I started writing a blog post about breaking my shoulder in March and the impact on my mental health, but it's evolved into 2 posts and here is the first, but probably second as it's reflecting on how the injury has impacted my life.
Reflecting on the impact of this injury on last year has allowed me to have some fairly large realisations on my personality and how certain traits feed into my mental health.
In early 2017 I had some CBT therapy that helped me to realise that I have low self esteem. If you know me, even quite well, that might not be very evident as my low self esteem through my school years, university and into adult life has generally represented itself as competitiveness which to the outside observer would generally appear fairly successful and well adapted behaviour.
At school I worked extremely hard and at one point our class was told to "stop doing extra homework!" Yes I really was that geeky! I got a good bunch of GCSEs and A-Levels, but I remember looking at the results table for my school and endlessly comparing what I had achieved to everyone else. By doing this I was trying to tell myself - I'm better than x in my class, so I'm an ok person. In year 10 I was in the top set for Maths and was at the bottom of the class, my teacher compared my grades to the set below and suggested I might be better suited to moving down, but my best friend was in the top set with me and so I took the opportunity to complete a maths text book on quadratic equations over the summer holidays and happily achieved an A grade. If I had moved down then it would confirm my fears that I was actually as stupid as I feared.
After graduating I then started a job in recruitment. Initially I liked the idea of helping people find jobs as a career and hadn't necessarily appreciated as a more naive graduate that actually it often boils down to a sales job (although you do genuinely get a buzz from getting someone a life changing better job!). This allowed me another method of validation - if I bill more fees than x colleague, I'm better than them, I'm a worthy person, I hopefully won't get fired (read up on imposter syndrome for more about this fear!) If I look at my work performances over the past 17 years, frequently my better months/quarters/years correlate very neatly with my poorest points of mental health.
In 2004 at probably my lowest ever point of mental health, I signed up to run a 5K Race for Life for my Aunty Mary who had breast cancer and thankfully then discovered how running and exercise can positively impact mental health. It is however very easy to fall into the same trap with the amount of easily available race statistics and how you can literally overtake people and say in a race "I'm better than that person I just overtook, so I'm worth something"
I was really worried that with my shoulder I would not be able to run and also would lose an avenue of "validation" as my times got slower. In reality it's given me a different perspective.
When I was worried I couldn't do something I loved like running for a really long time and I eventually got the chance to run again, I realised that there is something really nice about just being able to run. To be able to smell the fresh air, feel sun, rain and wind on your face and see some of the beautiful views you only get to see when your own 2 feet take you there. The opportunity to run with Alan and chat without distractions and run with friends and meet new people. The opportunity to lead running groups and help others to find the benefits and joy of running.
It made me realise that gratitude for just being able to run is more important than being uber competitive about your parkrun time and as my Facebook is full of runners, it also made me realise that humility in your own running ability is something to aspire to. It's great to celebrate success and achievement, but it's worth appreciating that someone getting out of bed when they felt barely able to do so and running a parkrun is probably more of a personal achievement than shaving 2 seconds off your best time. It's always worth remembering you don't know what is going on in someone's mind and in their life or in their body for that matter.
We live in a world now of constant and inescapable comparison with others. Thankfully when I was at school I only had 149 others in my year to compare myself against, but now thanks to Instagram, Facebook and Social Media we are bombarded with images of people better looking than us, achieving bigger and better things than us and probably running longer and faster than us. Does that mean that we are any less as people than before social media? It really doesn't and the one thing that I have come to value more than anything this year never really makes it onto social media for comparison and that is kindness.
Kindness from those close to me like Alan helping me get dressed and cooking whilst I was one armed, kindness from my friends and family like Jenny taking me home from the hospital for my operation (and lots of offers from friends to do the same) and even from strangers like the lady who picked me up when I was struggling to catch the train and dropped me off at the station.
I'm still competitive, i'll still try and overtake that last person at the finish and beat my best time (now I measure my times in the context of post shoulder injury), but I also run each time appreciating that I don't know what the future holds and to run each run as if it was my last and make it one to remember as I'll always want to remember the joy that just being able to run can give and you'll never know what life might throw at you that might just get in the way of the small things that you never realised gave you so much joy.
