Healing Hurts, but This Pain Helps You Grow

To be able to make peace with the past, we cannot look away from it. We cannot forget that healing hurts, but this is the only way that we can turn the page and start over.

Healing hurts because you have to touch the wounds, open them and let them heal.

Sometimes, we avoid looking at the parts of us that have not healed. We ignore them as if by doing this they will disappear. However, this is nothing more than an illusion.

For those that don’t want to touch these wounds, they will continue hurting. By looking away from them, you impede its ability to heal and close.

The only way it will get better is by keeping them open.

Healing hurts, but this pain is necessary

We have all gone through times in our lives where a situation that has affected us in some way takes a lot out of us to overcome.

Those that cause us the most pain are the ones that involve our bonds with other people. For example, a breakup or the loss of a loved one can create an emptiness within us that can cause a lot of pain.

But, how can we keep this wound open? How do we prevent it from healing naturally like a wound or a scratch?

We avoid the healing of the wound through different resources that prevent us from accepting the adversity that we’re faced with.

Fall victim to looking for refuge from the pain

Healing hurts the most when we try to find refuge from the pain. We already hurt, the lesion burns, but we keep moving. We rejoice in our misfortune, and we avoid healing it.

It easy to feel like the victim in a situation. Phrases like “How unlucky am I!” or “Why do all of these bad things happen to me!” are heard every day, as well as other complaints about our daily lives.

We’re not victims nor is the world against us. This only increases the pain of the wound that will not heal until we accept what has happened. Regardless of how much we fight it, nothing will change.

Look the other way, distract ourselves

At some point, you have been going through a hard time, and you’ve been told “go out with your friends!” or “don’t stay home feeling sorry for yourself, distract yourself!”

This can be helpful when trying to avoid feeling like a victim, but you cannot take it to the extreme of turning a blind eye and pretending that nothing has happened. Because, by doing this, we don’t learn anything.

As much as we try to change our perspectives on things, the wound will continue to be there, creating problems and hurting the same, or more, than before.

The value of our experiences

Our experiences have a great value, that’s why healing hurts. Only through this pain can we learn something, grow, progress and mature.

Although we might not believe it, when everything is going well we don’t pay attention to it, but when things get tough, everything changes.

Have you realized that when you have a cold and you’re in bed, you realize the value of being healthy? However, you might take it for granted on other times.

This demonstrates how much we can learn when the world seems to be against us and everything is falling apart around us.

Maybe it’s because we have to back up, stop our lives for a moment so that we can start to realize what is really important because, sometimes, we live our lives in auto-pilot.

Healing hurts, but the bad experiences are not a total loss. We can take them as an opportunity to value the good moments and to perceive the beauty in the smallest things which will allow us to really savor life.

Pain helps us grow, we cannot avoid it or try to cover it up with distractions. It’s there for a reason.

Embracing our wounds and paying attention to them allows them to heal faster and therefore, we can avoid wallowing in our suffering and prolonging the unnecessary agony.