Why Does Healing Sometimes Feel Performative? | Thinking Out Loud

Kimberly: Why does healing sometimes feel performative? Not healing itself, not growth, not support, the pressure to look healed, to sound self aware, to tell your story the right way, to package your pain into something other people can understand, approve of, or comfortably consume, baby. Sometimes you finally find the courage to say this hurt me and instead of someone listening they tell you why their pain was worst. I had it worse than you, kid. You have no idea. Or they explain what you really meant. Or they decide you're playing the victim. Or they pity you and call it love. Or they tell you How you should feel about what happened. And suddenly the conversation isn't about understanding anymore. It's about comparison. It's about who suffered more. who is more self-aware? Who is more healed? Who gets to be the victim? Who gets to be the villain? Somewhere in all of that, something gets lost. The actual person who gets hurt. Because pain isn't competition. Healing isn't supposed to be performance, and sometimes it becomes one. I want to ask, why does healing sometimes feel performative? what happens when we become more focused on looking healed than actually healing? Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we go any further, quick note: this podcast is for reflection and conversation. Not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's gray areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I am not here to tell you what to think. I am here to offer you framework to help you understand your relationship, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. Healing language is everywhere online. Terms like gaslighting, boundaries, narcissists, trauma bond Bond, James Bond. Safe space triggered, love bombing, and Language matters. Education matters. Having language for our experiences can help people finally articulate what they've been feeling for years. It can help us connect words to experiences we couldn't previously explain. Trauma awareness can also help us recognize the difference between someone having a hard time versus someone creating a hard time for other people. For example, being in a dynamic where someone constantly criticizes you, dismisses your feelings, or only points out your flaws while also holding power over you. That power imbalance can look like a parent and a child, boss and employee, teacher and student, caregiver and a vulnerable person, or even a friend group where one person controls acceptance and belonging and awareness matters. And I think the hard question is, when does healing language stop being about understanding and starts becoming a performance? Sometimes the answer is control. Control of the narrative, control of how others perceives us, control of our relationships, control of accountability, control of who gets to s be seen as good and who gets labeled harmful. to be fair, sometimes people are trying. Sometimes they're terrified of becoming the scapegoats themselves. Sometimes they're clinging tightly to a therapeutic language because certainty feels safer. sometimes they reject all of it as buzz words. Most of the time I don't think people misuse these terms because they're evil. I think they learn fragments of information without fully understanding them. I've done this myself. Guilty as charged. I thought boundaries were rules you place on other people if they wanted to have access to you. I thought gaslighting included every white lie or a moment of emotional misunderstanding. I thought trauma bonding meant bonding over shared trauma. learning the difference matters. Boundaries are ultimately about your behavior, your responsibility, your choices, your limits, and your plan to protect yourself while staying aligned with who you want to be. Gaslighting is more specific than simply lying or misunderstanding someone. It refers to a pattern of psychological manipulation that causes someone to question their own perception, memory, and reality. Trauma bonding isn't simply forming an intense connection after going through something difficult together. It can develop within relationships where affection, fear, harm, and instability becomes intertwined, where one moment feels safe, loving, and validating, and the next feels confusing, cruel, distant, or unsafe. The inconsistency itself becomes part of what keeps someone attached. You can look later and think, I should have left the moment that mask slipped. Attachment had already formed though through love bombing, emotional highs and lows, confusion, guilt, and self-blame, we normalize the instability and eventually start believing we were the problem. This is where the language can be powerful. It's also why using language without understanding can cause harm. I think when new terms emerge, people rush to feel informed. We want to feel smart. We wanna feel aware, we wanna feel healed, We wanna feel like we understand human behavior. Like we do when we watch too many true crime documentaries. Sometimes we stop at surface level understanding instead of slowing down enough to research, critically think, or start asking ourselves uncomfortable questions. when in my own life have I been guilty of this behavior. is this something I do to understand? Or is it something I recognize because I've heard the word online? Sometimes that's another problem. We assume something doesn't happen because we've never experienced it ourselves. can lead us to invalidating someone else's reality simply because it doesn't exist within our frame of references. Sometimes the opposite happens. we recognize that we've caused harm, and that's difficult. Sometimes society often teaches us that once we've done something harmful, we have to become the bad guy, the sinner, the villain, the evil person. Part of being human is making mistakes. There is a difference between intentionally choosing to harm someone and causing harm without understanding that what you're doing is harmful. Neither can erase accountability. Shame does not automatically create accountability either. education matters because understanding gives us the opportunity to change. When healing becomes performance, healing can require us to face painful truths. realizing the person we believed was safe was harming or exploiting us. We can kind of feel stupid in a way, even though that's no. Wanting to trust someone and have loyalty we're not stupid for wanting basic human connection. Sometimes people aren't ready to face guilt without collapsing in shame. instead of healing, we start