{"id":296,"date":"2025-10-14T13:49:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T12:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/recovery-and-adjustment\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T13:50:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T12:50:36","slug":"recovery-and-adjustment","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/recovery-and-adjustment\/","title":{"rendered":"Recovery, adjustment and pacing."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Each&nbsp;person&#8217;s reaction to a cardiac event is unique.&nbsp;Some people report&nbsp; an initial sense of relief&nbsp; at receiving help and increased appreciation of life. At the same time, it is quite normal to experience early feelings of&nbsp;fear, frustration or irritability.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"960\" height=\"539\" src=\"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/02\/AdjustmentWindingRoad.jpg\" alt=\"Photograph of winding road through hills\" class=\"wp-image-418\" style=\"width:480px;height:270px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/02\/AdjustmentWindingRoad.jpg 960w, https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/02\/AdjustmentWindingRoad-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/02\/AdjustmentWindingRoad-768x431.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Most people will go through a number of different reactions &nbsp;and gradually feel more positive over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While adjusting,&nbsp;people&nbsp;often do too&nbsp;much or too little resulting in them&nbsp;feeling wiped out, sore,&nbsp;fedup and lacking in motivation.&nbsp;This can often be avoided&nbsp;by<strong>&nbsp;pacing activities<\/strong>. However&nbsp;<strong>pacing activities&nbsp;<\/strong>does not come naturally to everyone and some people can find having to make these adjustments in their life somewhat frustrating and can also lead to them feeling fedup and demotivated. The trick is getting the balance right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<strong>Pacing activities<\/strong>&nbsp;is about&nbsp;gradually pacing yourself up to your optimal level of functioning after a cardiac event or new diagnosis.&nbsp;This&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/02\/PacingHandout.docx\">pacing activities handout<\/a>&nbsp;illustrates some of the unhelpful habits and thoughts which can get in the way.&nbsp;It also gives tips&nbsp;for overcoming the urge to do too much or too little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes long term thinking habits can be unhelpful and get in the way of good pacing. This is especially the case when we are very driven by &#8216;shoulds&#8217;, &#8216; musts&#8217; and &#8216;have tos&#8217; or when we have a habit of comparing ourselves negatively to others or two what we used to be like before the cardiac change or event. this is noted in the pacing handout, but you might want to have a look at other potentially unhelpful thinking habits in this handout.<a href=\"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2025\/10\/unhelpfulthinkinghabitswithalternatives.pdf\">Unhelpful Thinking Habits<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For some people, pacing can be hard because they always put other peoples needs before their own. If this is the case for you then you might be interested in this information on self compassion. <a href=\"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2025\/10\/Compassion-Get-self-help.pdf\">Self Compassion<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each&nbsp;person&rsquo;s reaction to a cardiac event is unique.&nbsp;Some people report&nbsp; an initial sense of relief&nbsp; at receiving help and increased appreciation of life. At the same time, it is quite normal to experience early feelings of&nbsp;fear, frustration or irritability. Most people will go through a number of different reactions &nbsp;and gradually feel more positive over<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":14,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/widewidth.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"class_list":["post-296","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"davidmcbain","author_link":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/author\/davidmcbain\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":false,"rttpg_excerpt":"Each&nbsp;person&rsquo;s reaction to a cardiac event is unique.&nbsp;Some people report&nbsp; an initial sense of relief&nbsp; at receiving help and increased appreciation of life. At the same time, it is quite normal to experience early feelings of&nbsp;fear, frustration or irritability. Most people will go through a number of different reactions &nbsp;and gradually feel more positive over","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":685,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/296\/revisions\/685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/services.nhslothian.scot\/cardiacrehabilitation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}