What If Healing Isn't About Becoming Easier to Handle?

Somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned that being okay meant being easy to be around. Don't be too angry. Don't cry too much. Don't make anyone uncomfortable. Don't say the thing that might be misunderstood. Don't need too much. Don't feel too loudly.

So we learn to edit ourselves. And eventually, some of us get so damn good at it that we don't even realize we're doing it anymore.

I didn't.

For a lot of my life, I have felt inadequate. Not enough. Sometimes, if I'm being completely honest, not even worthy of taking up the same air as everyone else. I've struggled with my body and the way I see myself. I could be invited to a party I genuinely wanted to go to and change my outfit six times before leaving the house. Six. Because apparently the seventh outfit was going to be the one that magically fixed everything I didn't like about myself.

But it wasn't just the clothes. Before I even got there, I was playing out conversations in my head that hadn't happened yet. Thinking about who would be there, what I might say, how I might be received.

Then I'd walk through the door confident as hell—or at least that's what I was determined for everyone in that room to believe.

And I didn't just want to look confident. I wanted to portray it inside and out. I wanted people to believe I was unshakable. Because somewhere in me, I think I believed that if everyone thought nothing could get to me, maybe nothing would.

I got really fucking good at that part.

The thing is, the confidence wasn't completely fake. I'm outgoing. I'm loud. I'm funny. I love making people laugh. I'm also the person who actually wants to know how your day was. If I ask how you're doing, I give a shit about the answer. And if I ask you what your biggest fear is, I'm probably not looking for "heights." I want the answer underneath the answer. I'm afraid of dying alone. I'm afraid I'm never going to be enough. I'm afraid nobody actually knows me.

That's where I want to go.

I've always been that way. I feel deeply. I love deeply. I'm curious about people. I'm direct. I'll compliment you and call you on your bullshit in the same conversation, and somehow I promise I'm doing both because I care about you.

But for all the depth I wanted from other people, I was incredibly careful about how much of my own I let them see.

I could be the loud one. The funny one. The person asking everyone else the questions. But my own emotions? Those were different. I questioned them before I even allowed myself to feel them. Am I allowed to be angry about this? Am I being dramatic? Am I too sensitive? What are they going to think if I actually say what I'm feeling?

And then I'd go home.

That's when the real party started—and by party, I mean the completely unnecessary trial I held in my own head where I was simultaneously the defendant, prosecutor and judge.

I'd replay conversations. I'd think about what I'd said and how I'd said it.

Was I too much?

Maybe you know that trial too. The one where everyone else has gone home and you're still mentally sitting in the room, reviewing evidence from a conversation nobody else is probably even thinking about anymore.

The crazy part is that I kept getting invited back. People told me it wouldn't be the same without me. There were people who genuinely loved my personality and celebrated the exact things I was busy questioning.

And I've never known what the hell to do with that.

I am terrible at receiving compliments. Someone can say something beautiful about me and internally I'm celebrating it and questioning it at exactly the same time. Part of me wants to take it in. Another part immediately starts interrogating it. Really? You actually think that? Do you mean it?

But criticism? Oh, that shit could walk right in without showing ID.

I could hear ten beautiful things about myself and somehow give more credibility to the one person, one look or one comment that seemed to confirm what I already feared.

The people who celebrated me had to prove their case. The people who confirmed my worst beliefs about myself didn't.

Maybe you know that feeling too. Compliments make you squirm, but criticism somehow feels familiar enough to believe.

That's hard to admit.

I've always felt a little like the black sheep, and honestly, I've grown to like her. You can't dye black wool. There's something pretty fucking freeing about realizing maybe you weren't meant to blend in anyway.

But there's another side to being comfortable standing out that I haven't always talked about.

Sometimes I've wondered whether I'm actually loved for being different or simply tolerated despite it.

That's the part underneath too much that hurts.

For years, I thought other people were making me feel this way. Their reactions made me question myself. Their distance made me feel unwanted. A comment or a shift in someone's energy could make me question everything. I wasn't necessarily blaming anyone. I genuinely believed the feeling was coming from what was happening around me.

Then I found embodiment and nervous-system work, and I started realizing something that, quite frankly, pissed me off a little at first.

What if some of these people weren't creating the feeling at all?

What if they were bumping into something that was already living inside of me?

That doesn't mean people haven't hurt me. They have. Sometimes someone really does treat you badly. Sometimes you're angry because you should be angry. Sometimes someone's being an asshole, and no amount of nervous-system regulation needs to turn that into a beautiful fucking learning opportunity.

