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When I say healing is overrated, I mean healing with an end goal is impossible. As a client, I can get stuck in this framework sometimes. Like healing is a to-do list, and when something comes up for me — a trigger, a conflict, feeling small, an adult temper tantrum — the list gets longer. As a therapist, I hear things like, “I didn’t realize I still have _____ issues” or “I thought I was better” when clients are struggling with something they’ve gone through before.
I get it. I go there too. Honestly, I can’t count the times when I’m personally struggling with something and the next client I see takes the feels and words right out of my body and hands them back to me. I laugh to myself. Not me offering real validation and compassion to another, zooming out and seeing what they’re going through as a part of their healing process, when minutes ago I could barely imagine giving myself the same grace. Humans are confusing sometimes lol.
As humans committed to our healing practice, it can be easy to get caught up in all the language and information we now have about trauma, its impacts, and the labels that help us navigate our symptoms and experiences. That information can be life changing! But first we are humans. I included this photo of me on an Italian balcony because that is a photo of a person enjoying life who also struggles with C-PTSD symptoms and sometimes has meltdowns.
In a meltdown moment or a hard place, it’s so easy to fall into a spiral of worry and shame. C-PTSD survivor, writer and radio producer Stephanie Foo wrote recently on her instagram @foofoofoo, “It seems like torture, yeah? And yet all this worry feels like home. Feels less terrifying than getting excited [… and] then being unprepared and disappointed.”
Over-identifying with our trauma symptoms can shield us from new options and resources that may be available to us. It can also skew our perception of our current capacity to handle our shit. If torture and isolation feel like home, of course it can feel easier to stick with the familiar instead of reaching out for support or trusting the experience of safety or ease!
I challenge you (and myself) to remember that healing does not have start and end dates. You have not failed if an issue you thought you’ve “gotten over” comes back again or intensifies. Annoyingly enough, hard places are part of the normal healing process. They are our bodies telling us we gotta readjust and meet our needs, trauma history or not. Together, let’s practice giving ourselves permission to have “irrational” needs, to be imperfect, and to call that “healing” too.
