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Paige Frazier

Professor Johson

English 1201

27 March 2022

Dealing With Injuries

While sports can be an outlet for many athletes, they should be given ways to cope with

injuries that may affect their mental health because it causes many of them to be in emotionally

dark, depressive states while dealing with all other aspects of life. While researching mental

health and while dealing with injuries. There are a large number of studies that show different

results and some that show the same. There are movies, books, documentaries that help support

this topic. Doctors and therapists are a main part of dealing with injuries and play a big role in it.

There are plenty of people that deal with injuries and most of them do not know how to

overcome them and eventually end up with mental health issues. The therapist and doctors that

are out there give their opinions and advice that can help athletes cope with injuries and the

mental part of it.

Have you ever dealt with an injury that causes a lot of pain in your life and mentaly as

well? If you have not I have, Injuring my knee in the summer time during soccer season I tore

my Meniscus and my PCL. I had to get surgery, I then learned fast what I can and can not do

like, going down the stairs right, getting things around the house. My family had to do those

things for me and it was frustrating. It's very important to take things slow and let things come to

you. Athletes' first question to the doctors or therapist are usually “When can I start playing

again?” Sometimes when your injuries are really bad and when you hear the news the doctor

gives you, that's when the mental part starts playing a role.
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This essay will be organized to help the reader, teens, and athletes to follow along in the

best way possible. Each paragraph is fully developed to support the thesis statement. There will

be a counterargument that will disagree with what I am trying to say. The following paragraphs

will help support my thesis statement and the main claim for this paper as well. I will first talk

about what it was like dealing with an injury first hand. Secondly I will talk about the depression

part of it which will lead into more of the mental health part of coping with injuries. After talking

about all of that, Following that is what you can do to prevent it and what you can also do to

focus on other things while you are dealing with an injury. Finally I will wrap up the essay

ending with a strong conclusion to tie things up, leaving the reader, teens and athlete a better

understanding on this topic.

In the summer of 2021, I was playing soccer with my high school team. I tore my

Meniscus and my PCL. I had to get surgery. I got the surgery sometime in September and 2

times a week I went to therapy to work on my knee. I then learned fast what I can and can not do

like, going down the stairs right, getting things around the house. My family had to do those

things for me and it was frustrating.

Depression is a main part of coping with an injury. Dealing with an injury isn’t just the

physical part, it is mainly the mental part of it. “The physical tool and change in lifestyle will

likely have a big impact on your emotional well-being. It’s important to know how to battle

depression during injury so that you can focus on your process of recovery.”(According to

Christain Binney ) I believe that it is hard to understand how someone can fall into depression

after or during an injury.. There are certain ways to deal with depression. “Maintaining a winning

attitude” as Christain Binney says. If you are an athelte you maybe be raped all in your sport and

may depend on it. I think a good way is the sport you play is probably the sport you love and the
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good thing is you can take what you have learned and taught from the sport and translate it into

your life to help. With a winning attitude it can help you through a recovery and forget about the

negative things.

Coping with an injury can affect your social life. I think depression can affect the way

you talk to your family, friends, and your peers in general. It may also affect the way you are in

school. It can affect the way you learn, take tests, and how you focus. If you take a concussion as

an example, yes it is an injury that deals with your head. It will definitely affect the way you

perform in the classroom, I think just a simple headache can do that as well. I think it can affect a

person's ability to do simple activities to academically perform. The ability to focus, multi-task,

recall information, and process information quickly. Just these 4 things can affect the simple

things in life. In school if you are taking a test those 4 things can really mess up your school life.

Managing the stress of an injury requires both physical and psychological resilience. It is

important to move on from the negatives of the injury and find more of the positives to look

forward to during the injury. Dealing with the injury more elegantly is super important; it helps

the athletes become more focused,flexible,and resilient. There are a couple phycology strategies

that can help. Stay positive, don't let the negative parts of the injury get to you, it will take time.

High motivation for yourself, look at yourself at the end of the injury and stay motivated in the

sport you love to play. Setting realistic goals, I think this is a big one. Say you tear your ACL

and you need surgery and your goal is to start jogging the next 2 weeks, that is not a realistic

goal coming off a big injury like that. More of a realistic goal is to maybe start putting a little

more weight on your leg for the next 2 weeks so you can progress to more after that.

Motivation can sometimes be hard when dealing with an injury if you know Alex Smith

he was a quarterback for Washington football. He had a terrible leg injury, some believed that he
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would never be able to play football again. Smith eventually ended up winning the comeback

award for football. According to “How Elite Athletes overcome injuries” they stated “his

motivation and sheer willpower afforded him the chance not only to continue his career but also

elevate the Washington Football Team to its first NFC crown and postseason appearance since

2015." His motivation made him be able to comeback after a major setback, it shows younger

kids that motivation is a key point for overcoming an injury, if there is no motivation when

coming back then your recovery will be a lot slower and alot more painful.

