Injury and your identity

Injury Removes Proof

‘Injury isn’t only asking you to recover your body, its asking you to rethink what your body was proving to you. Your performance is not your whole story although it can feel it at the time. Recovery isn’t always finding your old self again, its discovering that you are more than the version of yourself that sport or activity allowed you to prove.

Try asking yourself:

What did sport allow me to believe about myself and where else could I find evidence of those qualities?

You might discover that the strength, discipline, courage and determination you valued were never owned by your sport or activity in the first place.

Thought of the Day

Sometimes injury changes more than what your body can do. It changes the evidence you have been using to tell yourself who you are.

When you can no longer train, compete, perform or keep up in the way you once did, it can leave you wondering whether you are still strong, capable, disciplined or worthy.

But perhaps the deeper work of recovery is not proving those things again. Perhaps it is learning that they were never dependent on performance in the first place. You are still you when you cannot do the things that once made you feel most like yourself.

And maybe becoming someone beyond your performance does not mean becoming less of the person you were. It means discovering that your identity was always bigger than the part of yourself that sport or activity gave you the most opportunities to prove.’

Dr Carl Bescoby PhD | The Injury Psychologist