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What If You're Taking Healing Too Seriously?
An exploration of the fine line between meaningful self-work and becoming trapped in the endless pursuit of healing.
6/12/20265 min read
Write your text hBack when I first discovered psychotherapy, I didn't know many people who had a therapist. Up until that point, I had never been in such a deep crisis that I felt the need to seek therapy myself. What I did have, however, was an enormous curiosity about human beings—about how we work, how our psyche, spirit, and body function. I was always full of questions and rarely satisfied with simple answers.
Life gradually nudged me in the direction of a serious and long-term psychotherapy training program. But before anything else, I wanted to experience the method for myself. I remember how excited I felt after some of my first sessions. Once I let go of the belief that you had to be doing badly in order to go to therapy and simply surrendered to the process of exploring and getting to know myself, I discovered the wonder and richness of therapy. My life kept getting better. I began uncovering all the different shades of who I was. I found a lot of goodness within myself, but also a lot of darkness, blind spots, frozen sadness, anger, helplessness, and grief. And that was okay. Everything unfolded gradually. Every journey through sadness brought genuine joy. Every encounter with anger brought strength. Every experience of helplessness brought a sense of support and a deep love that seemed to arrive from somewhere beyond my understanding. Therapy is a wonderful tool. It truly can offer us so much and improve the quality of our lives in countless ways.
And yet, something has changed in our relationship with therapy over the past several years.
What we call "self-work" has become so popular that it now seems everyone who values themselves must have a therapist or a coach. The word trauma is everywhere, and everything is being labeled as trauma, whether it actually is or not. In the fast-paced world we live in, we've forgotten some of the basic things that make for a good life: quality rest, meaningful relationships, time in nature, moderate physical activity, hobbies that bring us joy, and balanced nutrition. Instead, perhaps because we feel unable to change the system, we keep digging deeper into ourselves, searching for one more thing to fix, one more wound to heal. We've become trapped in the belief that if we just improve ourselves a little more, ultimate happiness will finally be waiting for us somewhere around the corner—the same happiness we see reflected in other people's Instagram feeds. And this is something I encounter more and more often.
I meet people who have taken therapy too seriously—people who are living in a cycle of endless self-improvement. People who are so focused on healing, trauma, and endless self-analysis that they forget to actually live. They postpone life because they need to focus on healing. They avoid relationships because they don't feel whole enough yet. They postpone building a family because they haven't fully healed the wounds of their family of origin. I know all of this because I've been a person like that at one point. I took healing as a project, as a way of controlling life.
But healing is not something that happens while we put the rest of our lives on hold. Healing happens while we are living: trying new things, taking risks, falling down, and getting back up again. It happens within life itself. It simply cannot fully happen while sitting in a therapy chair alone. Everything we work through in therapy must eventually be tested in real life. We have to live our new perspectives, our new emotions, our new dreams. We have to align our actual lives with the values we've discovered within ourselves. We have to forgive real people who hurt us, re-establish the relationships we want to keep, and open ourselves to the experiences we've longed for. And all of this involves risk—the risk of failing, of being hurt again.
I want to share a personal story here. Although the beginning of my story may sound like a journey filled with curiosity and expansion, there were periods of my life that I would rather not remember. I know what it's like to suffer deeply and desperately search for answers. I know what it's like when the only thing you can think about is how to get out of the pain, how to get better, how to heal. And this happened to me after many years of therapy, despite all my knowledge, experience, and professional training. I still found myself at rock bottom, in an abyss as deep as the ocean. I clawed my way out with everything I had, searching for a way through. This is a pretty extreme example, and I hope nobody else has to go through lessons like these, but perhaps that's exactly why I feel confident saying that an obsession with healing can become a dead end. A friend once summarized my experience beautifully with a simple sentence: "You can't escape your own life." You cannot control life. And if therapy has become one more way to ensure that your life unfolds smoothly, neatly, and according to plan, rather than messy, chaotic, and imperfect, as life naturally is, then I'm afraid I must tell you that your calculation is wrong. No amount of therapy or self-work can spare us from certain experiences. Some things simply have to be lived through. The most important thing we can hope for—and what therapy can help us do—is to be ready for and accept our own challenges.
I remember a period when my days were spent frantically searching the internet, hoping to find some trick to save myself from anxiety. I would read an entire book on burnout in a single day just to find the solution faster. My Instagram feed was overflowing with quick tips and endless hacks for healing my nervous system. But none of it was actually helping. It was simply my mind searching for temporary relief, while my body and emotional capacity were quietly draining away before my eyes. So what helped?
Paradoxically, what helped was stopping the fight. It helped to stop fighting myself and my inner states. It helped to accept where I was and direct the little energy I had toward something good. To slowly rebuild my capacity for goodness through lived experience. To stop believing every alarm signal coming from my anxious mind and start looking for signs of comfort instead. In other words—to start living again and stop focusing on my own trauma and healing. To gently and gradually open myself to life in all its shades. To risk the possibility that opening myself to pleasure might also mean experiencing pain. And to build the capacity to hold both.
Life is here to be lived, and the lessons will come regardless. We can call it self-development, a spiritual path, healing, a soul journey—whatever you prefer. Some roads need to be traveled, and I found some peace in accepting that, together with finding help and support in going through the tough times. Because alongside the challenges, support is always there.
And yes, we need therapy. We need it more than ever in today's world. But we also need simplicity. We need the freedom to be human—imperfect, unfinished, and not fully healed. And perhaps more than anything, we need to hear that we are completely okay even then.