Setbacks, an important part of the journey to recovery
What are my expectations of my body? this is an important question to ask, and are they reasonable? Working with the body and lets face it, it’s limitations, we inevitably must face setbacks. Nothing ever goes to plan, what is that saying? expect the unexpected, expect that your recovery, your body will have it’s ups and downs over your lifetime. So as it goes with recovery. In the physio world, the trajectory of recovery is very rarely linear, rather it will be a mixture of plateaus and ups and downs. So lets talk about setbacks and why they are crucial to recovery.
Setbacks in therapy teach us something important as practitioners. Generally we actually like them because they give us important information about what we need to focus on going forwards. Has the patient responded as expected to our management approach, what can we do better, what should we focus on? As therapists, it makes us work harder and generally any physio you see (hopefully) will be invested in you achieving the goals you have set for yourself. I have yet to met a physio who doesn’t care about their patients’ recovery.
So don’t see setbacks as an indicator that things aren’t going well, expect these ups and downs because it means you are on your way to really sorting things out.