Emotions Seen in Injured Athletes

There are many emotions when it comes to injured athletes such as fear, anxiety, anger, etc. There are many stressors that cause these emotions, even outside of a sports-related topic, such as general life and school work, all of these have one thing in common, they affect your mental health. 

At first, everyone is healthy, they have a normal sleep schedule and their mood is positive, but then they get injured. As soon as an athlete gets injured they start to react, they get worried and sad and just lose hope. After losing hope they get angry at the circumstances that fell onto them, and in worst-case scenarios, they get depressed and start blaming themselves and others around them. After they go through all the stages, they start going to rehab and start putting in the effort and in the end, they start moving back into the healthy segment again. 

One emotion that's seen in an injured athlete and even in life as a student is fear, which we will get into more about later on. One thing that will be mentioned to you is that fear is nothing to be ashamed of, it's normal.

Doing the necessary rehab, you will in turn see your emotions take a better standing. Instead of anger, you will feel happy and positive. Along with that, you will feel confident in the ability to do the sport you want to do. It will take time and a really big effort to be able to come back from the rehabilitation stage, much revolving around feeling that it's better and quicker to just give up. 

A college student and athlete at Triton College, Magdalena Sroka, says that sometimes emotions overpower your long-term goals, and that can affect how well you are going to do with getting back. Yes, I get it, emotions do sometimes force you to do things and say things, but in the end, they also make you regret doing and saying those things. “ I did not take my physical therapy seriously for my first injury and now I am feeling the effects of that,” Sroka stated. Just as was mentioned before, athletes don’t think their injury is that bad, until they can’t play or they need surgery which also cuts their playing time short. 

The main idea is to keep your emotions under control, only you can get the outcome you want. Focus on getting better and putting your all into your rehabilitation. Many athletes put this pressure on themselves and want to meet the expectation of not only themselves but their team and parents in some cases. Don’t try to hold those expectations on your shoulders while you are getting better, that will only drag you down.

Mental Health Effecting Physical Health

Not only do you need to focus on the physical attributes to get better but also your mental attributes. Many of you do not think that an injury affects your mental health since it's a physical thing, but many triggers can pop up such as anxiety, depression, etc.  Dr. Cybulski said from experience, he has seen a lot of emotions that revolve around anger, despair, and worry.   

You probably started off being angry. Angry at the fact that you were the one who got injured or that you can’t play anymore. That anger you feel affects and drives your mental health. You may also feel depressed, at the fact that you can’t do anything. 

Dr. Cybulski says that mental health 100% affects the speed of recovery because if you don’t have a good mental attitude, you don’t want to get better. Something or someone may be pushing you into getting better, but if you are not mentally there, you will have a hard time doing just that. “If you don’t have the mental aspect of getting better, you won’t get better,” Dr.Cybulski stated. Sometimes you just have to tell the universe that you will get better and opportunities will start coming your way, but you do have to believe everything you say. 

Mental health will affect the way you do treat your injury, all that has to be done is to do everything in your power that can be done to get better, and if it doesn’t take you where you want to be than at least you can say that you’ve done all that you can do and there was nothing more. A positive attitude will take these individuals far in their personal and professional lives. 

A study stated that many college athletes do not look for mental health help because of many reasons. You probably think that you should only be getting physical help to get you back on top, but you don’t realize that your mental health plays a role in getting back. As mentioned before, your emotions guide your decisions and play a role in what you do. 

Let's say this, you do end up getting better physically after all the time you put into the rehab and you go back into your sport, and you think all is well. But why are that depression and anxiety still there? You were scared, something terrible happened and you went into a dark place, no amount of rehab can help take away those feelings that you still feel. 

One solution to that issue would be to talk about your feelings and face them with someone you trust. That someone will help you get your confidence back and will help with not feel as alone as you did when you started feeling those emotions. “I confided in my athletic trainer when I was feeling depressed, and he was there for me when I was at the bottom,” Magdalena stated. Those individuals who feel like that do not have to be alone, going through this tough situation is hard as it is.

The Fear of Coming Back

Everyone feels fear when coming back and if you say you don’t, then you’re lying to yourself. Fear of getting reinjured, fear of thinking you didn’t get enough rehab, and even fear of not being good anymore. A sports injury affects the brain in a way that every emotion you have comes up at once. This fear of injury that these individuals have only slows the process of getting better and delays the outcome. 

Dr.Cybulski says that the biggest fear is the fear of the unknown. No one knows what they are getting back into, or what will happen. The key message that Dr.Cybulski stressed was to give it all you’ve got. Fear shouldn’t stop you from doing what you wanted to go back to, and if you give it all you got, then you can say that you tried before giving up. 

