I’ve spent a lot of time in the “healing” world. You know the vibe—the journals, the podcasts, the endless deep-dives into why you are the way you are. For a long time, I thought I was doing the work. But eventually, I realized I hadn’t actually healed; I’d just become a professional at being a patient.
“We have turned our scars into currency, forgetting that the point of a coin is to eventually spend it. If you’re just hoarding your insights and your “breakthroughs”… you’re just becoming a wealthy librarian of your own misery.”
The Perpetual Patient
That hit me hard. The “wealthy librarian of misery” is exactly where I was. I had thirty notebooks of “breakthroughs” but I still couldn’t just sit on a bench in the sun without wondering if I was “supposed to be learning something” from the silence.
“So if you find yourself back where you thought you’d already been, remember: You are not starting over. You are spiraling upward. And that, too, is healing.”
The Perpetual Circle of Healing
I love the idea of spiraling, but the trap is when the spiral becomes a treadmill. We get so obsessed with the process of healing that the process itself becomes the goal. We stop living our lives because we’re too busy preparing ourselves to live them.
“Although healing and curing are often used interchangeably, we think of these two terms in different ways… curing a patient isn’t always possible. What then? How can we still make a positive impact on patient lives, even when we can’t relieve them of their ailment?”
Stanford Medicine 25
Maybe the answer is just admitting that some things don’t get “cured.” Maybe the point isn’t to reach a destination where you’re 102% healed and finally “ready” for the world. Maybe you’re just a beautiful, broken mess, and that’s actually the finish line.
If you’re tired of the “repair manual” approach to your own existence, you might want to look at my thoughts on the violence of ‘healing’.
Put down the journal for an hour. Go outside. Be a person, not a project.