Injury Recovery

Not only can injuries cause great physical discomfort, they can also effect us mentally in a significant way.

All of a sudden, our community, our outlet, and a part of our identity can feel like it is missing. We may feel like we are watching the world from afar, feel out of control, and be dealing with various anxieties around our current life and recovery.

Mental health support can be critical to getting back on track. It can help us pass through these difficult periods, and come to some clarity about how to move forward. Working through our emotional experiences also helps to calm our nervous system, which allows our body to relax and use the energy it needs to heal.

Common feelings we can experience when we are injured:

Grief - for the temporary loss of things we want to do, and for the immediate change in our life.

Anger - at why and how this happened to us.

Isolation - from our friends and communities.

Loss of identity - for the reduced ability to participate and express ourselves in the activities we love to do.

Anxiety - around our recovery/health/relationships and the shift in how we cope with stressors in life.

Having a safe space to work through these feelings is an important step in recovery

Grief and Trauma in the outdoors

For many of us, getting out and recreating in the outdoors provides us with a sense of adventure, adrenaline, and accomplishment. We form our communities around our love for the sports that drive us. However, these sports are risky, and sometimes things happen that are out of our control. When trauma and grief strike in the outdoors we are left trying to understand and make sense of the utter devastation of the sudden loss at the hands of the very thing that gives us our identity and drives us forward.

Trauma and traumatic grief can have a profound and long-lasting impact on our emotional, physical, and psychological well-being. We may experience a range of symptoms including shock, disbelief, guilt, anger, anxiety, and depression. The intensity and complexity of these emotions can be overwhelming and can interfere with daily functioning, relationships, and our overall quality of life. On top of this, if the incident occurs while out doing the thing we love to do, we can be left unable of unwilling to engage in our sport, which is often our main coping mechanism, our go-to way of de-stressing. In some ways we experience a “double loss” of both the person affected and our own sense of self.

Finding support to help us move through these experiences, integrate the traumatic experience, and make sense of our emotions is a vital step in finding our path forward.