Healing Doesn’t Always Look Like Progress

by Safeyah Ashari, Doctoral Intern

“I thought I was doing better, so why do I feel so off again?”

It’s a question I’ve heard many clients ask, and one I’ve asked myself as well. Healing doesn’t always arrive the way we expect it or want it to. It doesn’t always look like relief or lightness or clarity. Sometimes, healing looks like exhaustion. Like feeling more tender, more uncertain. Like needing more rest than usual. But that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.

We live in a world that praises visible progress: the checklist, the breakthrough, the productivity boost. There is an implicit belief that if you’re healing, there should be proof, something others can see and validate. But in trauma work and deep emotional healing, things often move in ways that are quiet and non-linear. You may find yourself circling back to familiar feelings or old patterns and wondering, Wasn’t I past this?

Subtle Shifts Are Still Progress

Healing can be hard to recognize in the moment because it doesn’t always come with fireworks. Sometimes it looks like:

  • Saying no even when your voice shakes.

  • Feeling grief instead of numbing out.

  • Resting on a day you would’ve once pushed through.

  • Naming your feelings, even if you can’t make sense of them yet.

  • Crying in session when you used to hold it all in.

These are not signs you’re backsliding. They’re signs you’re feeling. And feeling is progress. Healing doesn’t mean you stop hurting, it means you’re becoming more present with what hurts, more willing to hold space for it rather than avoid it.

You Might Feel Worse Before You Feel Better

In the kind of work we do at NCTP—whether it’s through psychodynamic therapy, DBT, or trauma-informed approaches, there’s often a moment where things feel heavier before they feel lighter. That’s not a failure. That’s what it means to unlearn, to remember, to reconnect. To face what we’ve pushed away.  As painful as it is, it’s also a sign that something important is moving.

Sometimes, what feels like unraveling is actually making room and making room for understanding, for reprocessing, for integration. Emotional work is not about “fixing” yourself; it is about discovering what’s been buried beneath survival. 

You’re Not Back at the Beginning

Something I often remind clients (and myself) is this: returning to a wound doesn’t mean you’re stuck. It means you're seeing it with new eyes. With a little more strength, a little more insight, a little more capacity to sit with what once felt unbearable.

Progress isn’t about perfection or speed. It’s about becoming more present, more honest, more whole.

A New Way to Define Healing

So if you’re in a season where you’re crying more, feeling more tired, or questioning whether any of this is working, I see you. Maybe, instead of backtracking, you’re deepening. Maybe what’s showing up right now is the very thing that needs care.

Healing is not a destination you arrive at with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. It is practice. A relationship. A courageous, ongoing conversation with yourself. 

Healing is messy. It’s brave. And it’s happening, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

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Matt Headland