What am I even healing
Understanding the meaning of self-work in a 'healing' era
"Healing" has become a motto in modern culture, saturating conversations, social media, and self-help guides. I open Instagram, and that’s all I see. But what are we actually healing? Our histories are not diseases—so, are we all inherently sick?
If you’re not healing, what are you even doing?
It feels like society has built this subtle guilt around people who don’t fall into the “healing” category for whatever reason.
I found this term pop up everywhere—tied to mental health, self-improvement, and spirituality. From therapy and mindfulness apps to self-help influencers, it’s all over the internet.
Once, someone asked me if I was healing. My response? “No, I’m just living”. Whether I was enjoying a beautiful moment or living through something painful, it didn’t matter—I never felt like I needed to call it healing. After a breakup, I didn’t feel the need to heal, I just wanted peace and space to grow. I want to live my life without expectations, trusting that wisdom comes naturally with time, experience, and mindset.
So, is "healing" overused or even misunderstood? Does it really mean that everyone is damaged or broken?
There’s this quiet implication in our culture that everyone needs therapy or healing. But what if, sometimes, we just need community?
And if you don’t have a therapist, are your struggles just brushed off as karma? Sure, “Going to the gym won’t solve your problems,” but is paying a middleman to “fix” us always the answer? It feels like we’re so afraid to face ourselves by ourselves.
What are we healing from?
Life is tough, and yes, we all face challenges. But not everyone has endured overt trauma or extreme pain.
Of course healing isn’t only about recovering from hardship. It can also mean addressing subtle emotional wounds, letting go of inherited beliefs, or breaking free from societal pressures. It can be about unlearning patterns and assumptions that no longer serve us.
But does this word “healing” fit every occasion? I’m not so sure.
Are we mistaking healing for growth?
If we look up the word "healing," it means to restore something to health or to make it whole again—to return to a previous state. So, by that definition, healing just takes you back to where you started after you’ve suffered. Is that enough?
Growth, on the other hand, is about progress. It’s about evolving, learning, and developing through experience.
I think a lot of what’s being labeled as "healing" could simply be growth—natural, organic, and something that happens with age, reflection, and just living in the present. When we’re fully in the moment, growth happens on its own. No labels needed.
We live in a fast-paced, perfection-driven world, which makes it easy to feel inadequate. Industries feed off this, monetising the desire to "fix" ourselves and keeping us stuck in the belief that healing is a constant need.
While the idea of healing can be empowering, it can also create this exhausting pressure to always be improving, as if we’re never good enough just as we are.
What if you’re not healing?
A friend of mine from university used to say, “It’s okay to not be okay.”
Just like that, it’s okay not to be actively working on yourself every single moment. Why do we feel the need to “heal” from every mistake? They’re human. There’s no growth without making errors along the way.
Instead we can embrace the present, nurture joy, and let ourselves be curious (in a healthy way). Life doesn’t have to be viewed as a self-improvement project.
And every once in a while we can simply ask ourselves "how am I growing, or simply being?".
Healing isn’t a one-size-fits-all journey. Growth happens naturally when we live authentically and intentionally, whether or not we call it healing.
Maybe the real question isn’t, “what am I healing?” but “what am I learning, feeling, and embracing in this moment?”
Just like nature, we’re constantly growing and evolving, even if we don’t always see it. Trees shed their leaves in the fall, flowers bloom again in spring, and rivers carve new paths over time. Growth is an ongoing process, not something we need to force or define—it happens as we live, breathe, and experience life in all its forms.
How do you define healing?
Growth - not a healing. I love this so much. Maybe we are lacking the word ‘in between’. Between a growth and healing (as restore to the state ‘before’). For those moments that are asking of you to redefine things, shatter a bit, go right through it. It is still a growth and evolution, but those moments feel so profound and sacred - I feel like there isn’t a word that covers this 😊
I like this perspective. I think "healing" is necessary from deeply traumatic events, but I think sometimes we overuse the term. At this point in my life, I don't think I'm healing so much as growing, as you described here. Most of my prevalent wounds are already healed. I love thought-provoking posts such as these.