When Healing Meets the World Again
There comes a moment in every healing journey when you must return to life; not as the person who broke down, but as the person who survived.
After a long period of healing when you try to get back into society (family, friends, community, work, anything which involves people), a lot of things which seem normal to an ordinary individual, would seem alien like to a healing soul.
Re-entering society can feel strangely delicate.
The Strange Fragility of Re-Entry
Simple interactions suddenly require courage. Ordinary days feel like new terrain.
It’s a quiet truth of healing that once you change internally, the external world must be learned all over again.
For healthy/not deeply traumatised people, just attending an event is an everyday part of life. Meeting, interacting like “a socially fluent human being” is part of their daily grind.
The Memory of Who You Were
There is one very interesting thing about healing. If you have healed a bit, somewhere you are willing to give humanity and yourself a chance again, and then you remember you still are the same person who went through the dark tunnel, just to see the light today.
A healthy individual likes to live, being around life, in general. Hence, even the slightest healing nudges you towards forming your community again.
Learning to Live Life Again
For a mending brain who is learning to be human again, all these efforts of becoming a part of the community, sometimes may seem like running a sprint.
They know they’d probably finish it but would they feel competent rather than exposed?
Would it further tarnish their confidence?
And even if they do win, would they be willing to run again?
Would they be willing to put up so much effort again?
Would they find the struggle worth their mental energy?
No one can answer it until it happens.
Broken people trying to mend their wounds have been told to keep trying, to stumble, to fall and get up again, at their own pace, just like a child learning to walk. They have to learn how to participate in life for the first time, after a long time.
But how hard that process is, only the person going through it, or the one who has survived it truly knows.
And yet, healing has its quiet miracles. Something in it keeps pulling you forward, urging you to try again, to reach again, to believe that life can still soften around you.
When the Mirror Feels Heavy
When trauma runs deep, it doesn’t just change how you feel, it changes how you see yourself standing in the world. It makes you shrink from your own reflection. It makes the body feel unfamiliar, undeserving.
And because trauma often pushes you out of the community and into isolation, that physical self-doubt grows stronger. You start overthinking how you look, how you appear, how you are perceived.
Every small gesture feels loaded, every silence feels like rejection.
And when healing finally asks you to step back into society as your true self, it feels like stepping out without armour. It becomes one of the hardest parts of recovery, trying to feel like a “normal person” again, when nothing inside you has felt normal for years.
What Trauma Leaves Behind
Trauma brings out the beast in some and saint in another. Trauma can harden some, soften others, and leave some in between. It fractures people differently. And probably the one of the most remarkable qualities of being human is adaptability.
If you have healed right, with no more grudges towards the world and the self, you retain the good qualities and also the ones which are required for this big bad world.
But one thing about healing is, it is never linear. Even the strongest, most self-aware person will slip into old patterns sometimes. But slipping is not failing, it’s part of the recalibration.
Each return to old wounds teaches you something new about your strength. And once you know how to navigate these slip-ups with grace, you naturally become someone who can steady others when they feel themselves falling.
The Strength Hidden in Old Wounds
There are many strengths asociated with healing, if done right. If the trauma taught you to be assertive for self protection (in fight mode), stand up for yourself, then now it’s just a superpower waiting to be used, whenever needed.
You just need to switch it on, wield that hidden sword whenever you want. You see some wrong doing, you know you have the power and the assertive energy to stand up for anyone, only now you are intentional about it.
The gear is manual now, you are not on autopilot mode anymore.
When Kindness Becomes a Choice
If your trauma tilted you toward fawning, a people pleaser, you will always know what hurts others. Being nice becomes a choice, not a necessity. You become kind and nice because you know the world is very harsh and you don’t want to hurt another traumatised soul.
Some unhealed souls may call you a “doormat,” but you know it’s a choice. Healing teaches you when to step forward with warmth and when to step back with boundaries. Even your niceness becomes a form of strength, something you offer intentionally, not out of fear, but to bring a little healing into a harsh world.
You want people who need some warmth and need some unsolicited kindness to get it from you.
To me healed traumatised people make the world kinder.
God only knows how much unsolicited kindness has healed the world!
Hypervigilance – Reimagined as Wisdom
And then you meet a hypervigilant, anxious person, who always thought we are all gonna die tomorrow because of the apocalypse or an earthquake or climate change or a bomb blast, or a fire accident. This person in their healing phase becomes an impeccable planner and risk assessor. They by choice tell people of any pitfalls that they are ignoring, in whatver domain they are able to assess risk.
The erstwhile hypervigilant self, still notices things but knows how to use that information for benefiting others rather than going in a spiral alone.
Why Healed People Make Empathetic Leaders
People who survived chaos can become remarkable leaders. Their insight and resilience make them uniquely capable.
People who lived through hypervigilance often excel at risk assessment.
People who fawn often become excellent nurturers and relationship builders.
Unprocessed trauma can distort a person’s relationship with power.
But the same person with healed trauma has knowledge of empathy and boundaries, and other important aspects required for becoming a great leader.
You see the good thing about trauma is if you are truly healed, you operate as a happier version of yourself, yet the teachings remain. You still remain the empathetic version that you truly needed.
Does this mean everyone should go through deep trauma?
Does this mean the heroes of your society the leaders should be those who have gone through traumatic events and healed?
A good topic for research it seems!
The Danger of Unhealed Power
Unhealed people could be a menace for sure in leadership positions. We have many examples of such people, especially in political scenarios. The ability to watch the world burn but still be okay with it, is classic unhealed inner child behavior.
Often, unprocessed childhood wounds manifest in adulthood as emotional volatility or disconnected empathy.
It raises an important question: should emotional maturity be a prerequisite for leadership, just as education and experience are?
Because more than anything, I would suggest the leaders we choose to go through a psychological analysis to understand how deep a trauma they have, and will it make them do cruel things to their citizens, without any accountability.
Leaning On Those Who Have Done the Work
Now, to expect we have absolutely unbroken people in this world is impossible. But we can lean on people who have learnt to heal. For one, they believe in changing for good, they are self aware, they are adaptable. They know what it means to be broken, yet they believe in living a good life and they know why it is important to heal for living that life.
The Choice That Changes Everything
Until we reach the stage, where all are happy and resilient, I would use the superpowers of those who have chosen peace over war any day.
The power rests in choice, the choice to become a better human everyday.
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