How to come back mentally stronger from an injury

I hope this doesn't apply to you. I really hope you don't need this article. But for some athletes, an unfortunate consequence of pushing ourselves to the limit is dealing with an injury. Some athletes go through their entire careers without a major injury, but for most of us (myself included, many times over), that's not the case.

One of the reasons I wrote Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries is my own injury experience. I've had many injuries over the years, but one in particular had a profound impact on me, so much so that it changed the trajectory of my career. I was a year into my graduate studies in sport psychology when I had a fluke accident on a snowboarding trip and tore my MCL. Four years earlier, I'd suffered a different injury to the same knee: a torn meniscus that required surgical repair.

I went through two different knee injuries on my left leg, and I can tell you my recovery from the first was drastically different than the second. After the first injury, I really struggled mentally. I didn't trust my knee, I had a hard time dealing with the pain of rehab, and I was terrified of getting reinjured. But with the second injury, as soon as they were taking me down the mountain on the emergency sled, I told myself, "Okay, Carrie, you are still an athlete, and your recovery is now your sport. Everything you were putting into snowboarding now goes into your recovery.”

And that's exactly what I did. I decided to put as much effort into my mental recovery as I did my physical recovery. I applied everything I was learning in my graduate studies about optimal performance to my own injury process. And it paid off! I came back both mentally and physically stronger because I was committed to working on my mental fitness just as much as my physical fitness.

If you've ever been injured, you know that sometimes the body heals before confidence does. Our brains needs their own "physical therapy" to return to the confidence and composure we had before the injury.

One of the most powerful things about working on mental fitness during recovery is this: the mental skills we build to get through the injury will continue to serve us long after we're healed.

Here are three ways to work on our mental game while recovering.

1. Remember to breathe

It might seem like an impossible task to stay positive during one of the most challenging times in your athletic career. It almost feels cruel that your body needs you to destress in order to heal while you're experiencing one of the most stressful things you'll face as an athlete.

Holding our breath is both a symptom and a trigger for anxiety. Remembering to breathe helps reduce the physical symptoms of anxiety and eases the psychological stress, as well.

Tip: Try making your exhale just a little bit longer than your inhale. This helps slow your breathing and your heart rate, making you feel calmer and more in control.

2. Focus on what's in your control

As humans, we don't like the unknown. We feel stress when we're impacted by things outside our control. Unfortunately, those two factors—uncertainty and loss of control—are huge parts of the injury experience.

It's easy for our minds to spiral into what-ifs, but refocusing on what we can do, rather than what we can't, will help us regain composure. It keeps us grounded in the present moment and boosts our motivation to take the next step.

Tip: Any time you feel your stress response kick in, check in with yourself. Are you focused on something out of your control? If so, consciously shift your attention to something you can control.

3. Adjust your goals

One of the hardest parts of coming back from injury is resisting the urge to measure success against what we could do before we were hurt. Another major challenge? Setbacks right when it feels like we're finally making progress. These moments require us to adjust our goals. Redefining what success looks like right now is essential to staying mentally strong, keeping our heads up, and continuing to move forward.

Tip: Write down your current goals so you have a visual reminder of what you're working on. Be honest and realistic about what success means at this stage, and be sure to celebrate the small milestones along the way.

We have to be patient with the process and take ownership of our mental game. Not only will it help us build resilience during recovery, but it can also become the reason we come back even stronger than before, both mentally and physically.

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