building new muscles

I started working out again last month and I have to say I forgot what pain was like working with every muscle in the body.

You roll out of bed and feel every muscle in your body burn, your crawling up the stairs from the 100 lunges, squats and leg presses – but it’s a good pain; one to where the results are strength.

In my healing I am doing much of the same. My therapist always compares my healing journey to my weight training in the past.

Every-time I come to a new level in my healing, it’s like building new muscles. You feel a little pain at first, and you are tired and unsure, but the results is much like the same – “strength”.

When I first started therapy 5+ years ago, I was already 2 years into weight training. Coming into therapy and starting the emotional healing was truly a lot harder than I thought. 5 months into my healing and I decided to put my weight training and body building on hold, as it was almost impossible to do both; too many muscles being trained at once (internal and external).

Physical training is so demanding and time consuming, and it takes a lot of energy inside. Emotional healing is so much in parallel to physical training – it takes a lot out of you to the point of exhaustion sometimes.

For me, when I am working so hard emotionally on working through the healing in therapy, I sometimes go home and take a nap. It’s so consuming of the mind, and the soul that the last thing I can do is go to the gym and workout and put my ALL into my physical training.

I took a risk last month when I came back from vacation and decided to put forth my physical training again. Coming out of the hospital of 4 days I felt weak, and felt I needed a change… so I decided to get back into weight lifting again, and I feel I am ready for both.

It’s challenging I will say that! Today as I am sitting here on the couch, I can barely move my ab muscles are killing me, my arms feel like jello, but I know those muscles are being trained for strength. I know that the pain means it’s working.

In healing – I go into therapy, I share, I open up, I feel emotions sometimes I have never felt, and it hurts, but I know it’s the way to healing. It has proven time and time again over the past 5 years that pain creates growth and strength. I would never had been able to do what I do now in therapy even just 2 years ago.

My therapist tells me all the time “you are so unrecognizable from 5 years ago” and I am not going to be  shy to admit “Yes I have changed, in huge ways” and I will continue to change until I feel I have come through this healing out on the other side.

There are things I am doing today I would have NEVER done 5 years ago before therapy – the way I interact with people, the way I approach my problems, the way I reach out and lean in on support, the way I assert myself towards other, and just being confident in myself.

It’s because of the muscles used in both physical and emotional that I can work through each new level I come up against. NO I cannot bench press 150 pounds right now, but with perseverance and strength through the pain, I will over-come and become fit like I once was…. and each time I walk into therapy and explore new feelings and thoughts, it’s new muscles towards my healing.

This is hard work, and sometimes I go through tough tough moments like some I did this weekend, but I know on the other side is something greater than before.