You did the work. You followed every rule your doctor and PT gave you. And you still hit a setback. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Setbacks in injury recovery are almost universal. They don’t mean you’re failing, and they don’t mean all is lost. Certified Mental Performance Consultant Carrie Jackson breaks down why setbacks happen even when you’re doing everything right, and how to move through one without losing your progress or your mind.
You did everything right. You followed the protocol, showed up to every appointment, iced when you were supposed to ice, rested when you were supposed to rest. You did the rehab exercise when you weren’t sure you could, and held yourself back when you thought it was better to be conservative than to push too hard too soon. You did it all, everything that was asked of you, and then it happened anyway. The pain came back, the swelling returned, the MRI showed something you didn’t expect. So why, if you did everything you were supposed to do, are you still dealing with a setback?
Here’s the truth: recovery was never going to be a straight line. Believe me, I know how much that sucks to hear. But the truth is, very rarely, if ever, does anyone heal with a perfect upward trajectory. Setbacks aren’t a sign that you failed. They’re not proof that something is wrong with you, or that you didn’t try hard enough. They’re simply part of the process — which doesn’t make them any less frustrating, frightening, or unfair-feeling when they happen to you.
- Setbacks are one of the most common aspects of injury recovery; you are not alone
- They don’t necessarily mean you’re moving backward, even when it feels that way
- Understanding why they happen is the first step to getting through one without spiraling
What Is a Setback, Really?
There are certain points during recovery when distressing emotions tend to crop up, and hitting a setback is one of the biggest ones. Fear, frustration, confusion, anger, sadness, grief — these are all common feelings when something during your recovery isn’t going as planned.
Maybe your original diagnosis was incorrect. Maybe your body isn’t healing on the timeline you’d hoped for (or were told). Maybe your rehab was going great and then, out of nowhere, you’re in pain and have to take a few days off. Maybe you got excited, did too much too soon, and ended up re-injured.
Here is an important distinction when it comes to evaluating setbacks: some of these situations are true setbacks. Others are only perceived as setbacks, when really, there’s simply an adjustment that needs to be made. It’s the distressing emotions themselves that push you toward worst-case-scenario thinking and make you interpret something as a setback when it might just be a temporary detour. It’s your brain’s negativity bias that catastrophizes the setback into a lost cause. You have to be in charge of keeping your brain in check and make sure it is engaged in a challenge mindset mode instead of a my-whole-world-is-falling-apart-threat-based mode.
Unfortunately (and I truly mean unfortunately) setbacks, real or perceived, are common. Very rarely, if ever, does anyone heal with a perfect upward trajectory. With setbacks, it’s often not a matter of if— it’s a matter of when. Which is exactly why it’s worth building your skills of resilience and hardiness now, so you’re not completely derailed when one shows up.
Why Does It Feel Like Recovery Should Be a Straight Line?
If you’re wondering why this catches you so off guard every time, here’s why: you want recovery to be linear. You want there to be a tit-for-tat. If I do the work, I should reap the reward. I did what I was supposed to do, so why am I being punished? This is the template you are used to. In sport you do the work and you see improvement, so it catches you off-guard when the same doesn’t apply when you’re injured.
Many years ago, at a little place I lived at in Petaluma, I turned my front yard into a vegetable garden. I went all in and decided to plant seeds directly into the ground. No starter plants, and no raised beds. And it worked! It took a lot of work, but I did it and I had this beautiful, flourishing garden. One day I was working in the garden and caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked to my right and saw that the leafy green top of a carrot was wiggling. I stared at it, trying to figure out what I was looking at, and then, right in front of me, it got yanked straight down into the earth and disappeared. Whoosh! I was stunned! I was so shocked. I didn’t even have time to think about what to do when I saw another one disappear. And then another one!
Gophers. Did they know how hard I had worked to grow those carrots!! I was so upset. I had done everything right to grow those carrots, until that gopher taught me a lesson. I had no idea I needed a layer of chicken wire underground to protect them from something I couldn’t see coming.
That’s what a setback can feel like. You can do everything right and still lose ground to something you had no way of knowing to protect against. Feeling like you’re being punished is a common cognitive distortion around fairness and control. And underneath it, more often than not, is fear. Fear that it isn’t working. Fear that you won’t be healed. Fear of what this means for the rest of your life.
Here’s what’s important to remember: a setback doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving backward, and it doesn’t mean you’re back to square one. That’s the fear talking. That’s the fear that shows up when you’re already feeling vulnerable and broken, and something happens that sets off the thought, I can’t go through this again. I don’t want to lose this again. What you need to know is that the feeling of it — and the fear of it — is sometimes so much bigger than the reality of it. Because fear sends you time-traveling into the future, entertaining every single “what if” your brain can possibly generate.
Why Do Setbacks Keep Happening Even When You’re Doing Everything Right?
This is the question that breaks people: I followed every rule. I did the work. So why do I keep having setbacks?
Here’s the honest answer — sometimes there isn’t a reason that will feel satisfying. When you’re dealing with setback after setback, it doesn’t feel like one isolated incident. It feels like each one stacks on top of the last, until the weight of it all makes you want to give up.
One thing that helps: expect the unexpected setback. So when it happens, instead of spiraling, you can say to yourself — ah yes, here it is.
In Rebound, I talk about the personality trait of hardiness, which is made up of three elements: commitment, control, and challenge.
- Commitment is the ability to persevere and keep putting one foot in front of the other even when things are hard.
- Control is the ability to not feel helpless when faced with difficulty.
- Challenge is the inclination to view stressors as a normal, ongoing part of life rather than a personal attack.
No matter if this is your 1st setback or your 31st, your commitment, control, and challenge are what will carry you through it.
And here’s the part that matters most: how you think about a setback determines how you react to it. There are minor setbacks and major setbacks, but sometimes you turn a minor one into a major one simply because of the language you use to describe it to yourself. The way you talk to yourself matters. It influences everything.
How Do You Get Through a Setback? Go F.A.R.
When you hit a setback, it’s frustrating, aggravating, disappointing, and scary — and you’re allowed to feel all of that. But when you stay consumed by fear and frustration, it can get in the way of your ability to understand what’s actually happening in your body, and to communicate that clearly to your healthcare providers.
This is where I want you to use a tool from Rebound: Go F.A.R. If you want to go far in your recovery, you have to Feel, Accept, Recover.
Feel. Take a beat. Take a breath. Label what you’re feeling in this moment. Don’t skip this step or rush past it. You absolutely have to feel your feelings first. When you don’t, you stay stuck in the fear, assessing the setback as a threat and fight against the reality of it, which does not change the reality of it.
Accept. Accept what your body is telling you, right now, as it is. Not what you wish were true. Not what you were hoping for. What’s actually happening. When you allow yourself to feel upset, you allow yourself to settle into acceptance.
Recover. Decide what you need to do to address it. Not what you want to do. Not what you’d prefer to do. What you need to do. Fighting against the reality of what’s happening can prolong your distress and it can lengthen the time it takes for you to actually take care of your body.
Once you’ve moved through Feel-Accept-Recover, it can help to remind yourself that how you’re feeling right now — both physically and mentally — isn’t necessarily how you’ll always feel. In the moment, a setback can feel like this is it, this is how it’s going to be forever. That’s not necessarily true. It just feels that way because you’re standing too close to it.
What if the Setback is a Re-Injury?
Sometimes a setback isn’t a flare-up or a slower-than-expected week. Sometimes it’s the same injury, again. If that’s what you’re navigating right now, know this: it’s harder. It just is. Re-injury doesn’t just set your body back, it can shake the trust you’d started to rebuild in it. You did the rehab. You showed up. And now you’re being asked to trust the process again, from a place that feels less certain than the first time.
That trust doesn’t come back all at once. It gets rebuilt the same way it did before. It gets built back one step at a time, one milestone at a time. It gets built back with the same mental training tools that helped the first time, which means Go F.A.R. still applies here. Setbacks are part of the deal, but even knowing this doesn’t mean they aren’t incredibly challenging to deal with.
Try not to get hijacked and think that you did something wrong, or that your body will always be broken because it is inherently broken. Healing very rarely moves in a straight line, even when you think it is for other people. The gophers show up. The MRI surprises you. The pain flares when you least expect it. What matters isn’t whether you hit a setback. It’s what you do next.
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone — and you don’t have to navigate it alone either. Tune into the Injured Athletes Club podcast for real conversations with real athletes navigating the hard stuff, or pick up a copy of Rebound for a full guide to the psychological side of injury recovery. Because healing isn’t just physical — it’s mental and emotional too.