What Healing Looks Like on Hard Days

For a long time, I had a picture in my mind of what healing was supposed to look like. If I really healed, wouldn't I stop getting sad about painful things? Wouldn't conflict become easier? Wouldn't the memories lose all their weight? Wouldn't I eventually reach some place where life couldn't knock me sideways anymore? 

I desperately wanted to believe healing was possible, and I believed it for the people I worked with. But there was still a part of me wondering what “healed” actually meant when life continued to be life.

What I've learned is that healing doesn't remove our humanity. We can experience tremendous growth and still grieve. We can become more regulated and still feel overwhelmed sometimes. We can build healthy relationships and still have conflict. We can be deeply connected to ourselves and still encounter something that hurts.

Two things can be true at the same time.

That is what I mean when I talk about learning to live in the both/ands.

This week on the Be a Blaze Podcast, we're talking about what healing can look like when life is still difficult. We're exploring the difference between having a painful emotion and being consumed by an old response, and how learning to hold two truths at once can be an incredibly powerful sign of growth.  

🎧 Listen to podcast Episode 59:  You Can Be Healed AND Still Have Hard Days - The Power of Living in the Both/Ands

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Healing Isn't a Life Without Pain

I think one of the most discouraging beliefs we can carry into healing is the idea that eventually nothing should bother us anymore. Then something difficult happens and we think, Well, apparently I haven't healed after all.

But sadness isn't failure. Grief isn't failure. Anger isn't automatically dysregulation. Feeling hurt because something painful happened doesn't mean you've returned to who you used to be.

Sometimes something is simply hard. The difference may be in what happens next.

Do you disappear into the feeling and lose connection with yourself? Does the moment instantly become evidence for every painful belief you've ever carried? Do you shut down, lash out, numb yourself, or become consumed with trying to make someone else fix what you're feeling?

Or can you recognize, This really hurts, and I'm still here?

That little and changes so much.

I Knew Something Had Changed

There was a moment in my own life when I understood healing differently. I was helping prepare for an event connected to an organization that fights human trafficking, and because people close to me knew my history, a friend wanted me to preview a film that would be shown. Some of the imagery and subject matter overlapped with painful parts of my own story.

I expected it to be difficult, and it was. What I didn't expect was what happened inside me.

I felt sadness. I understood the gravity of what I was watching. I knew how devastating those realities could be, and at the same time, I realized I was okay.

I wasn't numb or disconnected from what I was seeing. But I also wasn't transported back into my own past. For years, I had imagined healing as getting to a place where difficult things simply wouldn't affect me. Instead, I discovered something much more meaningful: I could be affected without being overtaken.

The past was still part of my story, but it was no longer deciding what was happening in my body in that present moment.

The Both/And Gives Us More Room

Trauma can train us into very absolute ways of interpreting life. If someone is upset with me, something terrible is happening. If I feel anxious, I must be unsafe. If a relationship has conflict, it must be falling apart. If I'm struggling today, all the work I've done must not have worked.

The both/and creates room for another possibility.

I can feel anxious and recognize that I am safe right now. I can be disappointed and still trust myself. I can love someone and set a boundary with them. I can have conflict and remain connected. I can remember something painful and know that it isn't happening to me now.

And I can have a hard day while still recognizing how much I have healed.

We aren't denying one side in order to believe the other. We're becoming capable of holding a fuller version of reality.

Your Old Responses May Still Show Up

Healing doesn't necessarily mean every familiar response disappears forever. You may still notice the impulse to pull away when conflict happens. You may feel the urge to chase someone for reassurance. You may want to numb, fix, control, overexplain, people please, or shut everything down.

Those responses developed for a reason. Your mind and body learned ways of protecting you based on what you had experienced.

What changes with healing is your relationship with those responses.

Instead of automatically becoming the reaction, you can begin recognizing it. You can notice that you're wanting to withdraw, that you're trying to make someone else okay so you can feel okay, or that your mind is telling you this conflict means you're being abandoned.

That awareness creates space between what you feel and what you do. Inside that space, you get to choose.

A Trigger Doesn't Erase Your Progress

You can become triggered after doing a tremendous amount of healing work. You can have an experience that hits an old wound, receive information that overwhelms you, or get pulled into an old emotional state for an hour, a day, or even longer.

That does not automatically mean you're back where you started.

One of the most powerful things to notice is how you respond once you recognize what is happening. Maybe something that once consumed you for weeks now takes a couple of days. Something that once shut you down for days takes a few hours. Maybe you recognize an old response while it's happening and are able to reach for support, regulate yourself, communicate, or reconnect with the present.

That matters.

Healing isn't measured only by whether difficult emotions appear. It can also be seen in our growing capacity to meet those emotions without abandoning ourselves.

The Familiar Can Still Feel Safer Than the New

There is another strange part of healing that doesn't get talked about enough. Sometimes the healthier response feels more uncomfortable simply because it is unfamiliar.

If anxiety has been part of your internal landscape for decades, calm can almost feel suspicious. If you've always pursued people when you're afraid of losing them, giving a relationship healthy space might initially feel terrible. If shutting down protected you from conflict, staying present during a difficult conversation can feel incredibly vulnerable.

The old response may hurt, but you know it. The new response asks something different from you. It asks you to stay present long enough to notice what is happening instead of immediately doing what you've always done.

Each time you experience a difficult moment without automatically returning to the old pattern, you give yourself new information: I can experience this and remain connected to myself.

That's how trust grows.

Connection Doesn't Mean Constant Calm

Sometimes we can turn regulation into another impossible standard. We decide that if we're truly healthy, we should always be peaceful, patient, emotionally steady, and perfectly connected.

That's not being human.

Connection isn't never getting angry. It's being able to notice anger without letting it take control of everything. It isn't never experiencing fear. It's recognizing fear and becoming curious about what is actually happening. It isn't never grieving. It's allowing grief to be present without deciding grief means you will never experience joy again.

A connected life has room for a wide range of emotions.

You don't have to be afraid of every uncomfortable feeling. You can let it tell you something without letting it tell you everything.

Healing Changes What Happens Next

Maybe that's one of the simplest ways I know to describe healing. The difficult moment still comes, but what happens next begins to change.

You pause instead of immediately reacting. You recognize an old story before automatically believing it. You communicate instead of disappearing. You ask for support instead of pretending you're fine. You give yourself time to grieve without deciding the grief will last forever.

And sometimes you still get pulled into the old response. Then you notice, reconnect, and come back.

That counts too.

You don't have to turn every difficult experience into evidence against your healing.

Both Things Can Be True

You can be strong and tired. You can be grateful and disappointed. You can forgive and maintain a boundary. You can love someone and know a relationship needs to change. You can be healing and still encounter an old reaction.

You can have peace and still feel sadness. You can be okay and still say, This is really hard.

Life gets much less rigid when we stop forcing everything into either/or.

So the next time something knocks you off balance, resist the urge to immediately decide what it means about you. Pause and become curious about what's happening. Notice what belongs to the present and what may be echoing from the past. Give yourself permission to feel what is real without handing the feeling authority over your entire story.

Then find your and.

This hurts, and I am safe.
I'm grieving, and there is still hope.
I'm struggling today, and I have grown tremendously.
This stirred something old in me, and I know how to come back to myself.

Healing doesn't promise a life without hard days. It gives us a different way to live through them.