Why does it seem like things get worse before they get better?

Theologian Thomas Fuller knew this when he wrote, “It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.”

From an astronomy perspective, this metaphor isn’t true-eth.

The darkest part of the night is actually around midnight.

But it does capture the emotional truth of struggle.

The clash between dark and light that occurs just before dawn gives us enough contrast to notice the difference between the two.

And even though it seems bleak before the sun comes up over the horizon, the reality is that the sun does rise, without any of us having to do anything at all.

That’s pretty cool, and probably a well-thought-out feature by the Creator.

More importantly, it shows sometimes the hardest moment comes right before the breakthrough.

Here’s what you don’t need an astronomy lesson to know:

The more you try to fix the broken things in your life, the worse things seem to get.

And that’s frustrating.

I see this same clash of dark and light in my therapy office.

People enter the therapy room with a fair amount of hope they’re finally going to start feeling better.

The initial catharsis of telling their story to another person makes them feel a little lighter.

Excitement and hope build as they try the new skills we unpack in session.

And then comes this really hard place.

Things start to go off the rails a bit.

The new boundaries they were so excited to set in place are making the people closest to them upset about their reign of free access to them coming to an end.

They see where fear made them shrink back from doing the very things that create opportunity and purpose.

It’s confusing because even as they’re learning more about themselves, taking the actions they’ve always wanted to take, it seems to be making everything worse.

The harder they try, the more it seems they’re leaving a wake of strife and unhappiness.

This friction in their relationships can be the first sign of change.

Some will take this to mean therapy isn’t working and they quit.

But this might actually mean that the therapy is working.

You don’t recognize dawn without the darkness that comes before it.

In the same way, our struggles, inside or outside the therapy office, can feel like pushing through resistance.

Because you’re creating friction that causes reactions, and sparks change.

Once you set something in motion, you’re going to encounter resistance.

I’m not your physics girl, but almost any action we perform in life starts with initial resistance.

It actually takes more force to get something moving from a standstill than it does to keep it moving once it starts.

Things generally like staying the same because it feels stable.

Nature’s cool but it’s also kind of lazy.

It will settle into whatever requires the least energy, even if that low-energy state kind of sucks.

Part of the problem is in trying so hard to make things happen.

You do need to use Herculean efforts to get the ball rolling, yes.

But once you do, you have to trust other proven forces, like inertia, to carry that action forward.

If you pull a lever, get ready to create a reaction.

When you disturb one part of a system, energy ripples through the whole thing as it tries to find a new balance.

You don’t see this energy transfer. But it happens.

Just because you don’t see good things happening yet, doesn’t mean the forces needed to move forward haven’t been engaged yet.

This is the bottleneck we all hit once we set something in motion.

We’ve disturbed the system, energy is moving through everything we touch, but we can’t see the results yet.

And it’s terrifying when the cart doesn’t seem to be going anywhere because we immediately start looking at all that time and energy we just wasted.

It’s tempting to want to trash this system and think another set of levers might work better. But you’ll have to start that energy all over again, and that sounds exhausting, too.

This is the part you grow from: continue pulling levers even, and especially, when you’re seemingly going backwards.

If you can survive this head fake, you’ll see the wheels start turning.

This all sounds great in the stainless steel walls of your cerebral cortex, but it can be like a paper shredder for your heart.

How do you survive when it feels like everything is falling apart and you’re not seeing any progress?

Here are a few things to remember:

Be agnostic about the outcome for a minute.

Make a commitment to yourself that you’ll continue to do this work regardless of the outcome. If you’ve done your due diligence, then this effort should show forward progress.

You’re a smart cookie, so you can trust that and let go of the outcome just for now.

Not forever, but long enough to give the process time to work. You can reassess once you see where things are actually going.

Make sure you’re applying the right amount of pressure so something can actually happen.

Be brutally honest with yourself. What’s the one thought or fear keeping you from jumping all in to this thing? What are you still hanging on to just in case you need it?

If you’re too tentative, and you’re not giving your best effort, you will struggle. Protecting something sacred may be keeping your best energy bound up.

Ask a trusted friend who’s not afraid to challenge you, or your therapist or coach, to point out these areas. Tread softly here, though, because you’re not looking for criticism, even the constructive kind. You’re looking for accountability.

Criticism forces you back into yourself. Accountability pulls you away from yourself toward what you want.

Have people in your life who will notice if you’re all in.

Focus on the momentum, not the resistance.

Like pushing a stalled car, momentum needs persistent effort to overcome resistance. Every push at the start feels like wasted effort because the car barely moves, or rocks back and forth at best.

But your efforts are loading energy into the system. If you’re only looking at what’s not working, you might miss your cue to hop in the car when it does start working.

Every new skill you try or conversation you have in relationships you care about are another opportunity to create the friction for drag to finally give way to momentum.

Don’t miss that moment.

All struggle follows this same law: resistance before momentum.

It always feels harder than it should, and it always takes longer than you want.

But the breakthrough only shows up if you keep going, even in the dark.

Keep applying steady pressure.

Trust that the energy you’ve already poured in is still at work, even when you can’t see it yet.

Momentum will take over, I promise.

You are worth staying in it long enough to see that happen.

What about you?

What’s your experience with this? What did you do to get the momentum going?