it's uh I think it pertains quite nicely to what I'm going through and perhaps what you are as well. Now there's another ugly truth that we'll mention here real quick and that's the the physical side of pain. You can't really get around this one a lot of the times uh physical rehabilitation okay it's it's often physically painful for many reasons and unfortunately pain is often necessary to create change and healing within the body there's a lot that goes into that statement um glossing over it we're not going to get into the details but in the cases where pain is often necessary to create healing and a positive change within the body with these cases the goal is to always elicit as minimal pain as possible to experience the optimal result that we're after. And that's a concept of what we call minimal effective dose or minimal effective therapeutic dose which just means that we want to do in this case elicit the smallest amount of pain that is required in order to achieve the result that we're looking for. Sometimes I think people can get carried away and just push through unnecessary amounts of pain. And I think sometimes that not only impedes healing, but it certainly exposes us to more unpleasantness physically than what we need to but if your physical rehabilitation involves going through physical pain of some sort it's very important to as your first action step to know that not all hurt is harmful. It's a really powerful concept to keep in mind. I tell it to my patients a lot some hurt is harmful yes but a lot of it is actually signifying that good positive change is taking place. Can't get into the details here with all that not for this particular episode but I've mentioned in other episodes if you want to learn more about pain and what it signifies there's a book out there called Explain Pain by David Butler and Laura Mosley. Explained pain is a fantastic book written for the lay person from kind of some of the leading people out there on what all this pain stuff means and how it means good things are happening within the body. Now of course you can talk to your doctor about pain medication that's another action step to take because some pain you absolutely gotta you have to deal with that. It's funny using myself as an example again the other week I was in so much pain as I was kind of at work having to take down and take some uh some time to relax uh you know our our sports med doc came and said look like you need some pain medication here just to get through this and we had a good chat and uh we felt that was the right thing to do but I mean some pain you can push through but some you can't and if you have nerve pain this is kind of like neuro neuropathic pain that we would uh call it it's awful stuff and and sometimes you're gonna need pain medication uh for these types of nasty things uh it's a powerful action step to take but you have to talk with your doctor uh on that because uh they're the ones who are qualified to help you out with that but another action step that you can easily take is simply to start tracking your daily or your weekly pain start tracking how to you know the characteristics how does it feel in the morning or the evening or today my pain level was a seven and you know yesterday it was an eight and you can start to find trends with all this and that can help you to one feel like you got a little bit more sense of control of your situation but also to start tracking and monitoring progress. And then there's also what we call the pain pill strategy it's a term that we kind of sometimes loosely use to say okay if you have a lot of pain in the moment you're feeling overwhelmed simply taking three minutes and doing deep controlled breathing can be a simple little way to start helping your body deal with that pain a bit better. As we call we so we'll say hey take a quote unquote pain pill every three hours meaning every three hours you sit still close your eyes deep breathing in a restful position if possible as a means to again just kind of help your body regulate pain a bit better. And then there's one other hard truth here I think that's worth mentioning and that's simply that and thankfully this isn't all the times but for some people it's certainly quite the reality in that not everyone will understand just how painful or difficult your recovery process might be. And this is worth talking about because your energy is very precious. And I would always always encourage people to not waste their not waste their energy trying to prove to others or justify what you are going through. I think that's just a waste of energy I don't think you need to justify anything to anyone an honest discussion with someone who wants to listen I think is certainly very valid. A loved one who maybe you just you want them to have a better understanding of what your challenges are or how you're feeling I think that can be healthy. But when you know someone doesn't understand or care to understand or doesn't want to listen doesn't want to learn about what you're going through I don't think it's worth wasting your energy on that. So rather I think you find good people who support you and understand what you're going through. And again that can be done in a number of different ways I think you do that with um you you do that with finding the right people I think you do that by making sure that you um you know where to allocate your your energy to and I like that quote of don't try and prove other people wrong who don't believe in you rather try and prove right the people who do believe in you so knowing how to direct and focus your energy is a huge powerful thing with that. So those are the the big things I wanted to get through here but let's let's quickly run through the key takeaways of all that just so if nothing else you take away these takeaways and consolidate this episode into a couple of key action steps. So number one is you accept the situation and you need to accept that life won't stop and that you'll have to accept what has happened with what you're up against if you do want to start moving forward at least moving forward in healthy ways. And the second key takeaway is that you're human and emotions are real. So physical rehabilitation and it can be emotional for a multitude of reasons. And so work with others and have outlets that keep you collected keep you collected physically mentally emotionally socially spiritually super important stuff to do. And then the third key takeaway is to know your priorities because you will most likely need to shift your priorities which you can only do if you know what you value most. And in that process don't feel guilty because you know it won't last forever. And your fourth key takeaway is knowing that patience will be required because physical rehabilitation never goes as quickly as we want it to but being prepared to slow things down physically and mentally will put you in a better spot in the long run. Fifth key takeaway physical pain exists it's a reality and the more you learn about your pain then the less threatening it will be to you even though it will still physically hurt. And your last key takeaway number six is that a lack of understanding from others is is often a reality and people may not understand or sympathize with what you're going through. And if that's the case don't sweat it just focus on you and focus on those who do understand and do support you. So as always I feel like I've yammered a lot it's kind of not an easy thing to sit in front of a camera and a microphone and rattle off all these slides that I've put together but I do love it because I attack all of this that even if each episode can help point One person in the right direction, then I've done my job. But that being said, if you do feel that you got something helpful out of this particular episode or other episodes in general, please consider leaving a review. That would mean the world to me. Not because I'm trying to become famous, just trying to help people. I don't like being in front of a camera. I don't uh particularly feel super comfortable yammering in front of a microphone, but I do it anyways because I do believe it can help someone out there. You can't tell me that with seven plus billion people on this planet, that you can't tell me that not a single person would benefit from some aspect of an episode that I'm putting together, right? So that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. Now, if you feel others could benefit from this episode, please feel free to share it with them. Uh, that would mean the world to me, and it could quite uh frankly mean the world to them as well. If you want more content and stuff that I'm uh working on, I'm always doing, you can follow me on YouTube or Instagram. My handle for those is Strength Resurgents. I've got my website, strengthresurgence.com. If you like reading blogs and worked hard for a number of years posting hundreds of blogs on these kind of same topics. And you know, if you do want to support me in this project of mine that I'm doing, you can always buy me a coffee over on buymeacoffee.com slash resurgents. It's just a little way you can support uh these efforts. I use the money to offset the funds involved with maintaining a website and hosting and all this other type of stuff. Um, that would mean the world to me if you did want to buy me a coffee. But if nothing else, I'm hoping this episode is giving you something to mentally chew on and point you in the right direction. So with that being said, as always, you know how it goes. Uh everyone, please keep looking after yourselves, keep looking after one another, and then please keep making great things happen. And I'll see you in the next episode.