July 19, 2025 • 16 mins
Deep down, many of us have become addicted to our healing narrative. We've mastered the art of vulnerability, turning our pain into content, our wounds into engagement, and our trauma into a personal brand. But what if this performance is exactly what's keeping us stuck?
This exploration isn't about dismissing your pain or minimizing genuine trauma. It's about questioning the parts that never want to stop talking about that pain. The reality is stark but liberating: you weren't broken...you were adaptive. Those shutdowns, panic responses, and moments of withdrawal weren't failures; they were intelligent protective mechanisms in a world that couldn't hold your experience. Somewhere along the way, though, this metaphor of brokenness was promoted from description to identity, tattooed on your sense of self.
There's an uncomfortable truth many healing spaces won't acknowledge: staying "broken" works psychologically. It provides protection from full responsibility, an excuse to avoid intimacy, permission to under-function, and a community of people who will applaud your vulnerability while never expecting you to truly change. But real healing doesn't need an audience. It's what happens when the performance becomes exhausting and you can finally rest from the need to be understood. It's when the wound stops being a headline and becomes a footnote: still there, but no longer the centerpiece of your existence.
Are you ready to step off the healing stage? Not because you're "over it" or because your pain wasn't real, but because you're finally prepared to exist without performing your survival? The journey won't be celebrated with likes and shares. Some people who applauded your pain won't stick around for your peace. But what awaits is something more valuable: the freedom to move through the world without narrating your trauma, the ability to be defined by something other than what hurt you. Let your story go, not because it didn't matter, but because it already did its work.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Episode 2 of 19.
You were never broken, justperforming brokenness.
How trauma became a costume andhealing became a stage play.
Some of us aren't healinganymore.
We're just addicted to thescript of being still healing.
(00:30):
This episode a mirror for theidentity you may not want to
outgrow but desperately need tothis one's going to mess with
your story, especially if you'vebuilt a whole identity around
healing.
We are not here to dismiss yourpain.
We're here to question theparts of you that never want to
(00:51):
stop talking about your pain.
You say you're healing, butreally you're rehearsing.
You post about your trauma likea script.
You show vulnerability, butonly when it gets engagement and
deep down.
You're afraid that if thewounds do heal, you'll lose your
voice.
You were never broken.
(01:14):
You were in pain.
You needed safety, but youturned it into a brand.
You don't know who you arewithout the narrative of being
someone who's still healing.
This isn't an attack.
It's an invitation to finallystop performing your pain,
(01:34):
because healing isn't what youtalk about.
It's about what you no longerneed to talk about.
You can keep calling it healingor you can actually let it end.
One gives you applause, theother gives you your life back.
(01:54):
Section 1.
What broken really means andwhy it's a myth.
Broken is a word we reach forwhen we don't know how else to
describe collapse.
But collapse isn't the same asdefect.
You weren't broken.
You were disoriented, you wereoverwhelmed, you were unsafe in
(02:16):
a world that didn't make roomfor your nervous system to
breathe.
Calling it brokenness was neverthe truth.
It was shorthand, a metaphor.
But somewhere along the way themetaphor got promoted to
identity and now it's tattooedon your sense of self.
You stopped becoming someonewith pain and started being
(02:39):
someone because of pain.
Here's the thing Real traumadoesn't make you defective.
It makes you adaptive, even theparts you hate, the shutdowns,
the panic, the numbness.
We're all intelligence, notfailure.
But we don't teach people that.
We teach them to see themselveslike cracked pottery, like the
(03:03):
damage defines them more thanthe design.
So now you're walking aroundcalling yourself broken, when
what you really mean is I'vebeen impacted.
I carry pain that no one saw.
I lost track of who I was whiletrying to survive.
None of that makes you less.
It makes you real.
(03:24):
It makes you someone who's beenthrough the fire and is still
here.
You're not a defective product.
You're a person who's beenthrough something unkind and had
to build scaffolding where noone handed you a blueprint.
So let's stop calling thatbroken.
Let's start calling it what itactually is human.
