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As a seasoned somatic therapist and coach, over the past eight years I´ve worked with hundreds of clients on their healing journey.

But here’s my dirty little secret:

I’m not so keen on the use of the word “healing.”

Don’t get me wrong. There are things, such as trauma or illness, that do require healing.

But I’ve noticed that in the personal development world, people often engage with the latest modalities, be it breath work, ayahuasca, yoga, ice baths, meditation, affirmations, and so on, all in a continuous attempt to “heal” what they think is wrong with them.

And this isn’t actually healing. It’s actually something else.

Sometimes what we label as “bad” is simply what it is to be human.

As an example, I was having a coffee with a friend the other day, and she was telling me that she was feeling jealous and that she needed to “heal” this part of her.

And as she was sharing this, all I could think of was how normal and beautifully human it is to sometimes be jealous.

I wonder if the impulse to constantly “heal” ourselves has roots in puritanism. Maybe we’ve replaced original sin with the so-called crime of experiencing unfavourable emotions.

So in my therapy and coaching practice, we use the word “healing” when it’s appropriate.

And we use the word “growing” for everything else.

Growing doesn’t imply there’s something inside of you that needs to be fixed, purified, or gotten rid of.

Growing is the process of developing into the most expansive version of yourself.

Growing is knowing that every single part of you, even the ones you don’t like, are currently serving a role, purpose, and function.

Growing is having compassion toward yourself when you mess up, or have strong emotional reactions, or aren’t all “light and love” all the time.

Growing is knowing that feeling angry, scared, down, anxious, jealous, avoidant, or unmotivated is simply part of what it is to be human, and there’s nothing wrong with you if you experience these things.

What I’ve found is that when we can get to a place where we accept our messy humanness, and simultaneously let ourselves be led by our desire to develop and grow, that’s when we’re able to walk the incredible path of personal transformation.

So maybe you don’t need to keep “healing.”

Maybe instead, all you need to do is embrace your humanness and commit yourself to growing into the human that you came on to this planet to be.

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