We are currently experiencing a self-help boom. Social media is inundated with tips on “healing your inner child” or “breaking trauma bonds.” Self-help books populate every bookstore, and influencers are saying to “mindfulness” their way towards their “best self.” It seems that everyone is on a journey towards transformation.
But let me hit you with some harsh truth: most people are not healing; they are just making the pain look good for their Instagram feed.
The Fake Element of Performative Healing
Performative healing is everywhere. You have an aesthetic journal which you bought to record affirmations you write. You meditate daily to increase your streak on the app you downloaded. You post your sage smudging ritual or gratitude list to show your followers that you did the work. It’s a vibe- candles, terminology, and all.
These tools- boundaries, therapy language, self-care can help you. But even knowing terms like “nervous system regulation” does not mean you actually dealt with your wounds. More often than not we use these practices as a shield and never pick up the veil that will help us process the real stuff. Pouring out the glitter while hanging up the fairy lights is just decorating the prison cell in which we are currently existing.
The Dangers of Performative Healing
Performative healing is everywhere. You buy that pretty journal and write an affirmation. You meditate every day and build streaks on an app. You post evidence of your sage smudging ritual or gratitude list to express you are doing the work. It’s a vibe, it has candles, buzzwords, etc.
These tools, boundaries, therapy language, self-care, can be helpful. Knowing terms like, “nervous system regulation” doesn’t provide evidence you’ve actually dealt with your wounds. Often, we hide behind using these as tools; we stay busy and make ourselves “productive” and avoid the real stuff. We just decorate our prison/cages in string lights but remain trapped.
Why Healing Truly Scares Us
Healing is no cozy bubble bath or soothing meditation. It is raw and uncomfortable. Healing is opening the box where you placed all your pain, betrayal, loss, or the moment you broke, and actually look at it. Healing is feeling the hurt without running away from it.
The truth is that we shrink away because it’s just too much work. I do it with work, relationships, or fitness and wellness fads that help me avoid the truth. We have convinced ourselves we’re just fine, because dealing with the truth would require us to grieve what we’ve lost, and that feels like too much.
The truth cannot be unwritten. You can’t bury the truth under self-help books or positive affirmations. It just waits.
Healing is terrifying. It means you have to free-fall into letting go of any delusions of control, you will have to embrace the messiness, the anger, the sadness, the vulnerability. It can involve sitting with the memories you have evaded for years so that they can pierce you for an instant. It requires mourning the life or self you thought you would have.
The Courage to Confront Your Truth
Why do we avoid this? Because it is gnarly. There are no 30-day plans to heal, no tidy checklists, and healing does not happen with an outcome where you are now perfectly and happily healed. Healing is ongoing and requires you to continue to show up, even when it hurts too much.
But this is where growth exists, how it starts to exist. It starts with baby steps: acknowledging your pain, telling your story, letting someone see you are cracked. It means choosing to feel the pain, instead of numb it, even when every fiber of your being is screaming to shut down. It means you are done making improvements to the cage you have constructed, and you are ready to go free.
Take Action Today. You have made it this far because some part of you is ready to engage. Ready to engage in a harsher portion of your reality. Ready to stop decorating the cage and approach what truly lives inside the locked box.
Take a moment and recognize this may not be easy, but certainly worth it. Now, for the present moment, take an action: grab a journal and write down one truth you have been avoiding; reach out to a friend or therapist and disclose something real; or just sit with your feelings for five minutes without distraction.
Every step counts. You deserve more than a pretty life. You deserve to be free. Take that step. Break the cage. Begin to heal, for real.
Keep the candles if you find them comforting. Keep the books if they usefully provoke thought. But do not stop there. Open the box. Sit with the pain. Have the courage to heal.
Because you deserve more than to be influenced into decorating a beautiful cage.
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