The first time I met “Alice”, she told me she hated shrinks.
It was why she ended up reaching out to a coach. “I’ve been going to therapy for years and I feel like nothing is changing.” She wanted some answers. After almost a decade of trying to untangle her history of trauma, she wasn’t getting the results she wanted and she wanted to know why.
The problem was not with her therapists, it was in Alice’s expectations.
She was a woman who was trying to outrun her trauma. After visiting multiple therapists, it was clear to see why. None of them had done well in managing her expectations, in selling her on the reality of the trauma she was dealing with.
You see, Alice was striving for healing. Within that, she was looking for a perfect, healed version of herself. She was expecting the trophy of a perfect life to be handed to her at the crossing of some finish line that didn’t exist.
Together, we managed to curb Alice’s expectations and teach her a new way to see her journey as a survivor with CPTSD and a long history of emotional reactivity. But it left me asking a serious question…
How many other people out there are just like Alice? Looking for a perfect ending that doesn’t exist? What about you? Are you one of those people? Waiting on a perfect future and hating yourself for the trauma that’s made it seem like an impossible goal?
The concept of healing has become completely warped.
Most of my clients are just like “Alice” when they come to me. They are frustrated. They have put in years of work and spent thousands of dollars on becoming someone they haven’t been able to realize yet. They feel like failures. They’re disappointed, and a lot of them feel like maybe they’ll never be able to heal.
It’s not their fault. We’ve all been sold a pretty superficial idea of healing when it comes to trauma recovery. Many of us have even been sold this idea of magic, completely divorced from the neurological reality of trauma.
The idea of healing has become sadly warped. Instead of focusing on reality and making incremental improvements, our fast-food mentality has led us down the path of instant gratification.
We want quick fixes and magical solutions. We want to sit down with a shrink, have them wash our brains clean, and step out in the world as a new person. But that’s not how healing works, and it never has been (no matter who sells you what).
The truth is that healing is a lifelong and complex process. No, that doesn’t mean you have to get up every single day and put in some Herculean effort to survive. It simply means that you have to strive to empower yourself, over the things that claimed your power in the past.
Healing on an emotional level isn’t like the healing of a bone. There’s no set amount of time and a definitive solution on the other side. Inside, we are soft, we are malleable. Healing, on that level, is a matter of improving. We ease the hurts until we have lives that are better than they were before. Nothing more and nothing less.
What does a “healed” you actually look like?
If healing isn’t this big magical thing, what is it? If there’s no set finish line, no perfect person waiting on the other side, then what does a “healed” person actually look like? What will a healed you look like? There are two big keps to focus on when forming this new and improved vision of who you are going to become.
It’s not a matter of magic
There is so much magical thinking that’s been put into the concept of healing. Gurus promise to sell quick fixes and 5-step solutions to lifelong harmony. In our naive self-interests, we buy in. Why not? We’re tired of suffering and we want to think that we can wash the pain away, quick as a shower.
The problem is that magical thinking is dangerous. It convinces us that there is some “clean” version of ourselves out there, free of trauma and waiting to be set free, but that isn’t true. You can’t erase what happened to you, or the person that you are. There is only the present, and that is where you have to focus.
When envisioning your path to healing, you should be focusing on loving yourself as you are now, instead of striving to create some version of yourself without trauma. That person doesn’t exist.
More importantly, it’s important to acknowledge that you will never fully banish the pain and the upset of what happened. It was wrong and it will always hurt. Your goal is to transcend that hurt and live a healthy and happy life despite it.
There doesn’t have to be perfection
On the other side of that, there’s a real tendency for survivors of trauma and abuse to strive for “perfection” as they heal. It’s fueled by this idea that they need to be a perfect victim, someone who goes above and beyond to prove they are better than what happened to them. Then some think that healing means you become perfect in the end.
There’s no finish line like that. You’re not going to sit through a certain amount of therapy, or buy a certain number of books then WHOOSH! You wake up one day as a perfectly regulated, anxiety-free, and happy person.
That simply isn’t reality.
Instead of setting yourself up for failure, you should make things as simple and realistic as possible. Strive for improvement. What does an improvement look like? How would your life change by simply making things better, instead of striving to make them perfect?
