The Thing Nobody Tells You About Healing That Changed Everything For Me

Healing Isn’t a Straight Line (It’s a Messy Spiral)

Photo by Eugene Golovesov on Unsplash

Nobody warns you that healing doesn’t feel like healing.
At first, it feels like chaos. You think you’re getting better, then one random Tuesday you’re sobbing in the car to a song you haven’t heard since 2018. It feels like failure — but it’s actually progress in disguise.

When I started taking healing seriously — therapy, self-reflection, setting boundaries — I thought it would make me feel peaceful. But the thing nobody tells you is that real healing feels worse before it feels better. It’s uncomfortable, lonely, and wildly inconvenient. And yet, it’s the most freeing experience you’ll ever have.

The Lie We’re Sold About Healing

We’re told healing means “moving on.” As if one day you’ll wake up and not care. But research from the American Psychological Association shows that emotional recovery isn’t about erasing pain — it’s about reprocessing experiences so your nervous system stops seeing them as threats.

That means healing doesn’t mean forgetting what hurt you. It means learning to feel it without it controlling you.