What if recovery were a competition? What if someone measured your level of recovery at 2 days, 2 months and 2 years. Would the % that you got better, from baseline to the zenith of recovery beat others?
Is making it a competition a bad thing? There are classic stories, one of which is in Norman Doidge's "The brain that changes itself" of stroke survivors competing against each other within the context of constraint induced therapy.
During most of stroke recovery,
victory is a private affair.
You are the only one who will know if you prevail. You are competing against yourself and for yourself.
3 comments:
Very well said.
I had a friend tell me that he didn't want to work as hard as I do at getting his non dominant hand working again. He caught me off guard but I really respect his self awareness. Our interests are different and and it is not a competition. We each choose how to use our energy.
I am so happy I have found your blog. Not much first-hand information is placed out regarding stroke recovery. I had many small goals that were important to me that may not have been as important to therapists. I found recovery hard with cookie-cut predictions and results. Greater than that, I found success in myself and breaking away from the mold. Thank you for your inspirational, educational blog!
Tara
Agreed, I am very competive and early on figured out I was competing with myself on a daily basis. Always trying to best myself. Could I lift more weight, do more reps, climb more steps, beat my time, on and on...its working because I'm always winning (which makes me happy) and there are no losers.
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