Being injured is no fun. Whether it’s your fault or the fault of someone else, a physical injury can leave you feeling vulnerable and in pain. When you are in this situation, you need to be careful of the advice you take, as it can affect many things like you recovery, you pain levels and even your earning power. To help you do this, we have collected all the worst injury advice you should ignore below. Then you won’t end up in a worse situation with your injury, than when you started.
Man Up
If you have recently injured yourself, and someone is telling you to ‘man up,’ don’t listen. This is nothing but macho rhetoric, and it is very unhelpful. That is because until you have had your injury assessed by a medical professional, you could be doing some permanent damage to your body. ‘Manning up’ is only going make this worse.
It’s also a really sexist way of seeing things, although women say it to. Just because you know the limits of your own body, and you are aware of the pain that you are experiencing, doesn’t mean that you are any less of a person.
Yes, some injuries may seem slight, but they can be very painful. Others can be extreme, like when people are involved in car wrecks. What good is the mantra ‘man up’ to them if they are lying on their hospital bed?
You can’t take time off work
This is another rotten piece of advice that we are given all the time. Once people are injured, they don’t dare take off any time from their job to recover. It is a sad state of affairs that they see their employment position as so tenuous, that a physical injury could put it in danger.
Not taking time off work that you need to recover is so bad for you in the long run. This is because it puts added stress on your system before it is ready to deal with it. Your body is an amazing machine. But it can’t heal itself without the right amount of rest, and pushing through pain often causes, even more, damage. If you look at the long view, you need to realize that it’s not worth putting your long-term recovering in danger, for a few more days off work.
Just do what you used to do
This is one of the worst pieces of advice about injury recovery that we have heard. After many injuries like broken bones, bad sprains, or whiplash, the sufferer cannot just do what they use to do. This is because the body has been weakened or damaged to the point that usual movement is no longer capable.
Yes, you want to get back to the point of doing what you use to be able to do, but you can’t just jump right into it. Instead, you need to take a more measured approach. Go to physiotherapy session, do your homework exercises, and build up slowly to the sort of tasks that you could do before.
Pay for as many treatments as possible
So this one is not good advice. It is expensive and just throwing any and all sort of treatments at an injury can definitely do more harm than good. Some could be unsuitable for the type of injury you have. While others could work against each other.
It is much better to do some research on the type of treatment that is best for your injuries before you start to throw money at them. Speak to your doctor and see what they advise.
If you are struggling to raise money for your treatment you should also consider hiring a personal injury lawyer. Especially if the accident wasn’t your fault. They will be able to get you the compensation that you deserve. This can be put towards your treatment costs, improving your chances of recovery and helping you deal with the trauma of being injured.
Protect your injury at all costs
Lastly, the advice that you should protect your injury at all costs can be a double-edged sword. Absolutely you should protect the damaged areas from further harm. That means no sports or overuse of that part of the body until you have recovered.
However, it is very easy for people to clamp down on pain and refuse to do anything when gentle exercise can be helpful to their recovery. Be careful of this, because doing nothing at all can massively delay the process of getting better.
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