performing healing because performance feels safer than certainty. Sometimes people don't want honesty. They want a version of healing that keeps them comfortable, keeps them regulated, keeps their coping mechanisms toxic or not, going. A version that protects their self-image, a version that allows them to feel emotionally intelligent. Without having to examine themselves too deeply, and I think this is where healing language can become dangerous. Not because the language itself is bad, because we can use language to avoid doing the actual work. We can say boundary when we mean control. We can say protecting my peace when we mean avoiding accountability. We can say negative when we mean I don't want to hear criticism. We can call it toxic when we really mean is This person makes me uncomfortable. And those things aren't always the same. Positivity doesn't always mean healthy. I hear people who consider themselves positive labeling other people negative. sometimes that comes from simply not wanting to engage in uncomfortable conversations. Someone might enthusiastically talk about how wonderful America is. there are certain things someone can admire about America. If someone responds to criticism with if you don't like it, move, what happens to the conversation about what could be repaired? Critically engaging with our reality isn't automatically negative. Sometimes it's critical thinking. Sometimes the person asking uncomfortable questions are people trying to make something better. Problem solvers. Sometimes the person insisting everyone say positive is shutting people down in conversation. who is actually being negative? And I'm not saying we shouldn't look for the positive things. I'm saying positivity shouldn't require us to stop looking at what hurts. Because sometimes positivity becomes another word for please don't make me uncomfortable. Discomfort isn't automatically harm and sometimes discomfort is information you need a face. This brings me to something I think shuts down connection even more. Comparison. Not messiness, not vulnerabilities, not even emotions itself, comparison. Social media, reality TV shows, online discourse. We constantly rake pain who suffered more, who has more trauma, Who has the right demographic? Who is allowed to speak? Who gets more sympathy? For some reason we started treating validity. like something that has to be earned by suffering more. Two people can experience different things. Both still struggle deeply. Someone can survive something that would completely break another person. someone can survive something we don't think we could endure. And both can be true. I don't think I could survive that. You know your limits. You know your own per you know You know what you personally would consider devastating. You do not get to decide what is devastating to someone else. That doesn't mean every interpretation of an experience is automatically accurate. It means we should be careful about confusing I don't understand this with this isn't real. Sometimes our judgments are less about the other person and more about ourselves. I don't think I could survive that. That's different from they shouldn't be struggling. I think sometimes people become so attached to their own experiences that they unconsciously believe one size fits all and that doesn't even work for clothing. why would it work for human lives? when we're struggling inside relationships, maybe there's a question worth asking. What is the history around my emotions? Do I suppress resentment do I use it to justify treating other people poorly? Do I understand my own power and position? Do I demand respect while giving none? Was I treated as too much? did people shut me down when I expressed hurt? Have I ever turned someone into a villain because of unresolved pain I projected onto them? Is there a power imbalance in this relationship? Do I dismiss them because I can? Or do they dismiss me because they can? These questions do not tell us who is good and who is bad. They help us understand what is happening. Validation isn't the same as agreement. At the core of it, I think people need to feel seen. They need room to exist honestly. We confuse relating to someone with redirecting them. Someone shares their pain and instead of sitting with it, we interrupt it. we compare it, we explain it, we intellectualize it, we move the conversation somewhere else. We redirect it. I don't want to hear your pain. Ha ha ha. We move the conversation somewhere else. When someone shares their pain, most of the time they're not asking for hierarchy. They're asking for space to exist. validation does not require identical experiences. Sometimes support sounds incredibly simple. That sounds painful. Wow. really hard. I'm glad you told me. I can see you're trying very hard. I'm here for you. You don't have to have lived through someone's exact experience to make an effort to understand them. That's something I think we've forgotten. I used to think I was good at understanding people. Looking back, I think I was so focused on trying to understand people that I didn't always let them finish what they were saying. At the other side, there are people who are very good at appearing to be listening because they can stay quiet. Quiet doesn't always mean understanding, and sometimes we're still filtering everything through our own experiences instead of actually trying to understand the person in front of us. Both skills matter, the ability to listen without interruption and the ability to step outside our own perspective long enough to see someone else's, to hear what someone is actually needing when they speak. Not simply what it reminds you of, to understand their capacity, their context, their experience, their intent in sharing. There is another side to this. Sometimes it can be painful to try to understand someone who punishes you for trying to understand them. Sometimes fear of being exposed, misunderstood, or vulnerable can turn into rejection. Sometimes someone can become so entrenched in their pain that they begin to believe you don't understand, even when someone is genuinely trying to, that's where I think this distinction between assuming we understand and asking questions so we can understand. Sometimes people need space to stay stuck for a while. Growth can feel painful, exposing, overwhelming. Sometimes isolation feels safer than reaching for support. I think it's worth asking ourselves, is it actually true that no one understands me? Or am I becoming more isolated because I have been disappointed before? do people really need to