Rebuilding Trust In Your Body After Injury
It can be hard after an injury to get your body back to feeling “normal” and trusting it as you return to daily routines and exercise. There is a natural emotional impact from injuries, with people often feeling let down and limited by their bodies. Guided rehab and gradual re-exposure to movement helps to mend this relationship and rebuild trust in our capabilities and ourselves.
When we experience pain, naturally we try to avoid certain activities and movements to limit that sensation, tensing muscles, moving slowly, essentially guarding our body from the feeling. These are protective measures your body makes to ensure no further “perceived” damage or injuries occur, however they can also be detrimental to our recovery if we allow them to control how we move for too long.
Gradual exposure and guided physiotherapy led return to movement and activities is the best way to recover, rather than avoidance. If we remain stiff and guarded for too long, our brain starts to habitually avoid and associate movement with pain, increasing kinesophobia, which can be detrimental in the long term and prolong symptoms and recovery. It is important to understand that pain does not always equal harm but rather can be a warning signal from the nervous system. Rehab trains the brain in correct movement patterns and tests what the body can manage. This helps build self confidence and body awareness as we push our capacity in areas and movements we may have avoided due to an injury and resulting symptoms.
Generally, for most people and injuries, safe gentle movement is the first step in recovery and rehabilitation (some caveats here of course). Some pain and discomfort is expected in the rehab of most injuries to an extent, and it is important not to completely stop all activities or movement when we experience small amounts of pain. If we use pain or discomfort as our only guide during rehab it can lead to fear-avoidance behaviour, reduced activity levels, reduced strength, stiffness and prolonged rehabilitation. When guarding or avoiding certain movements, we tend to compensate with the use of other muscles or body parts, this can lead to overload in other areas and cause overload of compensating structures.
“Movement is medicine”
Early mobility after an injury helps promote healing and tissue recovery by increasing blood flow, stimulating tissue remodelling, maintaining joint range and normal movement patterns. It also helps to limit muscle atrophy, rebuilds confidence and reduces fear of re-injury. Rehab after an injury can also improve neuromuscular control through increasing body awareness and proprioception. Rehab and strengthening work helps to train the brain by testing what the body is capable of, improving the mind-body relationship through intentional, controlled and graded exercises.
At Streamline Physiotherapy, we help to provide individualised guidance, education and management of your injury, the healing process and likely timeline of recovery. We take the time to understand perceptions of pain and dysfunction and reassure you through this process to ensure you return to the things that make you happy.
- Julia Sheldrake, Physiotherapist