8 Strategies for Whole-Person Healing during Injury Recovery

Living with a chronic condition can mean you occasionally experience injuries as a result of it. Maybe your dizziness or muscle weakness makes you prone to falling, or your chronic back problems plays up when you lift something heavy.

There may also be times when an injury leads to long-term challenges, like pain and functional limitations. In either case, a positive period of recovery is essential for returning to wellness.

You can focus on treating the injury itself. Nevertheless, taking a more holistic approach to your healing can put you on a more positive journey to wellness. By taking care of your whole person, there are not just opportunities to have a more successful recovery experience. You can also adopt behaviors that support your long-term well-being.

Be Patient With Your Body

Living with a chronic condition can be a frustrating experience. Having to heal from an injury too can compound this frustration. It’s not unusual to get impatient about the progress your recovery is making. Yet, it’s important to recognize that whole-body healing requires patience.

Being told to be patient is frustrating in itself, isn’t it? So what practical actions are we talking about here? Some things you can do include:

• Listen to your body for signs of pain. Discomfort from an injury is often subjective. There are commonly recommended recovery times, but this will often be affected by your individual needs. When exercising or working, be vigilant of your current pain level and ease off your actions when this becomes too much. This helps to prevent further injury.
• Don’t rush your physical therapy. While it’s important to keep making progress, pushing this too far can cause more damage. Your medical professional will usually be able to give you the most nuanced advice here. Talk to them about what pain you’re experiencing and how this is affecting any pre-existing chronic conditions.
• Consider holistic treatments. While using an ice pack is generally advised for sprains and strains during the first 24-48 hours after an injury, heat therapy can ease chronic pain by improving blood flow to the affected area. Depending on your injury, you could also try massages from a licensed therapist to support your recovery.
• Break up periods of exercise. Regular rest is important to your physical healing. After all, exercise creates tears in your tissue and resting enables cellular activity that contributes to repair and growth. It’s wise not just to be patient enough to break while exercising, but also to take rest days where you do minimal exercise.

Remember that patience doesn’t mean you achieve a perfectly zen nature. It’s fine to express your frustration with how long recovery takes. Just avoid allowing it to influence a tendency to rush your healing.

Care For Your Psychology and Emotions

Becoming injured can be tough on your emotional and psychological well-being. Aside from the aforementioned frustration that can come from an injury, it’s not unusual to experience anger, anxiety, and even depression. Indeed, in more extreme cases, if the injury was caused by a particularly terrifying event, your recovery could be affected bysymptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This makes focusing on your mental wellness essential for whole-body healing.

If you find yourself struggling, some of the actions you can take to bolster your mental health during injury recovery include:

1. Recognizing and accepting your emotions

Firstly, it’s not particularly healthy to ignore the emotions you feel after an injury. Rather, it’s better to recognize these and explore them in a safe way. This could be through journaling to understand your thought processes, or channeling them through creative expression, such as painting. This not just helps you recognize the feelings, but it’s also a positive focus for what can feel like negative energy.

2. Using mindfulness techniques

It’s not unusual for an injury to bring overwhelming worries about the future with it. You might even wonder what could have been done to avoid the accident. Regular mindfulness exercises can help you to return your focus to the present, disrupt the difficult feelings, and help you identify what you need to heal right now. Some mindfulness exercises include deep breathing techniques and meditation.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when caring for your psychological and emotional wellness at this time is that you are not alone. Talking to friends and family can make them a good support network at this difficult time.

Mental health professionals specializing in feelings surrounding injuries and chronic pain can be excellent sounding boards, too. There are also support groups focused on chronic pain that share experiences and offer recommendations for management techniques.

Start Preventative Measures

As we’ve outlined previously, keeping focused on the present can stop difficult feelings surrounding your injury from being overwhelming. However, this period is still a good time to start implementing preventative measures that either minimize future injuries or avoid exacerbating the chronic condition you may be living with for a while.

1. Ergonomic activity

Even simple everyday activities can disrupt recovery and lead to issues if not performed correctly. Ergonomics can help you avoid injuries by adjusting your actions to put less unnecessary pressure on your body. This includes breaking up long periods of sitting by getting up and walking around once every half hour. If you’re working or studying at your desk, it’s important to make sure the furniture is positioned in a way that you can sit comfortably with your wrists straight and you don’t hunch over.

2. Warming up and stretching

If your muscles and joints aren’t already engaged, even slight over-extending or unexpected movement can exacerbate or cause injuries. It’s therefore wise to get into the habit of warming up and stretching after you’ve been sedentary for a while. This includes when you wake up in the morning, if you’ve been sitting for a while at work or home, and prior to exercise.

Your approach here will depend on your needs and the limits presented by chronic pain injury. But start gently, focusing on the range of motion of your limbs — including your neck — and stretching your back.

Conclusion

Taking a holistic approach to injury recovery enables you to have a more positive healing experience. It can include making certain you’re not pushing yourself too hard and even seeking mental health therapy to address psychological symptoms.

Particularly when it comes to the self-care aspects of healing, it’s important to implement measures that you find most supportive to your current challenges. Consider your unique needs as well as more generalized recovery advice to make changes now that help you thrive beyond your injury.

Get more tips on how you can work towards your recovery goals in everyday life, as well as 8 keystone habits to help you achieve that.