There is a lot of research conducted on athletes who were injured, mainly in a questionnaire format which assesses the measurement of fear in return. A journal stated all the information on what kind of impacts and outcomes those who have had an injury in their preferred sport, and a suggestion would be to go look at it and understand it. Much of the information stated the types of psychological impacts this kind of event can have on you. Many of the words are big, like kinesiophobia, which I did not understand until looking up the definition. 

The most important objective from this that you should know is that you are not alone. Magdalena Sroka says that she had a hard time coming back into volleyball after she injured herself, her two main fears were not being as good as she was before and hurting herself more than she already did. Giving up is very easy to do when fear is very high, but fear is just a small fraction of you, and you can’t let it control your life.

Overcoming That Fear

Overcoming fear is easier said than done, to say the least. Acknowledging your feelings is the first step in helping you control that fear. Telling yourself that you will get better instead of criticizing that this happened to you will help you feel better and quicken your recovery and lessen the chances of it happening again. 

Along with acknowledging your feelings, you have to accept them and adapt to the situation. According to the Washington Post, athletic trainers and sports doctors saw many athletes take a long time to accept their situation. This in turn affected those athletes in their recovery time. It’s hard to accept something when you are afraid, but understanding the situation and trying to adapt to the changes will help you in the end, just give it a try. 

Time is the most important aspect of recovering and overcoming that fear. You have to give yourself time instead of trying to speed it up. Speeding up the time it takes to get back out on the field, will only increase that fear that you’re feeling. Even when you’re back on the field and trying to speed up getting over that fear of playing again. It affects the way you play and will in the end affect your chances of getting injured again.

Coming Back or Not Coming Back

The majority of athletes have the option of coming back into their sport, but there are those few who don’t have that same opportunity. Injuring yourself is a serious matter that should not be taken lightly. The question is, are you coming back too soon?

Magdalena Sroka says that choices are hard to make when something happens to you very quickly and you're young and still want to play as much as you can. During her first year playing volleyball, she had gotten injured, her nerves were bunched together in her elbow and wrist which caused immense pain. “It was the choice between playing and keeping that scholarship or being replaced,” Magdalena stated. Athletes all over the world have a scholarship at school for playing their sport and this is one struggle that each of them has to go through when getting injured. So continuing to play, Magdalena only injured herself more and had to go to rehab for intense therapy, with the choice given to her of playing and losing mobility of that arm or having surgery and playing next year when the nerves heal. Both choices were not the ones she wanted to hear. It was a difficult choice, but choosing the one to do the surgery was the only option that saved her from losing the chance to play. 

The following year, when volleyball season came up again, Magdalena was better than ever. “ I never regretted my decision to stop playing for a season, the therapy after the surgery was intense but I feel a lot better,” Magdalena stated. After an injury, if chosen to get better, it only helps you continue the life you had before the injury happened and come back stronger. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a bit of time from the game you love to continue playing. 

On the other side, the majority who have the option of coming back are the ones who do not have a choice. The athletes who do not have the same option as the others, mainly do not have that choice due to the lack of taking it seriously and going to rehab. They were given the same choice Magdalena Sroka was but chose the opposite. 

A former college athlete who was very close to going pro, Krystian Sroka, says that if he can do it all over again, he would choose the other route. Receiving an injury changes your life, but the choices that come up to you, are yours to be made. Krystian Sroka had the option to rest and recover and come back later on in his career but chose to continue playing without much thought to recovering. This was his whole life, all he knew growing up. After being told he can’t play anymore, it broke him, he was angry, and he lashed out. But eventually, he realized this can’t stop him from living his life. “I was angry at the fact that I grew up playing soccer and it was just taken away from me from the choice that I made, but I found out that I am good at other things like working with technology,” Krystian stated. 

Every one of us has something we are good at, and we just don’t know it yet. A sport may have defined an athlete's life and who they were but no one realizes that one thing does not define who you are, you just have to tap into yourself and find it.

At first you might feel angry with yourself and your injury, and even at the people around you. That anger you feel, is what drives you into pushing yourself harder. Many sources out there state that anger is not the emotion that you want driving your success in getting better, but Dr. Cybulski says that anger is the one emotion that will make you push yourself into working harder. 

Along with anger, comes impatience and pressure. You may be feeling impatient with how long it’s taking to get you back out there or even how long it’s taking to get fully recovered. You may also be feeling that pressure of not wanting to let anyone down with the setback you are having. Dr. Cybulski says that you are only human, it’s easy to feel many emotions at one time.