By Haika Gerson
There’s a lot of talk these days about healing.
We hear it in conversations, see it on social media, and feel it in the pressure to constantly be working on ourselves.
Unpack this. Journal that. Fix your inner child. Rewire your brain.
The message is clear: you should be healing, all the time.
And if you’re not, maybe you’re falling behind.
But healing is not a race. It’s not a productivity metric.
It’s not another project you have to manage. Some things take time.
Some wounds don’t close because you’ve read the right book or followed the right therapist online.
Sometimes, the most honest thing you can do is sit with the ache and not try to force it away.
There’s this belief that the goal is to be fully healed before you can live fully.
Before you can date again, trust again, make new friends, or start a new chapter.
But that’s not how life works. Life doesn’t pause while we patch ourselves up.
It keeps moving, even when we’re a little broken, a little bruised, and a little unsure.
Psychologically, this pressure to heal perfectly can actually create more distress.
It turns healing into another thing to perform.
You end up monitoring your emotions like a checklist: Have I processed this? Am I doing better yet? Why do I still feel this way?
Instead of allowing space for your feelings, you start policing them.
Healing is messy. It’s inconsistent. You might feel fine for weeks and then suddenly find yourself crying over something you thought you were past.
That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re human.
The expectation to be emotionally perfect
In a world hyper-focused on self-improvement, there’s an unspoken expectation to always be working on yourself.
And while growth is important, this mindset can leave you feeling like you’re never enough as you are.
Every flaw becomes a problem to solve.
Every hard emotion becomes something to “fix.”
But not every feeling needs to be solved. Some emotions just want to be acknowledged.
They want to move through you without being judged or picked apart.
When we treat our emotions like errors in need of correction, we miss out on what they’re trying to tell us.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to grow. But growth can also mean accepting yourself in moments when you’re not okay.
It means being gentle when your heart still hurts, even if it’s been a while.
It means giving yourself permission to live in the grey, instead of trying to rush to the clarity.
Living while healing
You don’t have to wait until you’re fully healed to show up for your life.
You can still laugh, love, make plans, mess up, and start over while holding grief in one hand and hope in the other.
Life is rarely clean-cut. Most of us are navigating complex emotions on a daily basis.
That doesn’t make us broken. It makes us real.
In psychology, the concept of “dual awareness” explains how people can experience pain and progress at the same time.
You can carry sadness and still function. You can feel triggered and still find joy.
You can have trauma and still be worthy of peace.
There’s something powerful about continuing to live, even when things feel unresolved. It shows resilience.
It proves that healing doesn’t have to look like stillness.
Sometimes it looks like movement, like living through the mess and finding meaning along the way.
Signs you might be forcing healing:
* You constantly search for the “why” behind every feeling.
* You feel guilty for having bad days.
* You judge yourself for not being over something yet.
* You avoid relationships or opportunities until you feel more “together.”
* You treat healing as something to finish instead of something to live with.
If these resonate, it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.
It just means you might need to take the pressure off.
Let yourself be incomplete
There’s beauty in being a work in progress.
No one needs a perfected version of you to care deeply.
The people who matter will meet you where you are, without requiring you to have it all figured out.
The more you can offer yourself that same kind of acceptance, the easier it becomes to move through hard moments without shame.
Scars don’t make you fragile. Memories that still sting don’t make you weak.
They are reminders that you’ve lived, felt deeply, and survived things that shaped you.
That depth isn’t something to rush past. It’s part of your story.
When the pressure lifts to be finished, fixed, or flawless, what’s left is space.
Space to rest. To feel. To live without constantly checking if you’re “doing the work” right.
Some of the most important healing happens when you stop trying to perfect it.
Healing isn’t a finish line. It’s not something you master.
It comes in waves, not milestones.
Some parts of you might always carry an ache, and that doesn’t make you broken. It just makes you human.
The real goal isn’t to erase the past or numb the pain.
It’s to find a way to live with yourself in the present, soft spots and all.
To build a life that honors who you’re becoming, without disowning who you’ve been.
There’s nothing to prove. No perfect version to chase.
Just a life, slowly unfolding. And that’s more than enough.
