When Healing Doesn’t Look Like Progress
Healing Happens in Circles, Not Straight Lines — and this became clear through my own story For years, I believed healing was supposed to be linear. That if I just understood why something happened, or worked hard enough on myself, I would eventually arrive at a place where the pain no longer returned. I thought there would be a clear “after” — a point where fear, grief, confusion, and old patterns were finished for good. That belief caused me more suffering than the trauma itself. Because my life didn’t heal in a straight line. It healed in circles.
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When Healing Doesn’t Look Like Progress
There were moments in my journey where I thought I was finally free. I had left an abusive marriage. I had lived most of my life being silenced, and living in survival mode. Later, I believed I had found love again — only to discover I had entered another deeply manipulative, dangerous situation that ended in a hurried rescue from my Son. Sparking a whole world of guilt and shame in me. I felt like the one who had caused the trauma. When I broke free, I expected relief. Instead, waves came. Fear. Longing. Confusion. Shame for “going back” emotionally. A nervous system that didn’t seem to get the memo that I was safe now. I remember thinking: “How can I know all this… and still feel like this?” That question haunted me — until I understood something crucial.
Trauma Lives in Layers, Not Lessons
What I was circling back to wasn’t failure. It was the deeper layers of the same wound. Each time life brought me back to a familiar emotional place, it wasn’t because I hadn’t healed — it was because I was finally safe enough to heal more. The first time around, I was just trying to survive. Later, I was grieving what I lost. Later still, I was untangling identity. And later again, I was reclaiming my voice. Same themes. Different depth. Healing doesn’t ask us to clear something once. It invites us to meet it again and again with greater safety, greater awareness, and more compassion for ourselves and even for others. Forgive ourselves and allow them to be themselves with no thoughts of trying to fix them.