Why “Healthy vs. Unhealthy” Thinking Can Hinder Trauma Healing
When we’re deep in pain, it’s easy to fall into the comparison trap. We look around and imagine that others are living from a place of wholeness, regulation, or ease, while we alone are stuck in shame, chaos, or despair. The internal story becomes something like: “If I were truly healed, I wouldn’t feel this way.” Or “Other people don’t struggle like this.”
But is the idea of some untraumatized, fixed version of a “healthy person” actually useful?
More often, it separates us. It turns healing into a binary (healthy vs. broken), rather than a deeply human process. When we fixate on what “normal” or “healthy” people feel, we lose touch with what’s truer: suffering is part of being human.
As Kristin Neff, one of the leading voices in self-compassion research, teaches, suffering, emotional pain, and distress are not signs of failure. They are shared experiences. Recognizing this shared vulnerability is central to self-compassion—it allows us to soften toward ourselves, rather than turn inward with judgment.
Trauma can make us feel like outliers. It can lock us in cycles of self-pity or isolation, where pain becomes a wall between us and others. But real healing isn’t about eliminating all pain—it’s about expanding our capacity to stay with it. Somatic therapists often call this our window of tolerance. As that window grows, we can hold our suffering without shutting down, lashing out, or numbing. And from that place, we begin to feel connected again, not because we’ve stopped hurting, but because we’ve stopped believing that pain makes us unlovable.
There is no club of “healthy people” we need to earn our way into. It is just a shared human mess of nervous systems, hearts, and histories, all doing their best. The work is not to exile our suffering but to let it guide us back into relationship with ourselves and with each other.
Sam (they/them) is an IFS therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who helped people navigate trauma, relationships, and identity.
Curious about working together? Fill out the form below to book a free 20-minute consultation.