have lived through my exact experiences in order to make an effort to understand me? if The answer is yes. Is that belief protecting you Or limiting connection? Because support doesn't always sound like a perfect insight. Sometimes it sounds like that sounds painful. Sometimes that's enough for the day. I quote Alice in Wonderland a lot. I wish I didn't cry so much. I relate to that deeply because my emotional responses usually come from somewhere. It's not random. That doesn't mean my assumptions are always correct. It means that even when my instincts are right about someone's behavior or motives, the story my brain creates about what that means about me can still be disoriented by the fear and my past pain. My feelings can make sense and my interpretation can still be wrong. And that's an uncomfortable lesson, I But I think it's an important one. Healing isn't about becoming someone who never gets triggered. it's not about never misinterpreting something. It isn't even about never making a mistake. It's about becoming more willing to examine what happens inside of us. healing is often quiet most of the time. It isn't even shared online. When it is shared, it's usually filtered, the messy parts softened, palatable, edited, or left out entirely. I do that myself. There's a difference between transparency and vulnerability. For me, transparency is sharing enough so people can connect, understand, or follow the thread of what I'm saying. Vulnerability is deeper, more exposing. It's when I'm emotionally exposed in a way that doesn't feel curated or controlled. Those things don't always have to overlap. When I talk about abuse in other episodes, that's transparency. When I admit my own imperfections, that can feel like vulnerability. Something as simple as asking people to follow, subscribe, or engage, that can feel vulnerable too, because it requires being seen, being perceived, being responded to. I don't always feel comfortable with that. what feels vulnerable to one person might feel like transparency to another. Healing can be complicated like that. it can be as private as someone needs it to be. And it can still be real if nobody sees it. You don't owe people inspiration. you don't owe Instagram approved vulnerability you don't owe forgiveness on a timeline. We don't have to turn our pain into something beautiful in order for it to matter and not everything is character development. Not everything gets resolved in a clean arc sometimes healing is simply continuing to live while something is still unresolved. Sometimes you regress, relapse into old patterns Realize someone is hurting you. Realize you were hurting someone else. You don't have to have the answer yet, and that's okay. Healing isn't a performance review. I mean, unless you want it to be. It isn't a test you pass when you become calm, forgiving, productive, positive, and inspirational enough. Healing is a continuum, a process. a relationship with yourself over time and maybe do I dare say when you are healing maybe healing is fixing stunted development. You didn't have the option or opportunity to develop when growing up. maybe the question isn't, am I healed? Maybe it's who am I when nobody is watching? Am I able to be myself around the people I care about? Or do I feel like I constantly have to perform a version of myself to feel accepted? am I expressing myself honestly, or am I projecting my beliefs, assumption, fears, or unresolved pain onto someone else? Can I admit when I caused harm without collapsing into shame? Can I hear someone else's pain without needing to compare it to mine? can I sit with uncertainty without immediately reaching for a label? am I allowing myself to be unfinished? What would healing look like if I wasn't trying to prove it? Maybe that's where healing actually starts. not with looking healed, not with having all the right words. willing to tell ourselves the truth, even when the truth makes us uncomfortable. Because maybe the goal isn't to perform healing. Maybe the goal is to actually live life. Whatever that means. Back to the question. Why does healing sometimes feel performative? Maybe because somewhere along the way, healing stopped being something we simply experience and it started becoming something we feel we have to prove. Prove we're growing, prove we're more self-aware, prove we're not the problem. prove that we've done enough work. We don't need to heal no more. Prove that we've forgiven. Prove that we've moved on. Prove we're okay. When healing becomes something we have to prove, it naturally becomes a performance. Performance is about being seen a certain way. It's about managing perception. it's about making sure the outside matches what we think other people will accept. Real healing doesn't always look good. Sometimes it looks confusion, like anger, realizing you were wrong, realizing someone hurt you, realizing you needed rest, repeating patterns and only recognize it afterwards, not having the language for what you're feeling yet. Still admitting I don't know. none of that's particularly presentable. Maybe healing was never supposed to be. maybe healing isn't about becoming perfectly regulated all the time and this endless self-aware version of yourself that never struggles ever again. Maybe it's about becoming more honest with yourself, about your pain, about your impact, about your limits, about what you still don't understand. most importantly, more willing to let yourself be the person. instead of a finished product. If your healing feels messy right now, that doesn't automatically mean you're doing it wrong. You don't have to turn your pain into a lesson before you're ready. You don't have to make your story inspirational. you don't have to prove that you've healed and you don't have to perform being okay for someone else's comfort. You can simply be honest about where you are. you don't have to have it all figured out immediately. You can just start noticing by asking yourself, am I healing or am I trying to prove that I'm healed? Am I processing what I feel? Or am I performing the version of healing that other people find acceptable? And maybe most importantly, what would healing look like if I didn't have to prove it to anyone? Whether you leave me a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with this question, I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself. And remember, healing doesn't have to be beautiful to be real. You don't have to perform to be okay to have support. You are allowed to be unfinished while you're becoming. I'll see you in the next episode.