29 June 2016
About Injury
About seven years ago I rolled my left ankle playing soccer. It wasn’t even in the name of making a play or save — to be honest I was innocently fetching a ball from the sidelines when, due to the poor field conditions in the park we played in, I didn’t see a concave divot and the next thing I know I heard a pop and I went crashing to the ground. It was an intense moment of shock and pain. Players rushed toward me and eventually a bag of ice was fetched. Within 24 hours I managed to make it to a hospital where I was told I was lucky to have not broken anything. While I was happy to hear this at the time it didn’t do anything about my tender ankle and swollen foot.
Most of all, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to play soccer again.
After a week or so of stubborn recovery, I went to a park and — careful to make sure that the conditions of the field were good — proceeded to jog, then sprint short distances. I paid close attention to my left foot all the time, trying not to aggravate it and yet knowing that in order to avoid a build-up of scar tissue it needed to be worked-out. Next came dribbling a ball — this was hard. Knocking the ball around with my left foot was scary and new, not least because I’d never really paid attention to my left foot before, because I’m right-footed. And yet the more I paid attention to my left foot the more I began to feel more in control, perhaps in better control than I had previously.
In the subsequent soccer season I found myself to be more ambidextrous than I’d ever been, bagging goals with my left foot as often as my right.
If this sounds like a metaphor, then you’re on the right track. When we expose an emotional or mental wound, whether new or old — but particularly if we’ve been withholding it from ourselves — the temptation might be to catastrophize: I’m not normal and I’ll never be normal again. Everyone’s going to see that I’ve got this…thing. The wound in question might be a childhood trauma that we’ve buried or the premature end of a romantic relationship we’d thought would last forever. When we unpack it with a therapist and shine light on it, we can feel a lot of things — perhaps most destructively, shame. And yet, with an understanding therapist and careful attention, we can come out of these experiences with a more complete picture of ourselves than we had previously.
Therapy has the ability, under the right circumstances, to not only make room for the airing of wounds, but for the redefining of our strengths and accomplishments.
If you are interested in learning more about my services, about me, or perhaps booking an appointment, please call me at 416-873-7828 or email me at info@downtowntherapy.ca for more information.
filed under: anxiety• pain• sport• strength
18 May 2016
Plowing Through
It’s not unusual for someone to come into my office who, for a few or a great many years, was able to, as they say, keep their head down when it came to prevailing through hard times only to find themselves experiencing anxiety and/or depression later in life. Another phrase that is often used synonymously is plowing through: not letting the volume or difficulty of work — personal, professional, or both — deter someone from getting through to the next clearing in the proverbial jungle of ones life. What we don’t realize is that some of us aren’t prepared for that clearing.
What do I do with this extra free time? What do I do with all this space to be by myself? Why am I feeling so emotional even though I’ve accomplished all this stuff to get here?
We are remarkably resilient. We are capable of withstanding sustained mental and emotional hardship for long periods of time, and the more of that we’re able to see in our rear-view mirror the more we might be led to believe that we are machine-like: just feed us and give us space to move and we’ll get it done. All of it. Eventually.
And yet, when we reach a plateau where our efforts have rewarded us with a certain amount of comfort (physical, financial, or emotional freedom) we can begin to finally react to the things we had to go through to get this far. We find ourselves on the verge of tears for seemingly no reason. Somebody closes a door too loudly and we react to it as if a gun has gone off. Our patience with co-workers, friends, or loved ones isn’t as thick as it used to be.
Do this sound familiar to you? If so, you may want to sit down with someone so that you can unravel what’s going on. It’s possible you’ve compartmentalized your past into “stuff I needed to get through,” without acknowledging that there might be some things to explore about the hardships you might have experienced. It’s great to be accomplished, but sometimes it comes at a cost — other times, being accomplished means leaving people behind us (family included) who didn’t have a healthy influence.
Putting things into perspective can not only help to contextualize why you might be feeling the way you feel, but also to learn to accept yourself — the new and old you — before you continue on your journey.
If you are interested in learning more about my services, about me, or perhaps booking an appointment, please call me at 416-873-7828 or email me at info@downtowntherapy.ca for more information.
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