Most of us don’t identify as an athlete the second we start to learn a new sport, but at some point, this activity becomes an integral part of our identity, regardless of age or level of competition. Not all athletes are paid for their sport, train full time, or have access to holistic rehabilitation services, yet we are all prone to injuries. In fact, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are 8.6 million sports- and recreation-related injuries every year.

Injuries can be an inconvenient disturbance from normal life for your average person, but what happens when your sense of self, happiness and well-being are woven into your ability to train or compete?

What happens if you’ve been using fitness as a primary coping skill, or you feel like your self-worth is based on your athletic performance? Maybe you’ve also been masking issues with food and body image through consistent exercise.

An injury can be a shocking plunge into areas of your life you may have been avoiding and can cause feelings of loss and fear. You may experience loss of identity, autonomy, routine, and connection, leaving you with the desire to return to “normal” as soon as possible. You might even feel pressured to return before you’re ready, due to fear of losing progress or not matching your pre-injury abilities. At the same time, your conscious or subconscious brain may experience fear of the movements or sport that betrayed you and hurt you in the first place.

It’s important to recognize that the implications of an injury are so much more complex than just the physical aspect. For example, an athlete who has experienced injury may go through any or all of the normal stages of grief we typically think of when someone has lost a loved one: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. At first, you may find yourself in denial that the injury occurred, or that it will be keeping you out of the game for a bit. You may then feel anger at yourself or someone else. You may try to find ways to return to sport as soon as possible (even if not advised), or to convince yourself and others that it’s “not that bad”. Soon, you may find yourself experiencing depression, isolation, or withdrawal, before ultimately (hopefully) moving toward acceptance and a game plan.

These feelings are all real and valid, and it’s important to have a support system during this time. Friends of injured athletes, don’t forget to check in on your friend, especially if you notice them isolating, lacking motivation, and feeling increasingly irritated or depressed. If anything above resonates with you, don’t be afraid to reach out to your friends to let them know you’re struggling. Remember that you are not alone.

The good news is that research shows that having an optimistic outlook on your recovery actually helps your body recover better and faster.

Here are some reminders to help get you through your injury:

• You don’t lose progress as quickly as you think. In fact, a proper rest and recovery period may help you make progress faster when you do return to sport. In the meantime, the “boring” rehab exercises you’re doing are laying a stronger foundation to be able to achieve progress in new, more holistic ways. We often develop compensation patterns that don’t recruit the proper muscles at the proper times. Taking time to relearn some of these patterns can allow you to return to sport stronger than you were before the break.

• Everything is just information, and we get to decide what meaning we want to make of it. An injury is a signal that part of your body needs a little more attention. Sometimes, we are so laser-focused on training and competition, that we forget to really listen to our bodies and pay attention to those warning lights, until something, or multiple things, tells us we need a break. It’s like how sometimes a warning light goes on in your car, but the car still drives fine, so you tell yourself, “I don’t have time to deal with this now, it will be okay a little longer”. In the back of your head, you know you need to change the brake pads, but it’s too inconvenient, so you keep driving until not only are your brake pads shot, but now you need new rotors too. Similarly, it’s really easy to only want to work the movements that we like or that come easily to us, but it’s often what we see as those more boring, repetitive corrective exercise and conditioning drills that allow us to excel at the lifestyle we love, with minimal injury. Unfortunately, for this reason, it’s equally easy to push through pain, ignore warning signals, and prioritize other styles of training that feel more enjoyable but lack holistic care.

• When an injury happens, your brain may want to spiral with cycles of shame and guilt: “I must be getting old, this never would have happened when I was younger. I can’t keep up with those younger athletes anymore”; “My career is over”; “What’s wrong with me? Why did I get hurt? Why do I keep getting hurt so easily?” Something I always remind my athletes and clients is that often, the outcome is a reflection of your process, not your abilities. When faced with adversity, it’s easy to blame ourselves and our abilities (we weren’t strong enough, fast enough, unbreakable enough, etc) rather than exploring our process. For example, you might naturally be a really talented athlete, but lack of proper recovery will catch up with all of us eventually. In a hustle, grind, go-big-or-go-home culture, it can be easy to forget to prioritize sleep, rest, and recovery. We take “active rest days” out of fear of losing progress or not doing as much as our competition, and end up overtraining, developing overuse or stress-induced injuries and health concerns.

• Experiencing an injury is a great opportunity to reflect on your process. My caution here is to try not to blame yourself for the result, but to instead identify changes you may want to make for the future, and approach this discovery and change process with compassion, curiosity, and empowerment: you’re not stuck, you can change your process at any point. For example: maybe tearing your ACL allowed you to realize that you need to work on your foot and ankle stability, and hitting pause to do some of that less glamorous rehab work actually saved you from another more serious injury in the future. Maybe that overuse injury was a signal to prioritize rest and recovery more. Whatever the message, you have the opportunity to come back stronger than before.

• Rehab is a process. Expect it to be a process. I get it – you want to return to the thing that you love ASAP, and our society loves quick fixes, but there is no quick fix for lasting results. Our fear of not being good enough or losing progress actually causes us to sabotage ourselves, our recovery and our progress. Also, remember that no two athletes with the “same” injury are going to have the same recovery process or timeline, so the sooner you can get preconceived notions and comparison traps out of your head during this journey, the better your progress will feel and be.

• You may be an athlete, but you are not JUST an athlete. I challenge you to think of who you are outside of your athlete identity. What other things are you grateful for or love about your life? If you aren’t yet able to start rehab or you can’t train around the injury, what opportunity is there for you to focus on other parts of your life that you have been neglecting? What other coping strategies, skills and passions can you develop that you may not have previously? You have a unique opportunity to become a more multidimensional version of yourself than you do when training and competing 24/7.

You are SO MUCH MORE than an athlete. You may not yet love or be comfortable with those parts of yourself, and you may not even know what they are, but now is a great time to dive in. Ultimately, if you decided that being an athlete was your identity, you can decide to not let your injury define your identity.

Remember that your body is strong and resilient and that your current situation is not your final destination. Keep going.