Injured Adults

• Talk about what happened when and if you feel comfortable. One of the best ways to relieve difficult feelings and worries is to share them with someone you trust and feel supported by. Tips for talking to your Loved Ones about your Injury
• Use deep breathing. Deep breathing can help you manage your feelings,  reduce pain, slow your heart rate, and lower blood pressure. Pain Management Techniques
• Take time to adjust. It can take time to get back into a regular routine. Make time to do things you enjoy, take things one day at a time and return to your normal schedule as much as possible as you are able
• Communicate with your employer when you are ready. Consider when and how you will return to work, and come up with a plan for communicating with your employer. Communicating with your Employer
• Try out some mental health apps. Apps like Virtual Hope Box, PTSD Coach, Family Coach, Move Forward, CBT-I Coach, Headspace and Woebot can also help you learn new coping skills but should not replace a mental health professional. Resources
• Remember that adapting to an injury involves medical/physical healing as well as emotional/mental recovery. It is a good idea to be aware of all of the ways the injury has impacted your life. It is important to note that for some people, the emotional and mental healing can take longer than the physical healing.
• Keep a positive but realistic outlook. Take good care of yourself (get sleep, seek support) and remember that for most people, things start to get better with time, medical treatment, focusing on caring for oneself, and accepting help from others.
• Talk with your medical providers about what to expect. Ask your medical providers about what the recovery process is likely to be like, what challenges are likely to come up, and when you can start resuming normal activities. Click here for information about communicating with medical providers
• Focus on daily progress - don’t go too fast or too slow in your recovery process. You don’t want to rush into activities before you are ready- this can lead to frustration, sadness, and a slower recovery process! On the other hand, if you get out of the habit for too long, it can be more difficult to get back into your daily routines and can slow down your recovery. Talk to your providers about when you can start getting back to daily tasks, and work with them to keep on the path of healing.
• Expect to experience a variety of emotions, with gradual improvement over time. It is likely that you will have both good days and bad days, both frustrating moments and positive experiences as you recover from injury. Sadness, hope, stress, humor, and frustration can all be a part of the injury recovery process

Changes after an injury are common.  Most people recover after a few weeks or months. If these changes last more than a few weeks and interfere with everyday life, support may be needed. Feel free to email us at bright@uccs.edu if you have questions and we will provide information about additional electronic resources available to you, such as our text messaging support program and others, and we will also provide mental health treatment referrals if we can.

Here are some examples of situations in which seeking extra support, such as psychotherapy, may be a good idea:

• Intense memories: You find yourself repeatedly going over the details of the trauma in your head. Something you see, hear, smell, touch, or taste may cause you to feel the same feelings you did when the event happened.
• Avoidance: You avoid things, places, and people that remind you of the event. You may not want to go back to the hospital, see your doctor again, or take medications.
• Persistent symptoms: You experience ongoing and lasting changes in the way you think and feel.
• Nervousness: You feel very nervous. You may feel “on edge,” have a hard time falling asleep, or have trouble controlling pain. You may suddenly become angry or irritable with yourself or others.

If you continue to experience any number of these reactions after a few weeks, it is a good idea to talk to a medical or mental health professional. 

Charlie, age 34, was assaulted and robbed while walking home from work and was injured, including multiple fractures in his legs and several broken ribs.

Charlie initially experienced both medical symptoms and emotional/social challenges after this event. The medical symptoms included pain, difficulty breathing, and trouble sleeping. Charlie also experienced emotional challenges like anger/frustration, sadness, fear walking home from work, troubling memories and dreams, and feeling panicky in situations that remind him of the assault.

In the days following the event Charlie worried that these symptoms might be permanent and that they would never return to normal. This is an understandable feeling because Charlie’s symptoms were difficult to manage. But Charlie’s medical symptoms were significantly better within a few weeks, and Charlie was almost symptom-free within a few months.

The emotional and social challenges that Charlie experienced also resolved within a few months. This timeline is true for most people, though emotional recovery from a traumatic, life-threatening, and violent event like an assault can be more complex than recovery from an accidental injury.

Throughout the recovery period, Charlie focused on what could be done to recover healthfully. As Charlie explained…

"At first it was really hard.  I thought about it all the time. One thing that really helped is I had a friend who had also been a victim of a mugging several years ago. But apart from talking about it with him, I didn't want to do anything. I was afraid to go out at night, and even afraid to walk home from work in the daylight, which was embarrassing. My friends wanted to go out and do things, but I just didn't feel like it. My friends and family kept saying it would make me feel better to get out, so finally I forced myself to do it. And sure enough, eventually it did help. The first time I went out I was nervous and sweaty, and honestly I didn’t have a good time. But my doctors warned me that if I kept avoiding things, it would get harder and harder to stop. It eventually got better from there. The more I went out with my friends, even at night, the less anxious I felt.

And the pain - it was bad at the beginning. The surgeries and rehab went fine, but the pain took a while to go away completely. At first, I would feel some pain in my leg, and then it would remind me of that night. Then I would feel scared and the pain would get worse - a vicious cycle. I tried some pain management techniques my doctors recommended. I have to admit, at first I thought they were kind of simple, even stupid, but I did them anyway. Simple things like deep breathing or visualization. At first I did notice that it helped a little bit. Probably the best part is it would distract me from actually thinking about the assault and I would notice the pain wasn’t as bad either. As the pain got better over time, the thoughts and feelings did too. And, the more I tried these things my doctors and therapist recommended, the more I noticed I had more control over my pain and my thoughts and feelings than I thought I had. It was pretty wild to realize I could even control my pain and control my anxiety. It wasn’t easy, and I imagine there are a lot of other people that have had it worse than I had it, but now I am back to doing what I used to do. I want to let other people know they also have the ability to get through something like this."