But I started to see the difference between what someone did and everything that happened inside of me afterward.

Why could someone tell me nine wonderful things and I barely knew how to receive them, but one negative thing felt like absolute truth? Why was I so quick to believe the evidence that said I wasn't enough and so suspicious of the evidence that said maybe I was?

And then came an even harder realization: some of this had been around much longer than the people I thought were creating it.

I hadn't spent my adult life walking around thinking, Oh, this is probably connected to my childhood. I didn't even realize my childhood had affected me in some of the ways I was beginning to see. I thought this was just who I was—the overthinking, the questioning, the need to anticipate how I might be received.

Slowly, I started asking a different question.

Is what I'm feeling right now only about right now?

That question has changed a lot for me.

Not because I've uncovered some perfect explanation for every feeling I've ever had. And definitely not because I've reached some enlightened place where I no longer give a shit what anybody thinks of me. Trust me, I have not.

I've just started recognizing the difference between having a feeling and immediately turning that feeling into a fact about who I am.

Maybe someone doesn't understand me. That doesn't automatically mean I need to change.

Maybe someone doesn't like how direct I am. That doesn't automatically mean I need to become less direct.

And maybe someone genuinely does love the parts of me I've spent years questioning.

Maybe I could stop cross-examining them long enough to believe them.

And maybe your version looks completely different from mine. Maybe you don't walk into the room loudly. Maybe you've learned to disappear into it. Maybe instead of saying too much, you say almost nothing. Different ways of protecting ourselves can look nothing alike from the outside while asking the same question underneath:

Is it safe to be who I actually am here?

One of the hardest places I've seen all of this show up has been with my son.

There have been times when I've tried to quiet him around certain people. I've wanted him to make himself a little smaller, not make waves, read the room. At the time, I thought I was protecting him.

Then I had to get really fucking honest about what I was protecting him from.

I was afraid that if he was as bright as me, people might be blinded by him instead of loving him.

That one hurt.

Because suddenly I could see myself trying to teach him how to avoid something I had spent years fearing: rejection. I didn't want him spending years trying to figure out exactly how much of himself other people could handle. I didn't want him confusing belonging with becoming easier to tolerate.

And if I didn't want that for him, why the hell had I expected it from myself?

Maybe my brightness was never the problem either.

That doesn't mean I get to walk through life saying, "This is just who I am, deal with it," while taking zero responsibility for how I affect other people. That's not authenticity. Sometimes we need to apologize. Sometimes we need to listen. Sometimes somebody calls us on our bullshit, and they're right.

But there's a difference between being accountable for how we show up and constantly editing who we are because we're terrified someone might not like the unedited version.

That's the difference I'm learning.

And it's probably why the work I do now feels so personal to me. I want to create space where someone doesn't have to perform being okay. Where we can talk, get quiet and notice what's actually happening inside before immediately deciding what it means or what we're supposed to do with it. That's become part of the heart of my Embodied Reiki Journeys—not because I've figured all of this out, but probably because I know what it feels like to spend years doing the opposite.

I'm still practicing this.

I still replay interactions sometimes. I still question myself. I still get uncomfortable when someone compliments me. And that old you're too much story can still sound convincing as hell.

The difference is that I'm starting to recognize it as a story instead of automatically treating it like the truth.

Maybe you have your own version.

Maybe you've been called too sensitive, too emotional, too needy, too opinionated, too intense. Or maybe you're the easy one, the strong one, the funny one, the caretaker—the one who never asks for anything. Maybe you've become so damn good at being whatever keeps you connected to everyone else that you aren't entirely sure what happens when you stop.

I don't think healing requires us to become people nobody will ever misunderstand, judge, dislike or find difficult. I'm not sure that's even possible.

Maybe healing is noticing the moments when we leave ourselves just to make sure everyone else stays.

Maybe it's realizing that being loved and being universally palatable are not the same thing.

Maybe it's finally letting the people who celebrate us have as much credibility as the ones who don't.

I didn't find embodiment and suddenly become someone who never makes herself smaller. I became someone who can notice when she's doing it.

I'm still learning how to take up the space I've spent much of my life apologizing for occupying.

And maybe that's part of healing, too.

Not becoming easier to handle.

Becoming harder to abandon.

Written by Mandy - Owner of The Embodiment Journey

www.theembodimentjourney.com

https://www.instagram.com/the.embodiment.journey/