If you shy away from certain movements or activities because you are afraid the action will be painful, you’re not alone. Many people suffer from this condition – known as kinesiophobia – to varying degrees. However, movement is absolutely crucial for keeping your body strong now and in the future, so we shouldn’t live in fear of movement. Fortunately, you can overcome this fear and improve your overall relationship with movement by connecting with a physical therapist.
Our Relationship With Movement And Activity
Did you know that the majority of people develop a fear or hesitancy of certain movements after an injury, illness or accident? Oftentimes a personal experience can lead to this fear, but it can also develop as a learned trait by watching others. Now, fear can absolutely be a good thing, as it is a natural response to danger and keeps us from doing things like jumping off a roof or driving without a seat belt. But misdirected fear can actually serve to hurt our health.
For example, we work with many clients after sports injuries or joint replacement operations. We understand how past experiences or current discomfort may lead them to want to shy away from activity, but that’s not going to help them make the strongest recovery. Controlled exercise and activity can help to strengthen injured areas, stabilize surgically addressed joints, restore normal flexibility, calm inflammation and treat the root causes of pain. Physical therapy can help us to break out of this fear-based cycle.
If you’re afraid of movement, you’re going to shy away from helpful activities and begin living a more sedentary life. Even if this doesn’t lead to weight gain (which it oftentimes does), your muscles and joints will begin to atrophy because they aren’t being physically challenged. This only leads to further muscle weakening and joint instability, making you even less likely to want to pursue activity. Fear of movement keeps you from moving, and this lack of movement means that you’ll never overcome your fear of movement. It’s a downward and never-ending cycle, unless you choose to break out of it by working with a physical therapist.
The team at OrthoRehab Specialists can help you overcome this hesitancy or fear of movement in a number of ways. We’ll start by conducting a baseline assessment so that we can learn about your body’s strengths and deficits. Next, we’ll develop a physical therapy routine that is catered to your specific needs. This routine will have you perform some movements and exercises that gradually start to push yourself out of your comfort zone. These movements won’t be painful, but they should be a little challenging, because that’s how you make sustainable progress. As you begin to show improvements, we’ll adjust your PT routine so that you can take on bigger challenges until you eventually hit your movement goals. Over the course of a few weeks, we’re confident that we can help improve your relationship with movement.
Finally, we can also talk with you about the mental aspects of movement. While moving is a physical act, the decision to pursue or shy away from activities is purely mental, so we also work with clients to reframe how they view movement in their brain. Instead of framing movement as something that could cause discomfort, we help patients see how movement can actually serve to improve their physical condition and improve their long-term health. Movement is a controllable aspect of your recovery and total body health, and if you approach exercise and activity with the right mindset, you’ll find that it’s easier to seek out movement instead of shy away from it. We can help talk about the mental aspects that go into this change in mindset.
We don’t want you to fear movement. We want you to be excited by the prospect of movement, exercise and activity, so let us help you become physically and mentally capable of taking on greater physical challenges every day. If you need help overcoming a previous injury that is limiting your movement, or if you simply want to improve your functional abilities so that you can keep pursuing all the activities you enjoy, reach out to the team at OrthoRehab Specialists today at (612) 339-2041.