Reflecting on the impact of this injury on last year has allowed me to have some fairly large realisations on my personality and how certain traits feed into my mental health.
In early 2017 I had some CBT therapy that helped me to realise that I have low self esteem. If you know me, even quite well, that might not be very evident as my low self esteem through my school years, university and into adult life has generally represented itself as competitiveness which to the outside observer would generally appear fairly successful and well adapted behaviour.
At school I worked extremely hard and at one point our class was told to "stop doing extra homework!" Yes I really was that geeky! I got a good bunch of GCSEs and A-Levels, but I remember looking at the results table for my school and endlessly comparing what I had achieved to everyone else. By doing this I was trying to tell myself - I'm better than x in my class, so I'm an ok person. In year 10 I was in the top set for Maths and was at the bottom of the class, my teacher compared my grades to the set below and suggested I might be better suited to moving down, but my best friend was in the top set with me and so I took the opportunity to complete a maths text book on quadratic equations over the summer holidays and happily achieved an A grade. If I had moved down then it would confirm my fears that I was actually as stupid as I feared.
After graduating I then started a job in recruitment. Initially I liked the idea of helping people find jobs as a career and hadn't necessarily appreciated as a more naive graduate that actually it often boils down to a sales job (although you do genuinely get a buzz from getting someone a life changing better job!). This allowed me another method of validation - if I bill more fees than x colleague, I'm better than them, I'm a worthy person, I hopefully won't get fired (read up on imposter syndrome for more about this fear!) If I look at my work performances over the past 17 years, frequently my better months/quarters/years correlate very neatly with my poorest points of mental health.
In 2004 at probably my lowest ever point of mental health, I signed up to run a 5K Race for Life for my Aunty Mary who had breast cancer and thankfully then discovered how running and exercise can positively impact mental health. It is however very easy to fall into the same trap with the amount of easily available race statistics and how you can literally overtake people and say in a race "I'm better than that person I just overtook, so I'm worth something"
I was really worried that with my shoulder I would not be able to run and also would lose an avenue of "validation" as my times got slower. In reality it's given me a different perspective.
When I was worried I couldn't do something I loved like running for a really long time and I eventually got the chance to run again, I realised that there is something really nice about just being able to run. To be able to smell the fresh air, feel sun, rain and wind on your face and see some of the beautiful views you only get to see when your own 2 feet take you there. The opportunity to run with Alan and chat without distractions and run with friends and meet new people. The opportunity to lead running groups and help others to find the benefits and joy of running.
It made me realise that gratitude for just being able to run is more important than being uber competitive about your parkrun time and as my Facebook is full of runners, it also made me realise that humility in your own running ability is something to aspire to. It's great to celebrate success and achievement, but it's worth appreciating that someone getting out of bed when they felt barely able to do so and running a parkrun is probably more of a personal achievement than shaving 2 seconds off your best time. It's always worth remembering you don't know what is going on in someone's mind and in their life or in their body for that matter.
We live in a world now of constant and inescapable comparison with others. Thankfully when I was at school I only had 149 others in my year to compare myself against, but now thanks to Instagram, Facebook and Social Media we are bombarded with images of people better looking than us, achieving bigger and better things than us and probably running longer and faster than us. Does that mean that we are any less as people than before social media? It really doesn't and the one thing that I have come to value more than anything this year never really makes it onto social media for comparison and that is kindness.
Kindness from those close to me like Alan helping me get dressed and cooking whilst I was one armed, kindness from my friends and family like Jenny taking me home from the hospital for my operation (and lots of offers from friends to do the same) and even from strangers like the lady who picked me up when I was struggling to catch the train and dropped me off at the station.
I'm still competitive, i'll still try and overtake that last person at the finish and beat my best time (now I measure my times in the context of post shoulder injury), but I also run each time appreciating that I don't know what the future holds and to run each run as if it was my last and make it one to remember as I'll always want to remember the joy that just being able to run can give and you'll never know what life might throw at you that might just get in the way of the small things that you never realised gave you so much joy.
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