I could write pages on this. Don’t worry. I am not going to do that to you. I just want you to know how important this concept is.

We can start easy. Let’s say there’s a broken (fractured) femur. This bone is massive compared to the others in the body so you might think that all that matters is healing the bone. That will happen in 6 weeks, give or take.

So is that true healing? Nope. Why not?

Because true healing refers to functioning. The femur will be in one piece after it heals. But do you think you can climb stairs, walk without a limp, stand for long or run after 6 weeks of “healing”? No way. The bone is just one component of the functional unit. You need to strengthen and retrain muscles, nerves and the other bones that connect with the femur. Those things weren’t broken but you have to “rediscover” those unbroken components

We need to look at true healing as proper functioning of the unit.

The same idea applies to the psyche. If you have certain fears, you might work hard to face the fear…but often you have to repeat the same process over and over again. That’s because the courageous person you were when you were born has been buried and suppressed because of your repeated exposure to things that scare you. That courage is still there, it’s just been “stuffed in the closet” and out of the way.

In order to heal you have to work (therapy) through those broken feelings (repeated traumatic experiences caused the break) in order to find the courage that’s in there.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put the effort into fixing what’s broken. You need to do that AND discover the unbroken.