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Healing often feels better and worse at the same time.

Anger and sadness aren't detours; they're part of the process.

Healing begins when you stop fighting your emotions.

“Is it weird that I feel better and worse at the same time?”

“Huh?” I didn’t expect to hear that from my client, a 62-year-old man with whom I’d been working as a personal trainer.

“Physically, I feel like a million bucks. I’m stronger, and not as cranky.” He paused, holding the medicine ball I’d just handed him. “Then I think about how I should’ve started exercising when I was younger, and I get so mad. And sad. My life could’ve been so much better.”

I was a trainer, not a therapist, and I never knew how to handle these revelations. So, I did what I knew best. “Well, you’re here now, right? Come on, slam that medicine ball with everything you got, and don’t forget to engage your core.”

He laughed, shook his head. “You’re relentless, kid.”

How can someone feel better and worse at the same time? I remember thinking. Years later, as I began working as a therapist, I realized my client was likely experiencing something common on the path from unwell to well: a grief process that blindsides us because we don’t often recognize that healing, too, involves loss.

From Denial to Awareness

The path to healing looks different for everyone. It may include self-help books, journaling, a religious or spiritual practice, yoga, meditation, podcasts, therapy, or any combination of these.

Regardless of the path, we don’t always have the awareness and insight to articulate what, exactly, is wrong and why. What we may know is that we’re tired of not feeling good, and we want........

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