Growing Pains: Why Healing Can Be Painful
You are actively working on yourself either in therapy or through journaling or group work or all the above. You are committed to taking care of yourself and healing past wounds that have been open for a good chunk of your life. Things would feel easier once you start feeling better, right? Healing is not always linear.
Change is Hard
Whether you are trying to change habits with putting your keys away in a certain spot so you don’t lose them or changing the way you treat yourself, change is hard. Even when you want it. Especially when you want it. Times of changes and transitions are not usually for the faint of heart, even biologically.
Pain of Growth Spurts
Infants, toddlers, and teenagers are no strangers to transitioning and growing. As an infant, teeth are coming through their gums and it is all kinds of uncomfortable. Babies get fussy, chew everything possible to ease the pain, and requires lots of extra snuggles and love to support them. Teenagers with growth spurts experience pain throughout the body as the limbs and joints are lengthening.
Even individuals who have menstrual cycles and the changing out of uterine walls. The changing of the cervix when a birthing person is laboring a baby. These are all biological and they do have an end and are uncomfortable in their own way. So why would we expect emotional and mental changes to not be uncomfortable either?
Emotional and Mental Changes
We as people are used to the status quo, even if that means that our mood is low or we are anxious and having horrible thoughts. We know what to expect when we feel like shit. We know what happens next and what to do, even though we do not like it. So, when you start feeling better or having less negative or self-abusing thoughts, it can be really unsettling. It’s like you’re having to get to know this new person and you do not know what to expect. That is pretty terrifying even if you’re getting relief from the anxiety and emotional pain.
How to Cope
You have to be kind to yourself as you’re working through your stuff. If you need to take a break to sit with the discomfort, do so. Let yourself cry. Let yourself feel all the feelings in less graceful ways. But do not put yourself down because you are doing the best that you can given what you got. It is uncomfortable healing and growing so make room for the discomfort and find activities or people to be around or do things with to help lessen the intensity if it feels too much. You will get over this hurdle as long as you don’t completely avoid it and the feeling of feeling better will become part of your new norm.
You don’t have to enjoy the process, but trust the process.
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