Rebound is a book written by Carries Jackson and Cindy Kuzman. This book is all about

the mental skills of overcoming an injury. It is a practice guide to build the psychological and

resilience that athletes need to recover from an injury and be stronger than they have been

before. Injuries don’t just happen to the young ones, it also happens to the pros and the

olympians. I know it seems more like teens get injured more because if you're around teens more

there are alot of them that get injuries. More than 45% of athletes that get injured are mental

skills. Self Motivation, positive thinking, determination are all parts of mental skills and can be

easily taught and learned.

Probably one of the worst and dangerous injuries an athlete can have is a back injury.

Gift of an Injury a book that talks about a strong athlete who hurts his lower back and many

thought that his injury was going to be a career ending. The remarkable athlete Brian Carrol “

went from 1100 lb squats and 800 lb deadlifts to unending pain and disability after a massive

spinal compression injury.” (According to Stuart McGrill in the book.) Brian had to fight for him

to be able to get back to the winners podium. It took a lot of fight for Brian and he knew that it

would be a rough fight back. Brain had a friend/trainer next to him the whole time and decided to

work back to lifting. He truly believed that he would not be able to get back to lifting Briain
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quotes “Before understanding Dr. McGill’s work, I thought my back injury meant the end of my

lifting career. Since absorbing all of his knowledge and applying the lessons in this book to my

daily life, my career has been restored. I am stronger than ever – and taking my back health to

new heights.” Taking from this quote what I am trying to say is dealing with any type of injury

and dealing with them by yourself is hard, having people be there for you and by your side is

probably one of the best ways to deal with an injury and get through it, and to come out happy

with the results afterwards.

Coaches, trainers, family members, friends are the best emotional support system when

dealing with injuries. The best way for athletes to deal with injuries will need social support.

Having people along your side. It is very healthy for the people around you to tell you and have

them teach you that coping with injuries is good, also to encourage them to speak to someone

close when dealing with an injury/setback. Athletes should be able to communicate and be

understood during the setback. Taking rehabilitation as an example the therapists are there to

help, they are giving feedback for the patients and they are teaching you. They teach the steps to

get back to what you love. The same for coaches they can help with letting you still participate in

practice and do whatever you can still do while you are injured. Coaches can give you other

athletes that have surpassed injuries and can teach you as well. It will leave you feeling with

motivation and determination. Like I mentioned before, coaches, trainers and therapists should

be able to give you short term goals so you can keep motivated.

Accepting reality is a big part of injuries. “She went through a wide range of emotions

when she realized the gravity of her injury” Says Hasay. It is important to understand your injury

and that injuring yourself isn't your fault. So there should be no blaming. Getting upset and angry

that you are injured is not a proper way to recover or a healthy way. Sometimes the injuries are
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hard to manage and sometimes you are in the wonder of why it happens to you. There may be

fears, disappointment in the injury. When someone does not know how to cope with an injury it

can cause serious depression. There are ways to accept the injury and just let it be. One way of

accepting an injury is staying positive. Not neglected physical therapy is a way to stay positive if

you don't do therapy. Most injuries if they are serious you will be put into therapy almost 2 times

a week. Going to therapy is very important so you can get your mind off things and also to work

on your injury so you can get back to playing a sport, and being healthy.

Listening to your body is very key. If you play multiple sports and you know what it is

like going from one sport to another. It can be very stressful and get the muscles very tired.

Getting advice from your friends, family, doctors, anyone. Advice from them may be good but

every injury has a different twist and is unique. Listening to your doctor and therapist is the best

way. Listening to your body will come first before anything your doctor/therapist will say. They

can not feel how your body feels, it is very important for you to communicate with them. If you

think it is very for more treatment or you need more rest then that is your decision to make.

Remembering that your doctor/therapist is professional they know what they are telling you and

they are leading you in the right direction to get better.

Foucing on the things you can control. Usually teens when they get an injury they eat

more or less because they are depressed. After the injury you are usually so out of shape it is

hard to work back what you lost. Drinking more water and eating healthier while injured is key.

Having a healthy diet is hard to do because you're injured and eating whatever you want is easy

to do because you aren't active and eventually it all ends up in the long run. You can find

alternate ways to exercise. If you have an arm injury, focus more on the lower body. If you have

a leg injury, focus on the upper body. Doing a few of these things can still allow you to get some
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sort of exercise in, so you don’t have to lose all the things you worked for by gaining a bunch of

weight.

I believe seeking help from a professional standpoint is a great idea for those who don’t

know how to work with an injury. The body holds a lot of stress and it's not just on the injury

there can be a bunch of things that can be causing stress but dealing with stress and then other

things on top of it is hard. A professional can provide specific tips and can help with all of that.

