PT self-concept shifts

[mrissa]

So. The vertigo-induced nausea was hanging around causing trouble last night, and it doesn't seem to have gone completely today. This is, as you might imagine, great fun. Wheeee.

The combination of vertigo and PT has been shaking out some parts of my self-image that probably could use reexamining anyway. The down side, of course, has been that I generally think of myself as capable, and have had to deal with being incapable; I generally think of myself as someone who helps others, and have had to receive help instead. But I think it's good for me to have to learn that stuff, particularly as we are seeing progress in the PT, so I don't think I'm having to learn them permanently. (It's a lot easier to say, "Oh, look, a learning experience!" when you have some confidence that you are going to be able to move on to a different learning experience in a time frame smaller than years.)

But I could predict some of that. What I couldn't predict was that the physical therapists would say things to me like, "Well, you're a very physical, very active person," in the same tone as they'd say, "You're about five-foot-six," or, "You're not wearing your glasses today." They treat it as though it was an observable fact. And then I stop and think, and yes, I suppose someone who gets in six varied workouts every week with debilitating vertigo might be considered a very active person. I was thinking of her as a very stubborn person, but stubborn needs direction. Stubborn doesn't exist in a vacuum. And while I feel sure that my saga name would be Mris the Stubborn, as heretical as this may sound, sagas are not everything.* And maybe I should think about branching out in how I consider my own behavior, and not just file everything under "stubborn." And also I need to not assume that's where other people are filing things.

It happened again this week: I was blowing past strengthening exercises as though they were nothing, because they were, and when we got to one set of exercises, the physical therapist said, "Well, you're so strong and have such good control that I don't think any of this is going to be worth your time; just keep up your workouts the way you have been." And I made a squinchy kind of face in my head: Strong? Good control? It was like going up and down the fake slope in the store to see if new boots fit: is that me? Does that work? It doesn't seem to be rubbing funny in the ankle or banging my toe, so...strong. All right. I guess we can do that. I think of my legs in particular as strong; it shouldn't be that big a leap.

I think a big chunk of it is that I don't interact with people on the basis of physical activities much. When I'm steadier, I'll walk or hike with people given the slightest chance, but that's with people I already like for other reasons. I have geek buddies I occasionally hike with; I don't have hiking buddies. I don't have "my girls from the softball team" or "my friend so-and-so from my yoga class." And not only does that mean that I don't identify myself with groups of others who do similar things, but it also means that if someone who is not a professional says that I'm strong, or that I have a lot of stamina or something like that, it goes in one ear and out the other. It doesn't have much to stick to. I don't have a set of comparisons like, "Well, I tend to be more winded than X when we're done with a long run together, but I'm faster on sprints," or, "I always master forms faster than Y, but Y's sparring is way better than mine." That's not the stuff I do. There's just me. And I don't want that stuff; I exercise because I feel physically better when I do, and I'm perfectly happy with it being a solitary activity. It just means that it impinges on my self-concept less, and when it does, it startles me.

So that's a completely unexpected part of this PT stuff, and not entirely unwelcome, either. There are worse things than having something I'm good at when standing in the corner shaking my head is still bad. I'm not a dualist, and I don't want to be a dualist, so I think it's just as well that this keeps me from edging towards a "me vs. the body" mindset. I have vertigo. I am an active person. Not that I am stubborn and the body has vertigo. It's a package deal.

While writing this I've taken breaks to shower and to eat lunch and to do midday PT, and now I'm going to have to get away from the computer for awhile. But first, a few good things in my life:
--Robin's surgery and close examination of his eye went really excellently well yesterday! (!!!!!)
--markgritter is coming home this afternoon (evening at the latest)!
--The Wild won their division championship!**
--I have a whole stack of library books ready for me!
--Tomorrow I will see friends I don't see often enough!

That's far more + than the vertigo crap is -, I'm pretty sure.

*Yes, I know. It's okay if you need to go have a lie-down after reading that.
**Despite extremely inconsistent reffing. Referees: consistency is not just about a theoretically fair game, it's vital to the objective safety of the players. Ya jackasses.

Comments

[pieslut.livejournal.com]

I know that this is so Not The Point of your post, but I am curious about your workouts. I also prefer to exercise alone, and although I've come up with a good routine, it can get boring. You mentioned that you did 6 varied workouts a week, and I was wondering if you might describe them, so I could get some ideas for variety's sake. I fully understand if you do not have the time or the inclination. Many thanks.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

So: four days a week I ride a very broad, very sturdy exercise bike. It has a large controllable variability of resistance, so when I find it's getting too easy, I bring it up another notch. I do 8-10 miles per session, and usually I do that while reading or watching a DVD. It would, by itself, be unbearably boring, and the vertigo makes the reading much tougher (I have to hang on), but the DVDs work fine. On those days I also do some upper body stuff with small (15-25#) weights.