(03:46):
Let's start calling it what itactually is human.
Section 3.
How Pain Becomes a Brand.
You probably didn't mean tostart performing it Pain, I mean
, but pain gets applause.
Now Vulnerability goes viral.
Trauma has an aesthetic andsomewhere in between the first
(04:08):
time you shared your story andthe 10th time you posted your
healing journey, somethingshifted.
Your identity started to orbitaround the wound.
You used to just have pain.
Now you are the person who'sbeen hurt and it's working for
you Because, let's be honest,you know exactly how to write
(04:29):
about your trauma to getengagement.
You've got the cadence, thehashtags, the sad-eyed selfie
with the distant caption.
You've learned how to open upJust enough.
Just enough to look brave, butnot so much that it actually
costs you anything, because nowhealing is a performance.
Trauma is your TED Talk,woundedness is your aesthetic
(04:53):
and still, healing is a stageyou never actually plan to step
down from, because stepping downmeans risking silence.
Because stepping down meansrisking silence and silence
feels like erasure when yourpain is the only thing people
ever clapped for.
So let's name what's actuallyhappening here.
You're not just healing, you'realso protecting your status In
(05:18):
a world where people don'tlisten unless you're bleeding.
You've kept the wound open justenough to be seen.
That's not shameful, it'sstrategic.
But now it's time to ask do youwant applause or do you want
actual, real peace?
Because you won't get both.
Let's get even more honest.
(05:47):
Sometimes the wound is familiar.
Sometimes staying broken works,not spiritually, not long-term,
but psychologically.
Oh it pays.
You get protection fromresponsibility as long as you're
still healing.
No one expects you to show upfully.
You get to stay in the lobby ofyour life, not quite in, not
(06:10):
quite out, just processing,which means you don't have to
risk failure.
You don't have to risk youractual power because you're
still recovering.
You also get an excuse to avoidintimacy.
Nobody really has to know you.
If you're always a little tootender, they'll be gentle with
(06:30):
you or leave you alone.
Either way, you stay in control.
You also get endless permissionto under-function.
No one questions it when you'restill working through things.
Not your missed deadlines, notyour lack of ambition, not your
emotional unavailability.
See, it's all part of thehealing.
(06:52):
And best of all, you get acommunity, people who nod along,
people who are also stillhealing but never really
changing, people who love thatyou're working on yourself, as
long as you never outgrow thegroup.
Mind you and here's thetrickiest part they're not bad
(07:12):
people, they're not faking it.
But the moment you stopperforming pain, the moment you
step off that stage, some ofthem will turn on you Because
your healing threatens theirs.
You see, your peace calls outtheir performance.
So they'll say you're avoidingthe work.
They'll say that you've gonecold.
(07:32):
They'll say that you've lostyour empathy, when what you
really lost was the addiction toyour pain's identity perks.
Section 4.
How to Spot performedbrokenness in yourself.
This might sting a little,because we're not talking about
(07:53):
the raw pain that knocked yousideways.
We're talking about thepolished version, the curated
sorrow, the grief.
You've turned into a narrativeloop, not because you're still
shattered, but because you'restill scared.
This is how you know you canarticulate your trauma, but not
your truth.
You've got the story of whathappened down to a science.
(08:15):
You know the quotes, thepatterns, the psychology.
You can name the dysfunction inothers with chilling accuracy.
But when someone asks what youwant, not what hurts you, not
what you've survived, but whatlights you up, what's sacred to
you, what you believe in beyondpain.
You go quiet.
You center every story aroundwhat hurt you.
(08:38):
Even the stories that startlight end up circling the wound.
Even joy gets edited down tothis matters because of how much
I used to hurt.
Everything becomes a prequel toyour pain.
You talk about healing more thanyou do anything else.
It's not a phase, it's yourbrand now.
(09:00):
It's how you introduce yourself.
It's how you connect.
If you weren't healing, you'renot even sure who you'd even be.
Silence feels like identitydeath.
You can't not post, you can'tnot explain.
You need people to know you'restill in it, still working,
(09:21):
working, still doing the work,because without the broadcast
you feel invisible.
