Healing Reveals Where Your Energy Goes

There’s something I’ve noticed while working on my own healing journey: the more work you put into healing, the less time and energy you have for people who haven’t done any of theirs.

What I mean is this: as you heal, your tolerance for chaos, denial, and emotional immaturity quietly drops. Not in a dramatic cut-everyone-off kind of way, but in a very grounded this-no-longer-fits-my-nervous-system way.

You stop chasing understanding from people who are committed to misunderstanding you. And you stop confusing familiarity with safety just because it’s what you’ve always known. That one can be hard, especially if chaos was once wrapped up as love, where unpredictability was mistaken for passion, or emotional distance felt normal because it always had.

Boundaries Aren’t About Being Better

It’s not that you think you’re better than anyone. That’s an easy accusation to throw at people who start setting boundaries. It’s that you’ve worked too hard to unlearn survival patterns to keep rehearsing them with people who refuse to look at theirs.

And the crazy part? You start seeing the patterns in others so clearly. Once your own nervous system calms down, the dysfunction around you gets loud. Suddenly, the defensiveness. The avoidance. Blame-shifting is all there staring you in the face. Like a huge neon sign you can’t unsee anymore.

The Lonely Space

And yes, it gets lonely.

But it’s not the kind of loneliness where you feel alone, abandoned, or that ache of wanting someone to choose you. It’s the kind where space has opened up because you stopped begging for connection or even betraying yourself for belonging.

And when you’ve spent most of your life craving acceptance, even while building walls to survive, that space can feel unfamiliar. Quiet. Almost unsettling. Your system has been trained to see closeness with danger and distance with safety, so when neither is present, your body doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

There’s no chaos to manage. No emotional fires to put out. No version of yourself you need to perform just to stay connected.

Meeting Yourself

So that quiet can feel very suspicious at first. But if you stay with it long enough, something else happens.

It’s actually where you begin to meet yourself. The person you really are without the performing, shrinking, or always looking over your shoulder.

In truth, this isn’t what I expected healing to look like. I thought it would feel lighter, more celebratory. Like a clear finish line.

Instead, it feels quieter. More honest. A little awkward at times. And deeply real.

In fact, healing doesn’t make your world bigger overnight. Sometimes it makes it smaller first. And that takes a little getting used to.

Sitting With Emotions

So, I guess this is where I find myself right now. In the quiet, smaller place. The place where I am sitting and feeling emotions, where I am learning what they are trying to tell me. Understanding who it is I actually am. My needs and wants, and what it means to honor them. I’m sitting with sadness and happiness, where neither is clouded by trauma.

Not empty or lonely in the way I once feared.

Just honest.

And for the first time, that feels like exactly what I need.

Photo by Matthew Smith on Unsplash