I hurt my back this past summer. It was very painful. It was also the first time that I had experienced that kind of pain, the kind that didn’t go away after a few days. I had to use a cane for two months. I couldn’t walk normally, without pain, for about four months. As an active dad, it was very scary, to feel so limited.
About a month after the injury, after I’d had an MRI that confirmed that I had a herniated disk in my lower back, I finally started Physical Therapy. It was my first time doing Physical Therapy, but I’d heard enough from family and friends, over the years, to know that if I invested energy in the process, it would probably work.
It was a hard, often painful process, participating in Physical Therapy – the whole idea was to move and strengthen muscles that were painful to move. But I could tell, even early in the process, that it was working, and that I was getting better. It was astounding to think about how, slowly but surely, my body was healing – as I understand it, my body slowly broke down and removed the “extruded disk material” in my back, and the inflammation in the surrounding muscles began to decrease.
In terms of Mental Health, this got me thinking about –
(1) Healing takes TIME. More time than most of us want. When we’re uncomfortable or suffering, it is natural to want quick fixes, but sometimes those don’t exist. Any bad situation that has developed over time is also going to resolve over time. It takes what it takes.
(2) Just as the body has some pretty incredible capacity to heal itself, the mind and the spirit do, also. Not in every case, of course – sometimes, you need surgery, or some other more significant intervention. But as one of my past supervisors told me, most people with “mental health problems” have what they need to thrive, already within them – they just need help finding it, unearthing it from under all the rubble of the past.
If you want to begin this healing process and improve your mental health, therapy can help!
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