Pain Sometimes Comes Before Healing

I have been physically injured a few times in my life and afterwards have had to participate in physical therapy.  In case you haven’t been in physical therapy before I am here to tell you it is AWFUL and PAINFUL. Initially you go to the doctor broken and hurting and wanted some type of relief and then the doctor writes a referral for physical therapy and some medicine to ease the pain.  The doctor realizes that you will not be able to bounce back without strengthening your muscles and that any other type of treatment will only ease the symptoms and not the root of the problem.  Once you get to physical therapy the physical therapists have you perform certain exercises that target the place where you are broken. This basically makes you move the part of your body that hurts the worse and it seems impossible. As you continue to go to your sessions you then see progression and then they may increase the intensity of the exercises and you can see that the new patients are doing your old exercises.  You start to become the expert and realize that maybe there is some type of method to the madness. The last time I was at physical therapy another patient saw me grimace and he told me that the pain is the only way that I will be healed.  I gave him a look because it didn’t make sense to me. Why do I have to feel worse before I can get better? I realized at that moment I can also take that same concept to emotionally healing.  Sometimes we are broken and then in order to “feel better” you have to first face your problems and the issues that come up and that is truly painful. I realized that emotional therapy is necessary for healing. We have to sometimes fight for our healing!