Looking for the Pain Point: A Marketer’s Approach to Healing
As someone who’s spent most of his life working in advertising and marketing, I’ve been trained to look for the “pain point.” What’s the thing underneath the thing? What’s actually driving the behavior, the resistance, the mess?
CPTSD Healing Comes With Endless Pain Points
And when it comes to healing, especially CPTSD, there’s no shortage of pain points. It’s like emotional whack-a-mole. You address one, and another pops up wearing a different hat and a worse attitude.
When Healing Feels Exhausting
I’ve been on this healing journey for a long time now, and I still have moments where the frustration hits so hard I just want to tap out. Like, can I just be done with all this shit already? The hypervigilance, the triggers, the emotional plot twists nobody asked for. Some days it feels like the universe is handing out pop quizzes I definitely didn’t study for.
But those moments don’t mean you’re failing. They mean you’re human. They mean the work is real. And honestly? Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is admit we’re tired and then keep going in whatever small, human-sized way we can.
The Everyday Chaos of Living With CPTSD
Living with CPTSD is like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instructions, missing three screws, and realizing halfway through that you’ve been building it upside down. And yet somehow… you keep going. Keep figuring it out. And you keep putting the pieces together, even when it feels like your brain is both the customer and the customer complaint department.
How Trauma Pain Points Evolve Over Time
What really gets me is how the pain points change shape over time. At first, they’re loud and obvious: panic, emotional flashbacks, and the whole “why am I crying in Duane Reade” routine. Later, they become quieter but trickier, more subtle, and sneaky even. Like the whisper that tells you you’re too much, or not enough, or that people will leave if you show up as your full self. Sometimes I swear my nervous system is running outdated software with a thousand hidden bugs.
When Your Nervous System Says “Nope”
And the annoying thing is, even when you’re doing the work, even when you’re showing up for yourself, unlearning patterns, re-parenting wounds, and practicing healthier reactions, there are still days where your system simply says, “Nope. Not today.” The body keeps score, yes, but it also keeps receipts, backup drives, and apparently an entire archive of feelings you thought you already processed.
That’s usually when the frustration hits.
The “I’m over this” frustration.
The “why am I still dealing with this?” frustration.
The “isn’t there a fast-track lane?” frustration.
What It Really Means When You Want to Give Up
But here’s what I try to keep reminding myself, especially on days like today, when the frustration is loud and my patience is at an all time low: wanting to be done doesn’t mean the healing isn’t working. If anything, it usually means I’ve hit another layer. Another pain point. Another spot where the old wiring is finally showing so the new wiring can take its place.
The Slow, Brave Work of Trauma Healing
Healing is slow, unsexy, repetitive, and unbelievably brave. It asks you to stay with yourself in moments you used to abandon yourself. To sit with things you spent years running from. And to choose yourself even when your whole history taught you not to.
Some days you’ll feel strong. Other days you’ll feel cracked open. And then there are days you’ll wonder why you ever started this whole journey in the first place.
But every one of those days is part of the process.
Growing Toward a Quieter Nervous System
You’re not meant to power through it; you’re meant to move with it. Be present. And you’re not meant to be “done”; you’re meant to grow into a life where your pain points stop being the loudest voice in the room.
And maybe that’s the quiet win underneath it all: you’ve survived every pain point so far. You’re still here. You’re still choosing the kind of life you deserved from the beginning.
It’s not fast. It’s not glamorous. But it’s real.
And sometimes, real is enough to keep going.
Photo by Michael Hamments on Unsplash