many people have said to me through my many injuries that all things happen for a reason. being injured gives you time to think and reconsider things as such. a break is never a bad thing. ok so they may have a point. in fact i would say they do have a very good point. i have found you can learn a lot from being injured so I'm going to try to discuss it. one thing i will say though is that everyone will learn different things and well perhaps i had quite a lot i needed to learn and still quite a lot im still learning. (i think i may have confused you by this point so i shall give a bit of background history of me so you can get an idea of me)
i reckon the easiest thing to do is go back about 4 years to me aged almost 14. now at this time it would be fair to say i was rather unhappy most of the time. i was having an interesting time at school and had been for the past 8 years. my self esteem was pretty much at rock bottom and most of the time i hardly talked. when i did it tended to be one word answers. if you saw me smile you should have probably taken a picture to prove it as it happened so little. i was a moody, scared (of people mainly) and rather unhappy kid at that point. didnt trust anyone (inculding belayers which is not useful for climbing) and lived my life by a rather odd set of rules to try and avoid any more hurt than i had experienced already. i had built up the wall around me for so long i didnt even know how to see over the top and all in all it wasnt a great place to be.
it would be fair to say at that point that climbing was the one good thing i had. it was where my friends were it was the only place i got anywhere near feeling happy. when i climbed i didnt have to think about anything else going on in my life at all. it was teaching me how to trust people something i had lost years ago. i still wouldnt trust easily but i was getting towards being able to trust a few friends to belay me and such. i had also started to climb reasonably well. my head was holding me back massively but things didnt seem as bad when i was in a climbing centre. there were still problems though my lack of trust meant i refused to fall off lead and was very nervous of falling off boulders although i was getting better at that. i also have a fantastic ability to talk myself out of things. this really didnt help (somehow) and caused problems for me in competitions. my self belief was still practically non existant but when climbing it was a tad better than other parts of my life.
as i have said in previous blogs i had pretty much buried myself deep within climbing. it was my comfort blanket for the real world. my head was buried so deeply in the sand it would have probably taken a good few days to get down to it even with heavy drilling equipment. so not the perfect time to get injured then? (ok so there is never a great time but i was so heavily dependent at that point it really didnt help)
so back grounding over time to move on to what im really driving at. i was 14. i was injured and the world had ended!(fine, the world may not have really ended but i sure felt like it had)
lesson 1: trust
climbing had taught me a fair amount about trust. i could now trust someone with my life. (not many people but in comps i would happily trust total strangers to belay me but at the same time if a member of my family was at the other end of the rope it would be a very different story.) so this was progress but much to my surprise i learned more about trust from not climbing than from climbing.
now id only been injured a week but it was still upsetting me a lot. i was standing in ratho watching my friends climb and started crying (i cry a lot if you didant already know) one of my friends saw and decided what i needed to do was stick my head under one of the hand dryers in the toilets (dont ask me why) so she grabbed my wrist and off we went. from there i did something i hadnt done for years. i started to talk about "things". i had bottled up my emotions for pretty much 8 years and now for the first time they were literally spilling out of me. (in hindsight i feel very sorry for the 2 people stood through all this i think we were there for the best part of an hour and they very patiently listening to all i had to say). for the first time in about 8 years i had trusted people with secrets that i had sworn to myself never to tell. and it felt as though a massive weight had been removed from my shoulders.
now im not going to claim that i only did this because of not being able to climb. i would have probably learned not to bottle everything up in time. but for me i think it helped. not climbing had tipped a balance that had been ready to go for a long time. once the flood gates were opened progress could start to be made. i learned to talk to others and listen to them. that day i got lots of useful advice which helped me greatly. i have continued to work on my ability to trust people and now 3 and a half years, 12 finger injuries and many many conversations later it would be fair to say im getting there.
lesson 2: how to use spare time
due to my some what lacking social life i tend to have a fair amount of spare time. seeing as practically all my socialising is done within climbing centres when i cant climb my spare time seems to take over. on that day in ratho i was given a few ideas of what i could do with the masses of time i now had. previously i tended to slip into climbing day dreams when i had nothing else to do and lose myself in them. this however wasnt very productive and tended to make me miss climbing more. i needed a new strategy to use my spare time.
the ideas i was given ranged hugely. i wasnt quite sure what to think about some of them but here they are:
1) get a boy friend?!?! erm what? ok so the idea was then teach them to climb. i can't say i thought much of this idea really. the small problem being i didnt want to be in a relationship with anyone.
2) write a book. ok so it would keep me entertained but i had nothing i could really write about so this was a non starter as well.
3) do lots of core. ughh i hated core at the point. no way was this happening.
4) spend some time thinking about things going on in your life and try to adress them. hmm ok this might have something.
5) help out with younger climbers at the local wall. again seemed good to me.
in the end i went with 4 and 5. i enjoyed helping out with the young kids at the local wall so went down as often as i had when i was climbing most weeks. this helped keep me involved and seeing my friends which helped the time pass hugely. thinking was not something i had been doing much of. it was far easier to just climb when things got too much but now i really needed to start adressing things. i could no longer bury my head in the sand. so i started going out on my bike for a few hours most days and found that i could think in a less emotional way about things i had previously kept hidden. after talking about them i was able to think about them. this was hugely liberating for me and marked the start of my journey of growing up. (ok part of me really does not want to grow up at all so is planing to stay young and immature forever but i wouldnt want to be old and boring). so by being injured i was forced to think about my life and become aware of things i could do to make it better for myself. things i had previously not tried to do because it was a lot easier to just go climbing.
lesson 3: its ok to ask for help
i have always been very independent. often i refuse help even though i really want some. part of this is because i always have. as a child i would never really expect help unless i had no other option. i was scared that people would see needing help as a "weakness" of sorts and i didnt want anyone to think i was weak. so i did everything i could for myself with as little outside interference as possible. but something I have learned through my injuries especially the one i have right now is you cant do everything for yourself all of the time and some times its ok to ask for a bit of help every now and again.
within climbing we help each other a lot whether it is giving beta, belaying or spotting for a friend. i had grown used to this over time and it was one of the things i loved about climbing. i felt safe in climbing so things like mutually helping others and getting help in return didnt seem so strange. but its only been in the last year or so that i have been abe to branch this out to my normal life. somthing i never thought i could do.
recently i have had to ask for help as i cant do everything i used to. my arms have a bad habit of stopping and hurting so much and I end up hopping about and swearing under my breath which is not uncommon on occasions. but ive needed to learn these lessons. now seeing as i cant use them how i used to i have had to ask for help. help to fix them, help to fix me and help to deal with all the emotions that come with it as previously described.
Trust!this blog wouldnt have happened if i had never been injured but im not doing this alone. the offer of help from a friend is what prompted me to really give it a go. she gave me the confidence to write it, she reads everything through before i post it to make sure its spelled correctly and makes sense but she also gives me the confidence to write what i really think. shes helped me so much but i would never have learned to accept her help if it hadnt been for the injuries. although they have hurt me more than i can say they have taught me many things.
looking back it can often seem to me that i got injured at points of my life when i needed to change things. and in their own small way the injuries gave me a chance to start to make those changes. the things i have mentioned in this blog are all very personal. most people will not be needing to learn to trust or understand that getting help is ok but i did and now progress has been made. i have written here about a few small things that relate directly to me but in the continuation of this i will talk about the more general side.
one thing i would like to say is that there are many inspirational people i have met who have helped me find things i need to learn and who have helped me learn them. they have showed me how to stay positive and make a success of what would otherwise be something that could crush you.
recently i learned a man (john ellison) i have often seen at competitions and who i have always respected greatly for his enthusiasm and willingness to help everyone no matter who they are (he has help cheered me up many times before when i was upset at my performance and always has a kind word to say to no matter how busy he seems if you look like you need it) has got terminal cancer. this is far bigger than any amount of injuries but he is not letting it stop him. climbers against cancer seems to have taken over the internet within climbing circles. john is using his illness to help as many people as possible. the t shirts have been worn by many influential climbers and his message is being spread fast.
for me it carries 2 meanings. one is that no matter how bad things seem we can make a success of them in a small way if we try and the other is we must never just lie down and let things happen. something good can come out of any bad situation. i would like to say that i have found john extremely inspiring with his ability to deal with something as big as cancer. i find it hard to cope with not climbing but when i look at him it gives me strength to carry on and shows me just how important human spirit is. and becasue of this and because i want to do something in my own small way to help john and cac (the money raised goes to cancer research) im going to donate 1 penny per every read of this blog to cac and ask everyone who reads this to get a tshirt to help support the cause. thanks :) www.climbersagainstcancer.org
in my next blog im going to talk about the more general things i think you can learn from injury. the stuff that may take a bit of looking for but we can all find. in the mean time anyone who is having a bad time with injuries. please look at john for an example of how to cope with a bad time! hes amazing.(i cant say im a great example but he really is and we can all learn from him!)