Without the script, you don'tknow how to be witnessed.
Here's the thing.
No one tells you Real healing.
Real healing doesn't need anaudience.
You don't have to be acharacter in your own tragedy
(09:41):
just to feel real.
You don't have to keep the painon display just to prove you've
earned your peace.
You don't need to be stillhealing if you're finally ready
to just be Section 5.
What Real Healing Feels Like?
Real healing isn't loud.
(10:02):
It's not a content strategy.
It's not a three-minute reelwith piano music.
It's not your next vulnerablepost.
It's quiet, it's internal.
It's what happens when theperformance finally gets
exhausting and you can letyourself rest from the need to
be understood.
Here's how you know when it'sreal.
(10:26):
You stop talking about the wound, not because you're hiding, not
because it wasn't real, butbecause it's no longer the
centerpiece, it's not the lensanymore, it's just part of your
background texture.
The wound stops being aheadline and becomes a footnote.
You don't need people to knowwhat you've been through.
(10:49):
You no longer chase validationthrough disclosure.
You're not baiting empathy.
You're not measuring connectionby how much of your pain
someone can hold, because nowyou can hold it yourself.
You stop introducing yourselfthrough pain.
You don't lead with whathappened to me.
You lead with who you arebecoming and you're okay if
(11:13):
someone doesn't understand yourdepth immediately.
It takes years to understandsomeone's depth.
You're not on a mission to makeyour trauma make sense to
everyone.
You don't owe anyone yourbrokenness to earn their care.
You're not on a mission to makeyour trauma make sense to
everyone.
You don't owe anyone yourbrokenness to earn their care.
You're not healed, you're justno longer rehearsing.
That's the real difference.
(11:34):
You're not perfect, notuntouched, not above the mess.
You've just stopped performingthe pain in order to feel like
you still exist.
You're not building identityaround your wounds anymore.
You're building your life andyou're letting the silence speak
for itself.
Section six the cost of lettinggo of your wounded identity.
(12:02):
Section 6.
The Cost of Letting Go of yourWounded Identity.
No one talks about the griefthat comes after the healing,
when the story ends and there'squiet.
Not peace yet, just silence,just absence, just a timeline
with no new posts.
Because here's the truth.
You lose community, maybe evenquote-unquote friends.
(12:27):
The people who clapped for yourpain might not clap for your
peace.
Some of them were never therefor your wholeness.
They were there for the drama,the relatability, the shared
ache.
Once you stopped bleeding outloud, you stopped being
interesting to them.
Some of them will say you thinkyou're better than them now, or
(12:47):
that you're being fake, becausethey can't imagine being okay.
Without pretending, you lose theapplause.
No one throws you a party whenyou quietly reclaim your
selfhood.
There's no standing ovation forno longer identifying with your
trauma.
You just stop posting about it,stop explaining, stop needing
(13:09):
people to clap for your survivalstory and, in a world addicted
to spectacle that feels likedisappearing, you lose your
emotional safety script.
And in a world addicted tospectacle, that feels like
disappearing.
You lose your emotional safetyscript, the one where you always
had a reason to avoid risk, toavoid intimacy, to avoid
accountability.
Without it, you're raw again,but this time you're raw without
(13:34):
an excuse.
You can't blame the woundanymore.
Now it's just you Unmasked,responsible, terrifying.
But you'll gain your wholeness.
You get to wake up and notbrace for impact.
You get to enter a room and notcalculate how much of your pain
(13:55):
you need to reveal to be liked.
You get to move through theworld without narrating your
survival.
You get to just be Not broken,not still healing, just you, and
that might be the bravest thingyou've ever done.
(14:16):
Section 7.
Let your story go.
The story served its purpose.
It gave your pain a place toland.
It gave your fear a name.
It gave your shame a scriptthat other people could
understand.
It built a bridge from survivalto self-awareness, and that
(14:37):
matters.
But bridges are not homes.
You were never meant to live inthat story.
You were meant to cross it.
