Jeff Langmaid (speaker) discusses how clinicians often become desensitized to common injuries while patients—especially those with little prior knowledge—experience fear and catastrophic worry. He emphasizes that the psychological component (fear, apprehension, questions about physiology/biomechanics) is crucial in treating athletes whose performance or livelihood may be at stake.
We see patients all day, every day, and sometimes things can become kind of old hat. We see people in extreme back pain. We're empathetic, but we've seen it so many times, it's a different story. For the other side of that coin, that person, especially if they've never dealt with an injury before, it's like catastrophically life changing. Think about how nervous you would be if you had an injury and how apprehensive and how many questions you might have. And that's with the knowledge level that you already have. Most people coming into your practice, they know little to nothing about their physiology. Biomechanics, they know nothing at all. So it can be super, super scary. And as an athlete, whether you're a young athlete trying to perform on a team, a college athlete, maybe trying to go to the next level, a professional or semi professional, now your livelihood's involved, these can become really big issues really, really quickly. And that is where the psychological component is so, so important.