Two days a week I do yoga and/or Pilates for core strength, balance, and flexibility. I've found fairly cheap DVDs in multiple DVD packs at places like Target. There are only a few that are very functional with my vertigo, but I've done enough of them now that I can add in other exercises if I get through the stuff on the DVD that I can do too quickly. It does get boring. Being able to remix routines myself is good, but having a high threshold of boredom is also a good idea. And in my case, it's very clear that the physical therapists have talked about the benefits of the various things I've been doing all along, when it comes to my PT, so I have more incentive than the average person to keep going through the boredom. "It will help me not fall over" is pretty motivational, it turns out; not everybody has that, and the longer-term health motivations like "I am statistically likely to have fewer balance problems in 40 years if I do this now" are really difficult to actually use as motivation for a lot of people.

Mostly, though, I'm just pig-stubborn.

[pieslut.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I get kind of the opposite experience, because I have done sports enough to have a communty based on them. In high school, I could do gymnastics well enough to impress any non-gymnast but I was really pretty bad by the standards of any real gymnast (mostly due to lack of coaching). Now in rowing, real rowers think my form is pretty good but you don't get points for that. Speed matters, and I'm slow. Unfortunately this time it's mostly due to actual physical limitations. Climbing is OK, and I could be very good at it outdoors if I worked on it - but you can't do that without a partner and my partner is more interested in rowing. Indoor climbing, in my opinion, depends more on size so there I'm constrained again. (I think indoor routes tend to be set *by* tall people *for* tall people, and often there's something I just can't reach for a particular route. Outdoors, you use whatever you have and small size is sometimes its own compensation.) Basically I've had to learn to value the activity for its own sake and that competing is more fun than not competing even when you know how it will end.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I think that either "I enjoy competition" or "I do not enjoy competition" would be false for me: the circumstances in which I enjoy competition are extremely specific, I think. One of the factors here is that I don't enjoy beating people when it matters to them and doesn't matter to me. And on a competitive level, most physical stuff just doesn't matter to me -- so the social risk is there every time. Does that make any sense?

The only physical thing where the competition was ever any fun for me was running when I was a kid. I liked running really fast, but I also liked being faster than other people. Particularly boys; when I was in the 7-9 age range, I loved running faster than all the boys in my class. Then I got boobs, more or less overnight, and I was still fast, but the body mechanics of running felt significantly different, and significantly worse. I was still beating my classmates regularly, but that wasn't enough to make up for not enjoying the running itself any more. And then grown-ups tried to push everybody into doing late grade school track and field, and that was really the end of that; "everyone's doing it" and "you could win and then the school would be proud of itself (oh and by the way of you)" are two of the worst motivations a person could possibly apply to a young Mris.

(Coincidentally they are very similar to the motivations the department head attempted to apply when I went to quit grad school. Wrong; thanks for playing, no parting gifts for you.)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

It's not so much about beating other people for me. The thing about rowing is, training is boring and futile unless I'm training for something. Otherwise, well, I can go out and row for fun but there's nothing to make me push myself, and then I can feel myself getting less fit. But working out just for the sake of fitness isn't enough for me - if I'm going to do that, I'll use a rowing machine, which isn't any fun at all but is much more convenient and faster (don't have to worry about weather, don't have to go out to the boathouse, don't have to carry the boat out and in and wipe it down afterward and so on.

And setting myself an arbitrary goal, say of reaching a certain speed for 1000 meters, feels arbitrary and pointless. So competition works for me, even if my goal there is only not to be DFL rather than to win. The exception is in the case of a marathon, where finishing is victory enough however long it takes, but even there it's more fun if it's a big arranged marathon rather than me on my own.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Heh. Here in Minnesota, DFL has a rather different (and -- in most circles -- more polite) meaning.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Really? What?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Democratic Farm and Labor Party. It's the official name of the Dems in this state.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Wow. There's something I've totally never heard before. (For some reason, it sounds like something I should have known, though there's no good reason why.)

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

What lovely positives you have there! And isn't it nice to suddenly recognize something good in yourself that you had no idea others saw in you? Perspective is funny that way; even things you think are true aren't necessarily the things others see, and in that way the same piece of familiar information can suddenly be new and exciting and a learning experience. I'm glad you are able to turn this mostly unpleasant experience into something positive. For your sake, though, I still hope the vertigo goes away sooner rather than later.

Hadn't heard about Robin; thanks for the update! YAY!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I could go with sooner rather than later, too, thanks!

[redbird]

I don't do six workouts a week, but I think our attitudes towards our workouts are similar: I feel better (physically and mentally) when I exercise regularly, and I'm not at all interested in team sports, nor do I need workout partners. Long walks with people I like, yes--but those are as much for the companionship and to see what's out there any given month as for the exercise.

Very good point about stubborn needing a direction: someone else's saga name might be Njal the Stubborn, and they'd be known for always getting the cattle to market, because they wouldn't let storms or raiders or anything else get in the way, but it wouldn't necessarily have to do with physical exercise: convincing those cattle to get on a ship and having someone else row them across the Channel would be fine.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Or Njal's brother Olaf the Stubborn could be very stubborn about always sitting on his butt. Really it varies nearly as far as the range of human behavior does. Nearly.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I have always hated working out with anybody. Granted, I don't *ever* *like* working out (afterwards, usually, but never during). But I much prefer to do it alone.