So if you're still rehearsingyour pain just to feel seen, if
you're still writing chaptersjust to keep the spotlight.
Ask yourself this what wouldhappen if you just stopped, not
(15:01):
because you're over it, butbecause you're finally ready to
stop needing the performance toprove that you're real?
Real healing doesn't needpunctuation.
It doesn't demand closure postsor public updates.
It doesn't demand closure postsor public updates.
It ends quietly in thebackground, like a wound that
doesn't itch anymore, like avoice in your head that finally
(15:27):
shuts up.
You're allowed to move on evenif no one claps, even if the
audience leaves, even if the oldparts of you feel betrayed by
your piece, because healingisn't what you say, it's what
you no longer need to say.
(15:48):
So let your story go, notbecause it didn't matter, but
(16:27):
because it already did.
Thank you.
Episode 2 of 19.
You were never broken, justperforming brokenness.
How trauma became a costume andhealing became a stage play.
Some of us aren't healinganymore.
We're just addicted to thescript of being still healing.
(00:30):
This episode a mirror for theidentity you may not want to
outgrow but desperately need tothis one's going to mess with
your story, especially if you'vebuilt a whole identity around
healing.
We are not here to dismiss yourpain.
We're here to question theparts of you that never want to
(00:51):
stop talking about your pain.
You say you're healing, butreally you're rehearsing.
You post about your trauma likea script.
You show vulnerability, butonly when it gets engagement and
deep down.
You're afraid that if thewounds do heal, you'll lose your
voice.
You were never broken.
(01:14):
You were in pain.
You needed safety, but youturned it into a brand.
You don't know who you arewithout the narrative of being
someone who's still healing.
This isn't an attack.
It's an invitation to finallystop performing your pain,
(01:34):
because healing isn't what youtalk about.
It's about what you no longerneed to talk about.
You can keep calling it healingor you can actually let it end.
One gives you applause, theother gives you your life back.
(01:54):
Section 1.
What broken really means andwhy it's a myth.
Broken is a word we reach forwhen we don't know how else to
describe collapse.
But collapse isn't the same asdefect.
You weren't broken.
You were disoriented, you wereoverwhelmed, you were unsafe in
(02:16):
a world that didn't make roomfor your nervous system to
breathe.
Calling it brokenness was neverthe truth.
It was shorthand, a metaphor.
But somewhere along the way themetaphor got promoted to
identity and now it's tattooedon your sense of self.
You stopped becoming someonewith pain and started being
(02:39):
someone because of pain.
Here's the thing Real traumadoesn't make you defective.
It makes you adaptive, even theparts you hate, the shutdowns,
the panic, the numbness.
We're all intelligence, notfailure.
But we don't teach people that.
We teach them to see themselveslike cracked pottery, like the
(03:03):
damage defines them more thanthe design.
So now you're walking aroundcalling yourself broken, when
what you really mean is I'vebeen impacted.
I carry pain that no one saw.
I lost track of who I was whiletrying to survive.
None of that makes you less.
It makes you real.
(03:24):
It makes you someone who's beenthrough the fire and is still
here.
You're not a defective product.
You're a person who's beenthrough something unkind and had
to build scaffolding where noone handed you a blueprint.
So let's stop calling thatbroken.
Let's start calling it what itactually is human.
(03:46):
Let's start calling it what itactually is human.
Section 3.
How Pain Becomes a Brand.
You probably didn't mean tostart performing it Pain, I mean
, but pain gets applause.
Now Vulnerability goes viral.
Trauma has an aesthetic andsomewhere in between the first
(04:08):
time you shared your story andthe 10th time you posted your
healing journey, somethingshifted.
Your identity started to orbitaround the wound.
You used to just have pain.
Now you are the person who'sbeen hurt and it's working for
you Because, let's be honest,you know exactly how to write
(04:29):
about your trauma to getengagement.
You've got the cadence, thehashtags, the sad-eyed selfie
with the distant caption.
You've learned how to open upJust enough.
Just enough to look brave, butnot so much that it actually
costs you anything, because nowhealing is a performance.
