How to Recover

#191

Friend,

As an avid sports fan, most of what I know about the medical world is injuries to my favorite players. I know about ACLs, MCLs, Achilles tendons, and the important difference between low and high ankle sprains.

Often, before an athlete can go back on the court/field/arena, they have to go through at least a few broad steps.

1. Initial recovery- The injury has flared up in your body, and you have to wait for the swelling to go down.

2. Reset the injury- A pin in the broken arm, reconnecting the tendons, etc. Someone, often invasively, goes inside to help put something so it can heal appropriately.

3. Rest and recovery- Your body has to heal from the reset. Even though the reset will heal, first it will hurt.

4. Rehabilitation- You begin a process of strengthening the muscles that were underutilized and re-learning how to move appropriately from the injury.

If an athlete tries to rehab and skips the other steps, they are putting themselves in a position to make the injury worse.

I think these steps are true for our emotional wounds and trauma.

1. Initial recovery- Something has happened, your body has entered a heightened state of alert, and it takes a while to “come down.”

2. Reset the injury- A counselor, a friend, or a wise mentor helps you to reset and re-story the injury, so you can re-orient healthily. (While surgery often lasts minutes or hours, this reset can take much, much longer.)

3. Rest and recovery- Your heart and soul have to heal from the reset. The invasive nature of resetting requires the prioritization of rest.

4. Rehabilitation- You begin a process of strengthening your heart, your new practices, and thought processes to become healthy.

If someone tears their Achilles and can’t walk, you don’t expect them to be playing basketball in a month.

And if your trust and heart have been torn in two, you can’t expect yourself to be “back to normal” in two weeks and one counseling session.

Be gracious to yourself and to each other.

Love,

Aaron