Unhealthy healing

By Daniel Francis

It’s no secret that I’m a big basketball fan. I’ve mentioned in past articles that even playing basketball is my hobby of choice. I play regularly, once the outdoor court I frequent isn’t wet from showers.

Recently, I was on the court playing like I usually do. In between a game, I noticed that one of the more mature guys who typically plays with us had a disfigured finger. He could not fully extend his finger, and it was noticeably difference in appearance to his other fingers. I had never noticed it before, so I asked him about it.

He said a few years back while playing he went up for a rebound and misjudged where the ball would be. He jammed his finger so hard against the ball that he broke it. This is a common injury among basketball players. Maybe not a broken finger but we tend to sprain our fingers often due to the nature of the game.

So, he broke his finger, but he said at the time it wasn’t too badly disfigured and the pain was bearable. Against the advice of all the players present that day, he did not go to the health centre and even continued playing.

Over time, he said that his finger healed and the pain fully subsided, but he noticed that his finger had lost some functionality.

Irritated by the lack of functionality in his finger, he decided to go to the health centre a few weeks earlier. Mind you, this was years after the initial incident. At the health centre, the doctor confirmed that his finger did indeed break that day, and because he did not seek medical attention when it occurred, it healed in an incorrect orientation. The doctor told him that the only way to fix his finger was to break it, splint it and allow it to heal properly. He let his finger heal unhealthily because he could “bear” the pain.

I need to speak to the men and boys here. This is typically a problem with us. We have been groomed to not fuss over pain, especially if we can bear it. In the story I highlighted, it was physical pain from an injury, but where in our lives do we do this for non-physical aspects?

We experience great emotional distress from a bad breakup, when we have a terrible fight with a loved one, or we show the worst side of ourselves and hurt someone we care deeply about, etc.

The natural inclination is to bear the pain and focus on the next thing – but is that healthy?

Not addressing our pain healthily is causing us to heal broken. When you heal broken, you can’t operate in a normal fashion similar to the older basketball player in the story.  He had to shoot in a special way to avoid using that disfigured finger and could not dribble the ball properly with that hand which affected his ability to play.

What aspects of your life are being negatively impacted because you did not allow yourself to heal properly? You tried to ignore your pain and moved on with life while your internal injury, still broken, continues to impact you.

This can also be seen from a spiritual angle. You lost trust in the Church or God because of an incident. Now you are the furthest away from God because you didn’t heal properly.

Men, we need to change our mindset on healing or risk going the more painful route to recovery. Like having to re-break a bone to allow it to heal healthily, we create a convoluted path to recovery. What aren’t you healing from healthily? Can you honestly identify them? Seek the proper experts when in doubt.

The good news is we always have God to help shine the brightest light on the spiritual aspects of what we are ignoring. Don’t allow yourself to get caught in this trap of unhealthy healing in your physical, mental and spiritual life. Question your pain, question your approach and ask God to help you through it all.

Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.

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