What if healing isn’t about getting rid of anything?

What if healing isn’t a destination where pain no longer reaches us, where old wounds are resolved, where emotions finally become manageable?

What if healing is simply this:

A body that no longer clenches at the sound of its own grief.

A mind that no longer believes it must silence its own longing.

A heart that still aches, but does not close.

For so long, healing has been framed as something to achieve—a point where we no longer struggle, no longer feel the weight of what’s happened to us. But what if healing isn’t the absence of struggle, but the presence of ourselves inside it?

Healing as Capacity, Not Resolution

Many people come to therapy believing that healing means getting rid of something—anxiety, grief, fear, past trauma. They hope that if they do the work, they will no longer feel the intensity of what once hurt them.

But healing isn’t about not feeling. It’s about increasing our ability to feel—fully, without avoidance, without bracing, without fear.

 Instead of pushing emotions away, healing allows them to exist without needing to change them.

Instead of trying to fix what hurts, healing creates space for pain to move through, without resistance.

Instead of fearing the return of old wounds, healing recognizes that emotions are cyclical, not linear.

Healing is not about arriving at a place where nothing touches us. It is about building the capacity to stay present, no matter what arises.

A Shift in Perspective

If healing is not about symptom reduction, not about eliminating struggle—then what is it?

Not the end of anxiety, but the ability to hold it without collapsing.

Not the disappearance of grief, but the knowing that it will come and go, and you can stay with it.

 Not a life without triggers, but the ability to experience them without losing yourself inside them.

Healing is not freedom from emotion—it is freedom within it.

Why This Matters

When we let go of the expectation that healing means feeling better, we stop treating emotions as problems to solve.

We will still feel sadness.

We will still feel fear.

We will still have moments where the past echoes into the present.

But we will no longer fight against those moments.

This changes the way we approach healing.

It means we stop searching for the thing that will “fix” us. We stop pushing ourselves toward some imagined version of wholeness where struggle no longer exists. We stop believing that something is wrong with us just because we feel deeply.

Healing is not about getting somewhere.

It is about staying here, fully, with whatever arises.

What This Makes Possible

Healing does not mean we never feel grief again. It means we stop fearing its return.

Healing does not mean we never feel anxious again. It means we can hold that anxiety without losing ourselves inside it.

Healing does not mean we reach a place where nothing hurts. It means we trust that, when pain does come, we don’t have to run from it.

And when we trust ourselves to feel all of it—the grief, the fear, the anger—we also make space to fully experience the joy, the peace, the love.

When we are no longer afraid of the hard moments, life itself becomes fuller.

We stay longer in joy. We stay longer in connection.

And all the hard moments become less hard—not because they don’t happen, but because we know we can hold them.

Embracing Shadows, Illuminating Hope,
Chelsey Fjeldheim, LCSW
Empowering Souls on the Path of Healing

Copyright © 2025 Chelsey Fjeldheim, Courage Speaks Counseling