Stitching a New Way: an interlude on healing

The word healing gets thrown around a lot today. There are thousands of Instagram pages dedicated to it, and I’m sure you all have that one friend who constantly reposts it all on their story. There’s also Mental Health TikTok which occupies the same space trying to make healing trendy. At this point, it feels corny and super saturated. There’s something that just feels off and commercialized about it. I wrote about this before with the self-help industrial complex, in that piece I called out that the reason this content is going viral is despite the corniness of it all, we need it. Many of us feel wounded and are searching for something to heal that wound. Just like how we use social media to occupy other parts of our lives, mental health posts also fill a gap. Ultimately though they’re just a momentary salve to our pain. They allow us to feel ok for a moment, but like all social media, it’s not permanent. You quickly move on to the next post related or not. You can’t heal from passively scrolling through these posts. They may spark interest or point you in the right direction, but they aren’t going to create lasting change. In order to do that you have to do the work. 

Before we talk about the healing process, I need to preface this all with a few caveats. There is trauma that takes immense amounts of work and I don’t want to be insensitive to those who have dealt with that kind of trauma. The world can be fucked up, and you don’t need another person telling you that it’s all on you to just work it out. I also want to acknowledge the economic reality of mental health care in America, especially for marginalized communities. As badly as you may want to start this process you may not be able to afford it or have access to the right resources. The following paragraphs aren’t meant to make you feel like shit because you may lack those resources. It’s meant more as a loose framework for the healing process, and hopefully, you can incorporate at least some of it into your life. 

The work begins with making a choice. You have to decide to heal. This is not the same as recognizing that you have work to do. It’s a start to say that you have anxiety, depression, PTSD, or whatever it is you’re dealing with, but at some point we have to act. Most of us know that we have something going on. It’s why we follow all of these accounts. Making the decision to heal involves actively taking part in your own healing and making the effort to change. It can look different for people. Some go to therapy immediately, and for others, that’s later down the road. Some may start reading the books that all of their favorite mental health influencers rip quotes from. Others may just start adopting healthy habits or cutting out bad ones. With all of these what’s important is actually incorporating your decision and the results from it into your life. You actually have to work with your therapist, do what the books say, stick with your new habits, or do whatever it is you need to do to heal. A lot of people go to therapy without actually doing therapy. You can read as many books as you want but if you’re not putting them into practice you’re just wasting your time. On the flip side, you can’t be too hard on yourself. It’s not like this will all immediately click and you’ll suddenly be healed. There will be fits and starts. There will be different decisions at different times. You’ll also never be perfect. None of us ever will be. Despite this and the journey being hard as fuck, it’s still worth it because making that effort will allow you to live your best life. 

For myself, I had to make multiple decisions. The first of which was to get my body healthy. Trauma had taken its toll and one day I realized that if I wanted any chance at all to live the life I wanted I had to start there. So I went from never stepping foot in a gym to going on the elliptical each day, which then led to weight machines, on to free weights, all the way to now where I can design my own workouts based on whatever’s available. During that process, I also had to come to terms with my own mental health and recognize that it was holding me back. My body wasn’t just out of shape so was my mind. Depression and anxiety clouded my vision and the way I was living my life. So I started meditating, reading about Buddhism, and engaging with all sorts of content that allowed me to start rewiring my brain. Outside of that, I had to push myself to step out of what I was comfortable with. One example of that was in college I took a job that forced me to always be interacting with people and gave me the social skills that I was never taught growing up. We forget how capable we truly are but there are opportunities that allow us to grow in ways we couldn’t imagine. That’s not to say there won’t be slips. There were times when I lost my footing but each time was an opportunity to make the decision to heal and grow all over again. Every time that I had to double down on that decision gave me the momentum to enact more change and level up. 

Another part of the work is integration. Once you’ve made the choice and have started doing the work, the moment will come when you have to face your demons. This is where you’ll probably need a professional and a good one. We have to be able to piece everything together in a way that helps us understand where we come from, how it affected us, and where we’re going now. Integration is not about placing a value judgment on what happened or whatever we’re dealing with. Nor is it about trying to make it seem like everything was or is ok. It most likely isn’t. What it’s about is accepting it from a place of non-judgment. What happened will always be a part of us but it doesn’t have to dictate our lives. We don’t have to run from it either. We’re stronger than that because we’re still here, and trying to make a better life for ourselves. We can move on. That’s why it’s called integration. It’s taking that piece that fuels these afflictions and putting it where it belongs, as a piece of a puzzle. If we don’t put the pieces of the puzzle together then we can’t move forward. 

Again, my integration story isn’t perfect. I didn’t wake up one day and everything made sense. I spent a long time running from my past, trying to will my way to healing. I read the books, listened to the podcasts, went on the diets, exercised, meditated, and basically took part in every routine you could think of. Yet, something was still missing. I felt like there was a wall I couldn’t break through. That wall was my past. I had done an amazing job of getting myself out of the mud and building my life up, but I hadn’t done the work to put all the pieces together. I experienced a series of unfortunate events that really highlighted this, so I went searching. I found a fantastic therapist who helped me with my life puzzle. I finally came to terms with my past and put it into place. Through that process, I also found love for my younger self who had to go through all of those terrible experiences. That younger self deserved that love but I never gave it because I was so busy running. I think a lot of people can relate to that, but we have to have compassion for ourselves and our lives. In the end, I could finally see my story and understand who I was. By gaining that insight into the past I had more appreciation for all the work I did and how far I’d come. With the story straight, I could finally move forward into the present and truly begin the life I had worked so hard to build. That’s why we need to integrate all of our stories so that we can stop constantly flipping through the old chapters and start writing the one we’re in now. 

This fresh start is the moment we start moving forward. Moving forward happens when we let go of the grip we have on the past and let go of the grip it has on us. The work is in process and the stories have been integrated. Now it’s time to make another decision, the decision to be who we want to be. We all have a vision for the future and you’re committed to enacting whatever your is. It will still take time, and it will still take work but we’re not stuck anymore. This is what healing is about. It’s the process of recognizing where you want to go and heading in that direction. We can’t forget the classic cliche of “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey”. Healing isn’t linear and none of us are ever 100% healed, we’re always in the process of healing. Embracing this means embracing the messiness of life. There will be ups and downs on this journey. At times you may feel worse than you did before you started, but again that’s why it’s a process. It’s not supposed to be easy, but nothing worth it ever is. Eventually, you’ll find the beauty in that process and see what’s unlocked for you. You’ll notice yourself living a life you could have only dreamed of before. I know that’s happened for me. My younger self wouldn’t believe where I’m at now. In a lot of ways I’ve made it and it’s time to move forward knowing that. I owe it to myself to live the life I couldn’t have dreamed of, and you owe it to yourself too. Healing is an art and a science. No one’s path is the same. Every day is an opportunity to do the work and head in our chosen direction. There’s magic in these opportunities. We all deserve healing, and I hope this helps at least one person recognize that.