Injuries and #FOMO

Feature photo (above) of Mt. Arrowsmith by Nicole Beaulac.

Fellow outdoorsy people, I know you have been here before.

You are so excited to go on a trip. You’ve been planning for months. You’ve got your gear and your snacks packed. Your friends are picking you up early for an alpine start.

And suddenly, something hurts. Like REALLY hurts. What do you do?

This is my struggle right now.

I’ve been wanting to do the Main Gully of Arrowsmith since … forever. Most groups seem to climb it without ropes or protection, which made me feel intimidated. (Maybe I’d be fine without it, but what if I wasn’t?!)

Earlier this year, two friends and I set out to plan three mountaineering trips just for self-identified women with the Alpine Club of Canada.  Where you could be bad ass climber, but also have space to be yourself.

Tomorrow is the first one, a trip up Arrowsmith’s Main Gully.

And my foot. It hurts. It really hurts.

What makes it worse is that I’ve been taking care of myself. I haven’t been overtraining. I don’t have some old foot injury. I was just laying in bed watching Netflix, got up and ouch. Pain. Hurts so bad I’m limping sort of pain.

I know I should take it easy and rest. No sense overdoing it and hurting myself. I’ve pushed past pain before and lost months to healing many many many many times before.

I know I have to go call my friends and cancel. But I’ve been putting it off because I can’t believe I am missing this opportunity to go on a rad WOMEN-ONLY trip on this route I REALLY want to do.

There is this anxious voice in my head whispering you-will-never-have-this-chance-again over and over again.

This little irrational voice that wants me to take some Advil and push through.  This voice worries hard about being left out, especially when I have to look at everyone else’s photos on social media. #FOMO

After spending decades being an academic super nerd, having so little control over my body is frustrating. I wish I could make my body submit to my will the way I made myself sit down and write a master’s thesis.

But I am stuck with the body that I have. And the only thing I can do is care for it, nurture it and look forward to the next adventure.

What’s your advice for dealing with the emotional side of injuries?

 

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2 thoughts on “Injuries and #FOMO

  1. It’s funny (well not funny but you know) I just wrote a post on this today about dealing with the emotional side of injury and trying to find the good in it. I am just coming back from a running injury and never anticipated how hard it would be mentally and emotionally to deal with it. But at least I knew the cause, your foot injury sounds very frustrating and random! All I can say is trying to see it in the grand scheme of things and wanting to be able to workout and be active long term (versus pushing through injury and being sidelined for even longer) was one of the things that helped me get through it.

    1. I just saw your post go by my Facebook feed. 🙂 I think so many of us suffer from injuries but don’t talk about it.

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