If you believe that your healing will bring you the perfect life, the perfect peace, or the perfect relationship, prepare for disappointment. Put your belief in improvement and you will find yourself pleasantly surprised each day.
How to get to a realistic place of healing.
Never one to leave you without some solutions, there is a pathway to this better version of healing, but you have to change the way you see the process as a whole. I like to think of this quote whenever I’m teaching a client to lean into this new way of thinking of a life lived with their trauma (instead of running away from it).
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi
There is little need to overwhelm yourself. To overhaul your life, or to strive for a version of self that never existed. As you lean into a desire for improvement over a desire for perfection, you can recalibrate, embrace your shadow self, and learn to celebrate the small wins that have brought you here.
Take time to recalibrate
First and foremost, you need to take time to readjust. A lot of us have bought into the idea that healing comes fast, or that it comes with a perfect fairy tale ending. That’s not true, and we have to take time to grieve and reshape our expectations. We can do that in 3 steps.
- Reimagine your ideal version of self
- Reconsider what you see as improvement
- Revisit your small wins and victories
Get some quiet space and time alone and rethink what your ultimate goals are. What does your ideal self look like, realistically? Who are they? How do they feel? Who are they surrounded by? What career do they have? How do they have fun? How do they enjoy life?
The goal should be to think carefully here. You are building this person with the tools you have right now. What does their ideal life look like? Now, rethink how you see the improvements you’re making.
Revisit the small strides you have made and celebrate yourself from coming this far. Lean into your strengths and allow this to recalibrate your perception of yourself and the future that you’re working toward.
Embrace your night of darkness
If you haven’t caught on yet, there’s a huge amount of self-acceptance that has to be entered into for you to get to this place of realistic healing. You must accept that “healed” you aren’t perfect. You must accept that there may be things you want to improve your whole life. Most importantly of all, you have to accept yourself. Wholly, as you are, not as you wish to be.
Embrace your dark night of the soul. Sit down, one one-on-one, with those parts of yourself or your past that you are most ashamed of. Embrace them. What lessons do they have for you? Where do they come from and why do they fill you with so much guilt?
Lean into the shadows you try to hide. Don’t act on them. Simply sit with them and notice what lies beneath them and what they bring to the table. Write it down. Take your time. The more you can confront these shadow versions of yourself, the less power they will hold over you.
Focus on improvement
So, you’ve shed your delusions and you’re no longer seeking magical fix-alls or overnight transformations. What’s next? How do you take more realistic action to start changing the qualities of your life that have been most touched by trauma?
Ask yourself 3 important questions:
- What is the smallest possible step I can take?
- Where do my spheres of control actually lie?
- What do my resources look like?
The journey is all about improvement. Set yourself up for success. Look at the biggest issues in your life. What is the smallest possible step that you can take right now at this moment to improve them? If it’s a job, you might start by looking for new jobs or signing up for a course that helps you change careers or add new skills.
Once you’ve got some small goals to sight, you can focus on your sphere of control. What can you actually affect in your life? You can choose a new relationship, but you can’t force your partner to change. You can move house, but you can’t choose your neighbors.
Fan out and consider your resources. What skills, supports, and safeties do you have in place to help you on this journey? Make no mistake, you can’t do it alone. Who’s going to help you? Who’s going to give you the tools? Lift you? And help keep you on track. Enlist the help of those who see the best in you and your life will improve.
***
The world would be a much better place if we could all find it in our hearts to be easier in ourselves. There is no such thing as a perfect human, a perfect survivor, a perfect ending waiting on the other side of our healing journey. There’s no finish line.
There is only us, as we are, with our human desires and our oh-so-human needs. We make mistakes, feel pain, and suffer no matter where we are in life, no matter how high we climb. That is the beauty of being human.
And perhaps that’s the real goal of healing after all…accepting the width and breadth of our humanity. Not running from what made us, but embracing it as a part of what has made us who we are.
We can choose gratitude. Gratitude for the lives we have to live and the futures we will have to build. Perfection doesn’t have to be the end of the road. Loving ourselves should be the goal of healing the hurts that have held us back.
© E.B. Johnson 2024
