Healing Doesn’t Come With A Manual

There’s one thing they don’t really tell you in therapy, or at least not in a way that fully lands, and that is how unbelievably hard it is to rewire your brain so you can actually let good things happen in your life.

It sounds like it should be the easy part. Who wouldn’t want joy, peace, safety, and love? But here’s the catch: when you’ve lived a long time in survival mode, your brain and body get used to not feeling anything. That numbness becomes the baseline. It becomes the “normal.” And normal, no matter how bleak, is what the nervous system clings to.

When Good Feels Unsafe

So when something good shows up, a kind partner, a safe friendship, a genuine success, your brain doesn’t celebrate. It freezes. Occasionally it even panics. Because to your nervous system, “good” doesn’t mean safe. It means unfamiliar. And unfamiliar, for someone with trauma, has historically been dangerous.

That’s why healing can feel like sabotage. You finally get something you’ve wanted, connection, recognition, a moment of calm, and some part of you instantly tries to push it away. You question it, minimize it, or shut down completely. It’s not that you don’t want the good. It’s that your brain literally hasn’t learned how to tolerate it yet.

Learning To Flip The Switch

An important point: healing isn’t just about unpacking the bad, digging through the past, and naming the pain (though that matters). It’s also about teaching yourself, over and over, that good is safe too. That joy doesn’t always come with a trapdoor. That peace doesn’t mean you’ve let your guard down. That love doesn’t have to lead to loss.

And that’s not an overnight transformation. It’s a practice. Sometimes it feels awkward and forced, like telling yourself, “It’s okay to enjoy this,” while your body screams, “No!” Other times it’s tiny and unnoticeable, like letting yourself stay present for one extra minute of laughter or actually tasting your coffee instead of running on autopilot. Those small moments matter. They’re the reps.

Repetition Builds New Pathways

Neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire itself, is real. But it doesn’t happen just because you “know better.” It happens when you show your system, again and again, that the world won’t collapse if you let yourself feel good. Think of it like strength training: the muscle builds slowly, through repetition, not in one dramatic breakthrough.

Sneaky Signs of Progress

The hardest part? You won’t always feel it working. Progress in this area is sneaky. One day you realize you didn’t shut down during a compliment. Or you let yourself believe, for a moment, that someone’s love might actually stick around. Or you notice you’re not constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That’s when you know the rewiring is happening.

So if you’re here, and if you’ve ever felt the weird, uncomfortable resistance to good things, you aren’t faulty. You’re just teaching your brain a new language, one it never got the chance to learn. And trust me: it’s worth the work. Because eventually, the good stops feeling like a threat and starts feeling like home.

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash