I was pondering this question recently, because it occurred to me that beating knee pain depends first of all on being in the right mental state. Specifically, there are four traits you need.
(1) You need to be receptive to the right message.
I’m not even saying, arrogantly, that it’s necessarily my message. I’d like to think that my message makes a lot of sense. But maybe you disagree. Or maybe you like parts of what I have to say about understanding and healing from knee pain and dislike others.
Nevertheless, you can’t shut yourself off from being receptive that the right message will come along. If regular physical therapy doesn’t work for you (as it didn’t for me), giving up shouldn’t be the default option. The default option should be to study other types of treatments and thoughtfully evaluate them, and keep pushing forward.
(2) You can’t be consumed with negativity.
This seems obvious, but it’s easier said than done. Most people who have tried a lot of things to overcome knee pain, failing many times along the way, become deeply discouraged. That’s not surprising. When something new is suggested, they might think, “Might as well try it, because everything else has failed.”
That heavy negativity weighs you down and prevents you from giving a new treatment a fair chance. Negative people tend to flit from one cure to the next, in manic depressive style, and never stick long enough with something to learn anything useful from it. How many successes do “I can’t do it” people have versus those who embark on new programs with hopefulness, even when things seem bleak?
(3) You have to be prepared to think “outside the box.”
Thinking “inside the box” has failed a lot of knee pain patients over the last few decades. The conventional prescription of muscle strengthening around the joint doesn’t work well for those with really weak knees. It just trashes your joints. And you figure that out quickly, unfortunately.
So what do you replace it with? You should be ready to look at creative, sensible alternatives that maybe aren’t part of a typical physical therapist’s playbook. Discoveries aren’t made by people entranced by the status quo; they’re made by those who dare to think differently.
(4) You need to possess a certain stubbornness, patience and will to persevere.
Healing from knee pain can take a long, long, long time. That’s what I learned. Luckily for me, when I set my sights on a goal, I pursue it with a steady, single-minded determination. And there are other people whose stories appear on this blog, who have shown an even greater singularity of purpose along with complete devotion to doing whatever it takes to get better. And they make the time it took for my recovery, over more than a year, seem downright fast.
Sure, even if you have these four traits, there's a lot of other things you need to do. But I think being in the right frame of mind is where you have to start.
