Is the Concept of Healing Overrated?
What If We Just Learned to Live with the Scars?
I’m conflicted about what it means to be emotionally well.
On one hand, I want to embrace all emotions and not judge my feelings even when they amplify my ideations.
On the other hand, I want to feel good and don’t want to feel like my “healed” self is throwing my “unhealed” self under the bus.
I know the cost of not dealing with your shit. People dispose of your friendship, opportunities disappear, and the inner critic takes over the conservatorship of your conscious mind.
Not dealing with your trauma comes at a premium and as I get older, I recognize the unintended tradeoffs of staying in my mental bubble. Entrepreneurship brought so much to the surface and my pre-hustle background gave me the foundation for self-awareness.
I know what needs to get done.
I know why I am the way I am.
My intellectual mind is coherent about the ways I sabotage.
And yet I still do it.
Maybe it’s because I don’t go to therapy. I don’t work on my issues. I don’t initiate a new way. I’m supposed to be a fucking tree right? Technically I can move.
If I listen to the gurus, I am where I want to be because the pain of change is not strong enough. I am comfortable with the status quo and until I hit rock bottom, I won’t budge.
Believing that we are solely responsible for the ways we cope to stress, anxiety, and trauma is neither effective nor compassionate.
How am I supposed to extend myself grace when I’ve been conditioned to believe that I haven’t earned or deserve it?
Healing is a touchy topic for me. I have a scar on my leg from when my mom dropped an iron on my infant leg. Sure, it was accidental probably the result of an absented mindedness that comes with being a teenager.
As I got older, the scar grew with me. Because of my beige-ness, the scar blends into my leg. It’s noticeable but not obvious. It’s only obvious to me because I know it’s there. I know the origin story. I know the context of the origin story.
The scar is a reminder that my body was harmed as a helpless infant. And, in hindsight, I can’t help but wonder about the irony in that example.
Childhood wounds are imprints that define who we become, for better or worse. The thought that we need to dedicate a sizable portion of our lives to healing from those experiences - what if we just didn’t?
What if we just learned to live with the scars?
What if we simply allowed those scars to grow with us?
What if instead of constantly trying to heal a wound that won’t go away, we acknowledge the harm and let it be?
Just a thought…