They Never Tell You This Ugly Truth About Healing

It is said that healing is a chill weekend feel. You light a candle, play some low music, and simply sleep. Nobody tells you the other side of the coin, the ugly, disorienting, lonely side that is more like falling apart than improving.

I was anticipating peace when I started healing. Instead, I got chaos. Memories came back, people went, and I knew how I had been avoiding myself. Healing was less self-love and more grief.

The Lonely Side of Growth

As I said previously, there is no one who informs you that healing is typically a process beginning with loss. I recall reading an article titled The Day I Hit Rock Bottom—And What It Taught Me About Mental Health one night when everything felt overwhelming, and it made me understand that sometimes the bottom is not the bottom, but the start.

I was not feeling strong when I began to dig into old wounds. I felt small. All the dialogues of years past were rushing back, and all the silences I had neglected had a purpose. Then I knew what real healing is; it makes you feel it all.

I said a bit ago that it is lonely, and it is. Healing usually implies the process of growing out of those who previously were home. You no longer fit in the same spaces, and that is the most difficult thing.

Feeling Everything Again

One of my articles on Psyche, How Do You Control Your Emotions When Life Gets Tough, actually assisted me in breathing through all of that. In the process of writing it, I realized that it is not about pushing emotions away but learning to know their origin. The thought stuck, and I began to act on my own advice, and life became a lot easier.

I was chilled some days; other days I would cry over things I believed I had already forgiven. There is no schedule of healing. Your heart is only learning to feel again.

I have written another article, How to Heal Invisible Wounds, and as I assembled it, I found something that had passed unnoticed before, that is, pain does not disappear; it merely ceases to occupy the stage. That hit home. The past still catches you unawares even when you believe that you are over it, but it is not as powerful as before. This was when I knew that I was beginning to heal.

Loss Has Its Lessons

As we said earlier in the beginning, healing involves losing first before you can earn back. I recall having read Hard Lessons We Only Learn After Losing Something Precious, and it was as though someone were reading my mind. You begin to understand how loss makes you, not by crushing you, but by revealing what is truly important.

And this is a good reminder in the article How Loss Can Be an Effective Motivator for Personal Growth. That is where I understood that there is a purpose of pain. It does not go there to destroy you but to make you again with stronger borders and smoother eyes.

Frankly speaking, sometimes it is rather inhumane to heal. I was at that stage when I wrote That Hurt Like Hell—But the Truth Is Even Uglier. It was the time when I realized that healing does not necessarily console you at the beginning; it destroys the walls that you have created to survive. It is only then that the actual mending starts.

The Quiet Victory

And, as I said before, healing like grief? It's true. However, what nobody tells you is that in the middle of all that pain, you begin to realize that something is changing. One day you wake up, and the memories are not so stinging. You begin to laugh once more, not because all is all right, but because you have come through the mess that was once so frightening to you.

Not everything is beautiful in healing. It is awkward, rough, and sluggish. But it is also the most sincere work you will ever do. And perhaps, as you go on, you will understand as I did that the ugly things were not intended to ruin you. They were supposed to make you see who you had been all along.