Ep 36: Recovery Isn't Linear

Season #1 September 27, 2026

Episode: Recovery Isn’t Linear

Description:
Recovery can be frustrating—especially when you’ve improved, but not as quickly as you expected.

In this episode, I talk about one of the hardest parts of rehab: understanding that healing doesn’t always move in a straight line. Sometimes symptoms fluctuate. Sometimes progress stalls. That doesn’t always mean treatment isn’t working.

The key is learning when to keep going.

Topics Covered:

Why recovery isn’t always linear
Pain vs progress
Unrealistic expectations during rehab
Why healing can sometimes feel messy before it improves

Need help figuring out whether you’re on the right track?
Visit kinesmovement.com

Episode Transcript

The Worsening Before Improvement
===

Speaker: [00:00:00] You may need therapy for what you are going through in physical therapy.

The road to recovery is not linear and can be very frustrating.

The idea is to keep going. I am sharing this with you because I have a patient who is giving quite a bit of pushback because their pain when we started, which was at an eight outta 10, is only now at a three or a four outta 10 after just a couple of months,

but now they expect to have zero out of 10. And to have, uh, less frequency, intensity, or duration of the pain. And that's just, just [00:01:00] hasn't been the case.

And so now I have to go in and explain to them sometimes in a way that I've never had to explain it before that. This is the way that it is,

and even for me as a physical therapist, I don't like sharing this, but sometimes it does get worse before it gets better.

If you're having trouble getting over that, understanding that, I want you to reach out to me at kinesmovement.com.

Let's rap about it. Tell then do more, wait less. I'll see you on the next one.

Ep 36: Recovery Isn't Linear

Episode: Recovery Isn’t Linear

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