When Healing Gets Inconvenient (and You’d Rather Just Eat Cheese and Scroll)
There’s something tricky about the moments when things are actually going well.
When the world isn't burning down around us, when we’ve hit a few personal milestones, when relationships feel smoother and old triggers don't spark like they used to—there’s a quiet temptation to hit cruise control. Our nervous systems are wired for patterns, and we’re really good at reinforcing the without thinking.
And sometimes, even peace can feel unfamiliar enough to be… suspicious.
That’s when the work really begins.
Because healing isn’t about a finish line. It’s about what we do when the noise dies down and we can finally hear the soft, anxious whisper of our oldest parts—the ones that still think they’re in charge.
There’s a therepeutic framework that illustrates that we have parts within our mind that do different things, are active at different times, and that help us do things in certain ways (or make a mess in others). It’s called Internal Family Systems - but think of it like different characters in your mind with different goals and values.
Maybe some of your parts look like an inner manager who micromanages our calendar to prove we’re worthy. A firefighter who gently nudges us toward the alcohol, the screen, the over-exercising, the snacks. That exiled part we’d rather not hear from—the one who holds the ache of not feeling enough - a deep desire to be seen and held (without having to ask).
It’s in those ordinary, functional, deceptively “fine” seasons that we have the biggest opportunity to create lasting change. To practice neuroplasticity not as a buzzword, but as a habit. Your values and intentions have an opportunity to retrain these parts and to help them be inclined to do and say things that are helpful to you; rather than whatever they’ve done in the past. We get to remind our system: we don’t have to live in the past if it’s not helpful.
And yes—sometimes it’ll feel absurd to pause and check in with your system when you’re already running late, still haven’t answered that email, and accidentally texted your therapist instead of your friend (just me?). But every time you return to your healing work—even just for a moment—you’re building new neural pathways. Not perfect ones. Not flawless ones. But real ones. Ones you can trust.
So here’s your gentle, loving challenge: don’t wait for another crisis to bring you back to yourself. Do something weirdly bold and slightly unintuitive today (we are breaking patterns after all). Journal for five minutes. Go for a walk without a podcast. Tell one of your parts it’s allowed to take a nap.
And if all else fails, close your eyes, use the 4-7-8 breathing technique for 3 breaths, and remind yourself: Healing is hard, yes—but so is pretending we don’t need it.
(Says the woman who once tried to avoid her feelings by going for another run… after just completing a race earlier that morning.)
So—what's your go-to avoidance strategy? Call it out. Laugh at it. Then do one small thing today that makes your future self proud. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to stay in the room.