Trauma is your TED Talk,woundedness is your aesthetic
(04:53):
and still, healing is a stageyou never actually plan to step
down from, because stepping downmeans risking silence.
Because stepping down meansrisking silence and silence
feels like erasure when yourpain is the only thing people
ever clapped for.
So let's name what's actuallyhappening here.
You're not just healing, you'realso protecting your status In
(05:18):
a world where people don'tlisten unless you're bleeding.
You've kept the wound open justenough to be seen.
That's not shameful, it'sstrategic.
But now it's time to ask do youwant applause or do you want
actual, real peace?
Because you won't get both.
Let's get even more honest.
(05:47):
Sometimes the wound is familiar.
Sometimes staying broken works,not spiritually, not long-term,
but psychologically.
Oh it pays.
You get protection fromresponsibility as long as you're
still healing.
No one expects you to show upfully.
You get to stay in the lobby ofyour life, not quite in, not
(06:10):
quite out, just processing,which means you don't have to
risk failure.
You don't have to risk youractual power because you're
still recovering.
You also get an excuse to avoidintimacy.
Nobody really has to know you.
If you're always a little tootender, they'll be gentle with
(06:30):
you or leave you alone.
Either way, you stay in control.
You also get endless permissionto under-function.
No one questions it when you'restill working through things.
Not your missed deadlines, notyour lack of ambition, not your
emotional unavailability.
See, it's all part of thehealing.
(06:52):
And best of all, you get acommunity, people who nod along,
people who are also stillhealing but never really
changing, people who love thatyou're working on yourself, as
long as you never outgrow thegroup.
Mind you and here's thetrickiest part they're not bad
(07:12):
people, they're not faking it.
But the moment you stopperforming pain, the moment you
step off that stage, some ofthem will turn on you Because
your healing threatens theirs.
You see, your peace calls outtheir performance.
So they'll say you're avoidingthe work.
They'll say that you've gonecold.
(07:32):
They'll say that you've lostyour empathy, when what you
really lost was the addiction toyour pain's identity perks.
Section 4.
How to Spot performedbrokenness in yourself.
This might sting a little,because we're not talking about
(07:53):
the raw pain that knocked yousideways.
We're talking about thepolished version, the curated
sorrow, the grief.
You've turned into a narrativeloop, not because you're still
shattered, but because you'restill scared.
This is how you know you canarticulate your trauma, but not
your truth.
You've got the story of whathappened down to a science.
(08:15):
You know the quotes, thepatterns, the psychology.
You can name the dysfunction inothers with chilling accuracy.
But when someone asks what youwant, not what hurts you, not
what you've survived, but whatlights you up, what's sacred to
you, what you believe in beyondpain.
You go quiet.
You center every story aroundwhat hurt you.
(08:38):
Even the stories that startlight end up circling the wound.
Even joy gets edited down tothis matters because of how much
I used to hurt.
Everything becomes a prequel toyour pain.
You talk about healing more thanyou do anything else.
It's not a phase, it's yourbrand now.
(09:00):
It's how you introduce yourself.
It's how you connect.
If you weren't healing, you'renot even sure who you'd even be.
Silence feels like identitydeath.
You can't not post, you can'tnot explain.
You need people to know you'restill in it, still working,
(09:21):
working, still doing the work,because without the broadcast
you feel invisible.
Without the script, you don'tknow how to be witnessed.
Here's the thing.
No one tells you Real healing.
Real healing doesn't need anaudience.
You don't have to be acharacter in your own tragedy
(09:41):
just to feel real.
You don't have to keep the painon display just to prove you've
earned your peace.
You don't need to be stillhealing if you're finally ready
to just be Section 5.
What Real Healing Feels Like?
Real healing isn't loud.
(10:02):
It's not a content strategy.
It's not a three-minute reelwith piano music.
It's not your next vulnerablepost.
It's quiet, it's internal.
It's what happens when theperformance finally gets
exhausting and you can letyourself rest from the need to
be understood.
Here's how you know when it'sreal.
