How Injury Affects Athletes Mentally
Sports injuries are not just physical in nature! When an athlete gets injured, there is both physical and mental hurt.
All athletic injuries need to be dealt with physically and mentally… And, to be honest, the mental aspect of injury is far more challenging to wade through than the physical injury itself.
The mental challenges of injury are many. By being aware of the mental components of injury, you can proactively prepare yourself for what is ahead.
The Mental Components of Injury
There are several mental aspects that accompany athletic injuries, some of which you may not be aware of:
- Initial shock of injury – When you first get injured, your mind floods with thoughts of “Oh No!” and “What Ifs”. These thoughts are overwhelming and difficult to process in the moment.
- Threat to identity – Most athletes’ identities are deeply rooted in their sport, “I am a baseball player,” “I am a soccer player,” “I am a ______” are how most athletes first describe themselves. Take away an athlete’s sport and they lose a sense of who they are.
- Management of pain and discomfort – Pain may be physical but dealing with pain is mental. Mentally managing pain can be emotionally draining.
- Rigors of rehab – Rehab can be long and uncomfortable with many hours of rehab exercises needed to be performed at home. Feeling there is no end in sight can be de-motivating and demoralizing.
- Fear of losing role on the team – Watching another athlete replace you creates all kinds of mental challenges and worry.
- Lack of contribution to team success – Contributing to your team’s success and being a team member fighting for a common goal provides a sense of purpose that is mitigated when you spend time away from your team.
- Blow to Confidence – Not competing can crush your confidence. Achieving rehab objectives protects your confidence from plummeting.
- Goal adjustment – In the beginning of the season, you set goals that you wanted to achieve by season’s end. Not only do you need to deal with delayed achievement, you may have the disappointing task of readjusting your goals according to the severity of your injury.
- Loss of camaraderie with teammates – Many times, your teammates are also your friends. Not only do you feel the loss of being a team member, but the lack of socialization can create feelings of loneliness.
- Need to get back into shape – All through preseason and early in the season, you pushed to achieve some level of fitness and strength. Getting in shape and pushing past discomfort, at times, is not fun. Now, you may have to engage in that process all over again.
- Potential loss of scholarship or recruitment status – Years of preparation for collegiate athletics can seem jeopardized by injury. Feeling that your college opportunities may be in jeopardy is a great source of mental stress.
- Loss of structure – Athletics provide a lot of structure for athletes. Time is organized around your participation in sport. An injured athlete needs to fill time slots with purposeful activity to develop a new routine and sense of structure.
- Skill regression – Technique is refined or habituated by repetition over time. Building your technical skills, no matter how small, or sharpening technique feels like an additional setback when cleared to compete.
- Fear of re-injury – Fear of re-injury is one of the toughest mental obstacles for an athlete. The tension from worrying about re-injury is the biggest factor in re-injury or injuring another body part.
As you can see, injuries can cause mental challenges for athletes in various ways. For this reason, it is important to attack the injury rehab process physically and mentally.
Exercise: Setting Goals during Recovery
When you are injured, it is important to set goals.
Write down 3 goals you want to focus on while injured.
For example:
- “I will rehab my injury 3 times a week and follow any additional therapy recommendations.”
- “I will attend two practices a week.”
- “I will perform two imagery sessions a week to generate positive emotions about a successful return to competition.”
Goals will engage you mentally and physically, keep you positive, give you objectives to strive for and maintain your confidence.