Have you ever caught yourself thinking something harsh or irrational, only to feel your mood shift immediately after? Maybe it was a thought like “I’m a failure”, “No one likes me”, or “I’ll never be good enough.” These thoughts, although powerful, often come out of nowhere—and yet, we accept them as if they’re undeniable truths.

We live in a world that constantly offers us solutions. Feeling low? There’s a pill for that. Feeling lost? Take a course. Feeling unloved? Find a partner. Overwhelmed? Buy yourself a vacation, a new outfit, a new “you.”

In the world of modern medicine and self-help, the focus is often on symptoms: the pain, the fatigue, the anxiety, the fog, the tension, the flare-ups. We treat, we manage, we suppress. We Google. We chase answers. We ask, What’s wrong with me? And often, we settle for a diagnosis that names the pattern, but not the cause.

So many of us grow up craving the kind of love, safety, or validation we didn’t always receive as children. Maybe you had parents who did their best but couldn’t meet your emotional needs. Maybe you had to grow up too fast. Maybe no one ever taught you how to feel safe inside your own skin.

We often think of trauma and healing as two sides of the same coin. If trauma is the wound, then healing must be the salve, the repair, the mending of torn edges. That makes sense. It’s a tidy narrative arc.

When we fear losing others more than losing ourselves, that’s when our light begins to fade. We dim our shine, hoping that if we make ourselves smaller, quieter, or more agreeable, the people we love will stay. But isn’t it strange—this belief that if we stay joyful, radiant, and true to ourselves, we’ll be abandoned? Somewhere along the way, we learned to trust that misery connects us more than joy ever could. But that’s not the truth. That’s just the wound speaking.