The Myth of Healing

Recovery, Resilience, and Building Forward

For trauma survivors, particularly those with complex trauma, healing can feel like an unattainable ending. Sometimes the concept of healing seems like a competition: a finish line that keeps disappearing just as you approach. It is the pot of gold at the end of the therapy rainbow.

One of the hallmarks of complex and developmental trauma is that there is no self to return to. In many instances, trauma is pre-verbal and pre-personality development. There is no healing because there is no wound in the traditional sense. The wound is in the denial of the development of a stable sense of self.

For those of us who have been shaped by trauma since the very beginning, our baseline is pain. It is trauma. There is no world for us that existed without harm.

Our safety is trauma. It’s what we know. It’s what we are comfortable with.

There is no wound to close, just different pathways to forge.

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The Case For Recovery

In the world of substance abuse treatment, there is a well-established concept of recovery. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration defines this concept as “a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential”. It is understood that recovery is ongoing. It is not something to complete; it is not something you can “check off your list”. Triggers still exist, setbacks still happen. That is why it is so vital to regulate the nervous system, develop consistent coping strategies, and establish safe connections - not just in the moments of crisis, but through the calm as well.

What if we applied this same concept to the entirety of the mental health space? Human beings are complex and never truly finish developing. The person I am today is not the person I was yesterday, and that doesn’t stop just because I’ve aged. We don’t graduate from being human. We evolve. We learn and unlearn. We build new responses to old trauma patterns. And we don’t stop processing pain just because we’ve named it or let enough time pass.

What if we stopped treating our mental health as if it were a destination to arrive at, and instead treat it as recovery - a lifelong relationship with oourselves, our capacity, our history, and our relationships? This is the work of recovery - not chasing wholeness, but learning to stay with ourselves in the process of growth and fracture.

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Building a Foundation of Resilience

We often hear the phrase that we build ‘brick by brick’ when beginning something new: a path, a journey, a life. However, in the mental health space, and with trauma specifically, we need to stop assuming that the path is already laid bare.

The field where we are building our resilience is full of brambles and thorns, weeds, rocks, and fallen branches. Before laying a single brick, one must clear the field.

There are no gloves, no protection; just your bare hands, grit, and determination to build something strong. This is the real starting point of recovery.

The thorns represent old beliefs, behaviors of survival, internalized shame.
The weeds represent people who consistently harm you, systems of oppression, and your own inner critic.
The branches and rocks are heavy life experiences that you have always carried on your own.
When you have known trauma for as long as you have known yourself, those thorns and weeds and rocks and branches come to feel like home.
Pulling them out, clearing it all out hurts. And it is necessary to make space for a strong foundation.

Finally, you begin to lay the bricks. One by one. Each one heavier than the last. Every brick asking more of you. But these bricks, unlike the thorns and weeds and rocks and branches, are yours. You get to determine where they go. You get to rearrange them as many times as needed to build the strongest foundation possible. You build forward.

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Building Forward

Healing is the language we are handed at the beginning of this process and it is the one we hear over and over. However, maybe recovery is the language that is understood in the body.

It isn’t about healing wounds. It is about building capacity to tend to the wounds, understanding they may never fully close and that’s okay. It’s about creating a life that nurtures the core parts of you that were never given care, never treated with reverence. It isn’t about erasing pain. It’s about learning how to hold your pain differently. To build something honest and sustainable out of what’s left over.

I’m not broken, and neither are you. I don’t have a gaping wound that everyone can see, showcasing the things I’ve been through. I have parts of self that were never allowed room to breathe and live in truth. I’m not chasing some vague concept of a self that never existed. I’m building resilience, capacity. I am building forward.

I am recovering.
I still have so much to learn and so much development left to do.
Maybe you do, too.

Recovery works best when it happens in community.

So if you’re still in the thick of it—clearing the weeds and the thorns, still figuring out how to lay those bricks— know this:

You are not behind.
You are not beyond repair.
You are not too much.
You are exactly where you’re supposed to be.
And we are all standing here with you.

Photo by AARN GIRI on Unsplash