They can help you manage it as well. Speaking to someone that has had an injury like you can

give you a different perspective. They can teach you what they did to be successful after an

injury and learning from that you can take that to your injury so it will help you as well. Positive

self talk and positive talk to a professional is key as well. It can increase the recovery rate and

speed the process rate up as well. The mind is a powerful tool. Working with a professional on

imagery and goals can help with the process and you will succeed after coming back from an

injury.

Learning about your injury is a great way to succeed. There can be a lot of questions.

What is the prognosis? If you take my injury as an example I would answer that as, I tore my

Meniscus and PCL. Another question would be, what is the treatment? My treatment was getting

surgery on my meniscus and PCL and fixing that I need therapy 2 times a week and also doing

some on my own. What type of movement can I do? The movement that I could do was very

little. For the first couple of weeks I could hardly bend my knee. It hurt a lot then when months

went by I started to be able to bend it more and more. There was not a lot of jerking the knee, no

fast movements because it hurt alot. What will speed up my recovery? Speeding up my recovery

is the little things you can do like your rehab on your own multiple times a week, working out

the upper body so you don’t gain so much weight. What can hinder your recovery? There can be
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a lot of factors for that and I have mentioned some already like depression, stress, negative talk,

etcetera. Are there symptoms I should look for that indicates my injury is getting worse? This is

a big question that you can always look for in an injury. Like I mentioned above, things you can

look for are depression signs, stress, negative talk. Talking to somones about these or simply just

looking them up on the internet and taking note of them can be so hopeful. It is very common to

feel overwhelmed by an injury. Asking these questions may help you more understand your

injury as well.

Others may say that when dealing with an injury you should never have depression, talk

negatively about yourself. These things are going to be common. If you love a sport and want to

get to the next level, yes there's going to be the bumps in the round that will be negative. Some

say that it’s the sport you play that causes the injury. All sports there is a possibility where you

can get injured. Some say that not playing a sport is better for not getting injuries. But if you

think about it,if you just sit around and do nothing, that's when you gain a lot of weight and your

health will be bad. According to MANA Medical Associates “Regular exercise and physical

activity promotes strong muscles and bones.” Therefore being more active will allow your

muscles and bones to be stronger, so by doing that it will cause less injuries because of how

strong your muscles are.

While injuries can be hard to work with there are a bunch of ways you can deal with them

in positive ways as I mentioned all throughout the paper. Injuries don’t just happen to teens, it

can happen to anyone, any age, older or younger. Different ways of dealing with injuries are

talking positively, social life,working on yourself and many more. Mental part of dealing with an

injury is always important and is probably the most important when dealing with an injury. There

are many different ways that you can cope with an injury and they should be positive ways for a
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faster recovery. Therefore by being more active it can allow your muscles and bones to be more

stronger so it can prevent major injuries. Ultimately coping with injuries in a positive way can

help with your recovery process faster, dealing with a setback can ultimately deal with greater

comeback with just a little hard work and positivity you will succeed no matter what.

Works Cited

Christain. Binney

https://lotsahelpinghands.com/blog/how-to-battle-depression/

Mary. L. Gavin, October 2022

https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/sports-injuries.html

Elizabeth Quinn, March 17, 2022, medical reviewed by Micheal Leu

ihttps://www.verywellfit.com/the-emotional-stress-of-a-sports-injury-3120689

March 2, 2021, by Bert Mandelbaum

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https://health.usnews.com/health-care/for-better/articles/how-elite-athletes-overcome-complex-

injuries

Written by leading mental skills coach, Rebound

https://injuredathletesclub.com/about-the-book/

Stuart McGill, Brian Caroll, Gift of Injury

https://www.backfitpro.com/books/gift-of-injury-the-strength-athletes-guide-to-recovering-from-

back-injury-to-winning-again/

Tiger woods, By Matthew jussim, 2018-2019

https://www.mensjournal.com/sports/13-athletes-who-made-amazing-comebacks-after-career-

threatening-injuries/

7 yards, The Chris Norton story

https://7yardsfilm.com/#:~:text=A%20documentary%20that%20will%20inspire,chance%20to

%20ever%20move%20again.

Trine, 2021, Clement, D., Granquist, M. D., & Arvinen-Barrow, M. M. (2013).

Psychosocial aspects of athletic injuries as perceived by athletic trainers. Journal of Athletic

Training

https://www.trine.edu/academics/centers/center-for-sports-studies/blog/2021/

mentally_overcoming_injuries.aspx

April 27, 2016, Ashley Rodriguez

https://www.runnersworld.com/health-injuries/a20794307/5-steps-for-coping-with-the-

psychological-effects-of-injuries/

Danielle Snyder, blog

https://territoryrun.co/blogs/news/the-guide-to-overcoming-injury
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