Injury Isn’t Just Physical: How Therapy Helps Athletes Navigate Setbacks
When athletes get injured, everyone talks about rehab timelines.
Few people talk about the identity hit.
The loss of control.
The quiet fear that whispers, What if I don’t come back the same?
Injury doesn’t just disrupt training.
It disrupts meaning.
For many endurance and mountain athletes, sport isn’t a hobby. It’s structure. It’s community. It’s self-trust. It’s how you regulate stress and feel competent in the world.
When that’s gone — even temporarily — it can feel destabilizing.
Here are six ways therapy helps athletes navigate injury and setbacks in a way that builds long-term resilience, not just a short-term comeback.
Rebuilding Identity Beyond Performance
Many athletes don’t realize how fused their identity is with performance until they can’t perform.
“I’m a runner.”
“I’m a climber.”
“I’m the fit one.”
When training stops, the question becomes: Who am I now?
Therapy helps separate:
Who you are (values, character, qualities)
From what you do (training, racing, competing)
This isn’t about lowering standards.
It’s about widening identity.
You can’t train right now.
But you can still embody discipline.
Curiosity.
Leadership.
Integrity.
When identity expands, injury stops feeling like an existential threat.
Making Space for Grief
Injury is a loss.
Loss of:
Routine
Fitness
A season you planned for
Social connection
A version of yourself you were building toward
Many athletes skip grief and jump straight to productivity.
They push positivity.
They minimize.
But unprocessed grief leaks out as irritability, anxiety, or quiet depression.
Therapy normalizes grief as a healthy nervous system response to loss.
You don’t need to dramatize it.
But you don’t need to suppress it either.
Making space for disappointment often reduces its intensity
Unhooking From Catastrophic Thinking
Injury amplifies mental noise:
“I’ll never get back to where I was.”
“Everyone is passing me.”
“This ruined everything.”
These thoughts feel convincing — especially when you’re sidelined.
Using approaches like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), therapists teach skills like:
Cognitive defusion (seeing thoughts as mental events, not facts)
Present-moment grounding
Expanding perspective under stress
The goal isn’t toxic positivity.
It’s flexibility.
You can’t always control the thoughts that show up.
But you can change your relationship to them.
Rebuilding a Sense of Control
Injury often creates helplessness.
Training gives athletes a clear formula: effort → adaptation → progress.
Injury disrupts that formula.
Therapy helps shift the focus from:
“Why did this happen?”
to
“What is still within my control?”
That might look like:
Consistent rehab adherence
Sleep hygiene
Fueling intentionally
Staying connected socially
Training upper body when lower body is injured
Following your PT’s instructions
Showing up well at work or school
Agency restores confidence.
When athletes regain small areas of influence, anxiety decreases.
Addressing Fear of Re-Injury
Even after physical clearance, the nervous system may still be on high alert.
Athletes often notice:
Hesitation on descents
Guarding movements
Hypervigilance around pain signals
Panic during intensity spikes
This isn’t weakness.
It’s protective wiring.
Therapy can include:
Gradual exposure to feared movements
Nervous system regulation skills
Rebuilding trust in the body through mastery experiences
Imagery and confidence rehearsal
Courage isn’t the absence of fear.
It’s increasing your willingness to move with it.
Developing Psychological Flexibility
The athletes who navigate setbacks most sustainably aren’t necessarily the toughest.
They’re the most adaptable.
Research on posttraumatic growth — including work by Richard Tedeschi — suggests that adversity can deepen resilience, meaning, and perspective when it’s processed intentionally.
Injury can become a pivot point:
Shifting from ego-driven goals to values-driven effort
Learning self-compassion instead of self-criticism
Expanding identity beyond sport
Developing emotional regulation skills that transfer to competition
Injury doesn’t have to be “a gift.”
But it can become growth.
Mental Health and Performance Aren’t Separate Lanes
There’s a myth that focusing on mental health makes you soft.
In reality, psychological flexibility is a performance skill.
When athletes learn to:
Hold discomfort without panic
Adapt when plans change
Separate identity from outcomes
Stay values-driven under uncertainty
They don’t just recover.
They become more durable.
If you’re navigating injury right now, you’re not behind.
You’re in a different phase of training.
And sometimes the most important gains happen when you can’t log the miles.
If you’re here in Colorado and need help navigating an injury or setback this is the work I do. Reach out to me to set up an introductory call.