Scar Tissue, Trust, and the Work of Healing
When I was younger and perhaps less risk averse than I found myself in my wiser years, I got horribly injured in a poorly thought-out pleasure boat incident. Unfortunately for you, that’s all I’ll say here. But the point of this enticing information is that I had to do a ton of treatment and rehab for my back. I went to physical therapy nearly every day for months. While I was there, the physical therapist grabbed my ankle, which, in my not-physiologically-trained-mind, made no sense because... I was there for my back, not my ankle. What was this gal doing? But she rolled it around and said “Whoa, you’ve got a lot of scar tissue in here,” and I nodded and said, “The other one is probably the same, I might have broken them when I was younger.” She deftly rolled the other ankle in her small and mighty hands and confirmed it was the same. I didn’t understand what she was doing, but I trusted her expertise enough to follow her lead. That same trust is what makes therapy work, too.
She didn't know exactly what happened, and she didn’t need to know to understand that I had sustained serious injuries that were not treated properly. And I trusted her enough and understood my own gap of knowledge in a way that made me comfortable in leaning on her process. Turns out... our bodies all work together! So, my horribly stiff ankles can cause a lot of back issues if I don’t work on them. Sometimes what we feel is hurting right now is not the whole story and it is hard to grasp the ramifications of past hurts.
Okay, so, why all this information about my random injuries on a mental health blog? Fair question! Because sometimes therapy does not feel as straight forward as other parts of our health. We go to a physical therapist and assume a back injury means we will focus on the back, and when we inevitably have to work on our hips, knees, ankles, and more, we might get confused. But we can see a chart of nerves and ligaments that roughly makes sense to us and tells us we probably aren’t wasting our time. In mental health, that’s a little trickier.
So many of us have scar tissue, and we don’t even know it. Just as my ankles had quietly carried old injuries, so do many of us carry unacknowledged emotional injuries that quietly affect the rest of us. You may seek therapy because you’re going through a breakup, a life change, you’ve lost someone or something, or some horrible and unjust thing has happened to you. All of these are good reasons to seek support. And there may be pieces of your story that you hand to a professional, and in their way, they see the scar tissue where you see nothing out of the ordinary. Therapists are trained to take in histories, symptoms, skills and more to see a complex and complete person. Good therapists develop real relationships with their clients and get to see beyond pathology into personal narratives that inform us of where the scar tissue is and what it might be doing. This takes a lot of trust from the clients in these situations, and that can be frustrating! There is not necessarily an assigned protocol that will point us to the exact corresponding issue. That is where the trust comes in—can you lean on the relationship you have with your therapist to see where the scar tissue is, and guide you through an exploration of how that might be impacting you in ways you aren’t even aware of?
It is not exactly a mystical encounter with some crystal ball-wielding seer, but it can be enlightening and healing if you are invested in the process. Like physical therapy, it can realign what’s been quietly pulling you out of balance. It’s challenging, sometimes uncomfortable work, but deeply worth it. I believe that you can do it. If you are interested in therapy, please feel free to reach out! The therapeutic fit is important, and if you liked my little anecdote, we may get along well. There is no harm in trying it out. I hope you find what you need for health and healing, either way.