(10:26):
You stop talking about the wound, not because you're hiding, not
because it wasn't real, butbecause it's no longer the
centerpiece, it's not the lensanymore, it's just part of your
background texture.
The wound stops being aheadline and becomes a footnote.
You don't need people to knowwhat you've been through.
(10:49):
You no longer chase validationthrough disclosure.
You're not baiting empathy.
You're not measuring connectionby how much of your pain
someone can hold, because nowyou can hold it yourself.
You stop introducing yourselfthrough pain.
You don't lead with whathappened to me.
You lead with who you arebecoming and you're okay if
(11:13):
someone doesn't understand yourdepth immediately.
It takes years to understandsomeone's depth.
You're not on a mission to makeyour trauma make sense to
everyone.
You don't owe anyone yourbrokenness to earn their care.
You're not on a mission to makeyour trauma make sense to
everyone.
You don't owe anyone yourbrokenness to earn their care.
You're not healed, you're justno longer rehearsing.
That's the real difference.
(11:34):
You're not perfect, notuntouched, not above the mess.
You've just stopped performingthe pain in order to feel like
you still exist.
You're not building identityaround your wounds anymore.
You're building your life andyou're letting the silence speak
for itself.
Section six the cost of lettinggo of your wounded identity.
(12:02):
Section 6.
The Cost of Letting Go of yourWounded Identity.
No one talks about the griefthat comes after the healing,
when the story ends and there'squiet.
Not peace yet, just silence,just absence, just a timeline
with no new posts.
Because here's the truth.
You lose community, maybe evenquote-unquote friends.
(12:27):
The people who clapped for yourpain might not clap for your
peace.
Some of them were never therefor your wholeness.
They were there for the drama,the relatability, the shared
ache.
Once you stopped bleeding outloud, you stopped being
interesting to them.
Some of them will say you thinkyou're better than them now, or
(12:47):
that you're being fake, becausethey can't imagine being okay.
Without pretending, you lose theapplause.
No one throws you a party whenyou quietly reclaim your
selfhood.
There's no standing ovation forno longer identifying with your
trauma.
You just stop posting about it,stop explaining, stop needing
(13:09):
people to clap for your survivalstory and, in a world addicted
to spectacle that feels likedisappearing, you lose your
emotional safety script.
And in a world addicted tospectacle, that feels like
disappearing.
You lose your emotional safetyscript, the one where you always
had a reason to avoid risk, toavoid intimacy, to avoid
accountability.
Without it, you're raw again,but this time you're raw without
(13:34):
an excuse.
You can't blame the woundanymore.
Now it's just you Unmasked,responsible, terrifying.
But you'll gain your wholeness.
You get to wake up and notbrace for impact.
You get to enter a room and notcalculate how much of your pain
(13:55):
you need to reveal to be liked.
You get to move through theworld without narrating your
survival.
You get to just be Not broken,not still healing, just you, and
that might be the bravest thingyou've ever done.
(14:16):
Section 7.
Let your story go.
The story served its purpose.
It gave your pain a place toland.
It gave your fear a name.
It gave your shame a scriptthat other people could
understand.
It built a bridge from survivalto self-awareness, and that
(14:37):
matters.
But bridges are not homes.
You were never meant to live inthat story.
You were meant to cross it.
So if you're still rehearsingyour pain just to feel seen, if
you're still writing chaptersjust to keep the spotlight.
Ask yourself this what wouldhappen if you just stopped, not
(15:01):
because you're over it, butbecause you're finally ready to
stop needing the performance toprove that you're real?
Real healing doesn't needpunctuation.
It doesn't demand closure postsor public updates.
It doesn't demand closure postsor public updates.
It ends quietly in thebackground, like a wound that
doesn't itch anymore, like avoice in your head that finally
(15:27):
shuts up.
You're allowed to move on evenif no one claps, even if the
audience leaves, even if the oldparts of you feel betrayed by
your piece, because healingisn't what you say, it's what
you no longer need to say.
(15:48):
So let your story go, notbecause it didn't matter, but
(16:27):
because it already did.
Thank you.
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