The Road to Recovery: 5 Ways to Overcome Challenges and Navigating Your Healing Process

When tragedy strikes, it can feel like an insurmountable obstacle.

A sudden illness or other type of loss makes it difficult to move forward. I know firsthand how difficult finding your healing process becomes.

You may find yourself smothering with all the things you want to do, but at the same time, you’re most in need of support and understanding. A time when you need everything to be taken care of, but nothing seems to be working out. You might feel like things will never get better, or there is no good way out.

Your road to recovery is paved with many challenges and hurdles. Overcoming it all is an awful procedure, and also something inevitable. So finding strength and building your resilience becomes the necessary object. It guides you in those difficult phases, and your unwavering resilience and belief keep you going in times of trials.

I know that some people may read this article and use it as a resource for themselves (rather than me). So I’m going to encourage you to follow me down the road together as we navigate the healing process, but first, hear out my story.

My Healing Journey from Chronic Pain

When I was in my senior year of college, I started to feel a discomfiting stinging sensation in my thigh out of nowhere. Initially, I thought it was just muscle cramps, so ignorance was the best response from me. But after some time, the pain started to impair my walk, making it a reason to see an orthopedic surgeon. The x-ray and MRI reports ruled out that I had a minor stress fracture in my right femoral neck.

At first, my doctor was worried that at such a young age, how could I break my hip? It was only possible if I had osteoporosis or any underlying health issues like thyroid or diabetes. However, after doing some more tests and blood work, it was assumed that I might have been injured because of repetitive injury or just poor bone health. As for the treatment, I was advised to go under 21 days of bed rest and a few months of physiotherapy.

After completing my treatment, I was free from thigh pain, but my lower back pain issue began from there. After getting up from bed rest, my back would ache pretty much on and off. Not wanting to take any risk, I again did some tests to see what was causing the sudden pain. But the reports came out normal. So, I got on with my daily life and occasionally dealt with low back pain.

For a year, everything was normal, but as time passed, I again started to feel thigh pain, at first it was minor swelling, so I would take medicines, and it would go away. But, building up negligence and lack of knowledge on my part made my condition worse.

After some time, I was diagnosed that I had developed hip osteoarthritis and my increased back pain was because of my unstable gait, causing flattening of my lower spinal disc. Turned out that my hip condition had imbalanced my back as well.

Soon my back condition started to affect my daily life. I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes or even sit for half an hour. At the same time, I was drowning in depression as well. But, I was desperate, so I kept looking for my treatment option online. And my back condition was my biggest concern. I had read that the spinal disc conditions are progressive. If I neglect it for a long time, it could paralyze my leg or cause some permanent nerve damage. So the dread kept me motivated through my search.

As a young generation, we always look for our problems on the internet. Which is what I also did. One day, I came across the ANSSI Wellness Center website. It is a spinal decompression treatment center that treats various spinal conditions. It is a non-surgical spine care center that has helped many individuals live pain-free lives without any surgeries or medication. You can learn more about the treatment here.

(Important note: This isn’t an affiliate link. I do not earn any commission for sharing this link. Everything I have shared on this page is based on my personal experience of my treatment, which I wish to share and hope to help other people out there who are going through a similar health condition as mine.)

Just after a few days of taking this treatment, I stopped taking painkillers. The intensity of the pain started to ease gradually. This was pretty impressive. Most of the patients were able to relieve their pain by 80 percent even before the end of the treatment. Even patients who needed a wheelchair or other waking assistance were able to walk freely, but due to my hip condition, my recovery was a bit slower than others. Nevertheless, the fact that this treatment was working on me was short of a wonder to me.

After taking two sessions of decompression treatment, I am now feeling immense relief from pain. I can again perform my daily chores without feeling agonizing pain. This was also a major boost for improving my quality of life as well. And for my hip condition, it is still a long road to recovery.

5 Ways to Discover Your Healing Process

1. Be Conscious of Any Emotional Changes

Coping with pain can feel all-consuming. It can empty you inwardly and make your emotional stability go haywire. If you keep letting your unstable emotions stay surface for a long time, it can trouble your cognitive ability and increase your stress level, which can make your healing process slow.

Allow yourself to feel the full spectrum of your emotions. Acknowledge any overpowering emotions and give yourself permission to express them. It can help you release the weight that has been holding you back and continue your recuperation.

2. Seek Support and Connection

Healing from any health condition or trauma isn’t easy. It comes with an overwhelming process, and dealing with it often drains your mental and physical energy.

There is no need to struggle on your own. Your family and friends also wish for a quick recovery for you. So there is no need to shoulder all the burden yourself. It is okay to sometimes lean on your family or seek support from a professional therapist who can guide you through the healing process.

3. Practicing Self-Compassion

When your healing process takes longer than you would like, your head can become a nasty place. Gradually negative and intrusive thoughts replace positive ones and can disorganize your mental state.

When your mind is filled with pessimist thinking, it becomes challenging to see past irrational assumptions and see your recovery. During, be gentle with yourself. Accept that everyone has a different healing pace and you have to navigate through your own. Give yourself time to heal at your own pace without burdening yourself mentally and emotionally.

4. Cultivate Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a well-known technique that can help in pain management and stress regulation.

It is a type of meditation in which you intentionally pay attention to your thoughts, breathing patterns, and present act. A mindfulness-based pain management therapy has helped many patients with chronic pain management. Making mindfulness a part of your daily rituals helps manage symptoms of stress and also calm your sympathetic nervous system. This simple practice of being present grounds you, and creates a channel that helps coping with chronic pain symptoms.

5. Engage in Self-Discovery

While you are on your way to recovery, you shouldn't stop yourself from indulging and giving way to new discoveries or throwing over your existing work interests. Doing what brings you joy and learning new opportunities for personal growth will not let you wander off the track of your main purpose and also make your recovery less difficult.

Rediscover Your Strength

Going through the recovery and navigating your healing pace is an uncomfortable process. It requires building mental and emotional resilience and also a great deal of patience to go through. But through support and useful practice, you can come out of the challenging situation and build your life with strength and resilience.