Tidbit from my physical therapist: When you’ve experienced a lot of pain, for example from a ruptured tendon, when you go to try to use that muscle again your brain says, “NO!” Not because it hurts now, but because your brain “knows” that activity will be painful.
I’ve certainly experienced this in physical therapy with my knees… but also elsewhere in my life. Before my dad died, for example, there were things I wanted to tell him, but I way afraid — not because it would hurt now, I suspect, but because by brain “knew” that activity would be painful.
So often we “protect” against the old and imagined hurts, and we don’t experience that we’ve grown past the memory of pain.
To get past it in physical injury, I have to risk, trust, hope, have an ally — and commit. I suspect the same is true with the emotional injuries.