Healing Is A Continuum-Not A Commodity

And the wellness commodity space should be taken in with a grain of salt

May 18, 2025

Healing is a complex, ongoing, continuous and life long process- not a destination: photo credit Dusan Stankovic

Hello,

It’s Sunita here.

“I was once foolish enough to believe knowledge would clarify, but some things are so gauzed behind layers of syntax and semantics, behind days and hours, names forgotten, salvaged and shed, that simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it.”

-Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

“Simply knowing the wound exists does nothing to reveal it.”

I myself, at one time believed healing to be a process where someone else could take away my pain. In my mind, I just needed to find the right person who would extract my suffering in the same way a surgeon performs an appendectomy for a patient with an inflamed appendix.

This is how they would approach my problem;

Locate and isolate my suffering.
Anesthetize the area, (in my thoughts it was usually my heart that was sick.)
Excise my suffering.
Suture me up.
Send me home with post suffering excision instructions.
See me for a post suffering excision visit after a week or ten days.
Remove my sutures
Declare me healed
I get to live happily ever after

There is no magic healing so don’t believe the rah rah shit anyone tells you about healing and wellness

There’s good news and bad news in what actually happened in my healing journey.

The bad news is that I never did find that person. So, the impact of my trauma and my suffering could not be neatly and completely excised from within me.

And the good news is that it was not my heart, but my brain that needed treatment.

Why is this good news?

Because our brain is malleable and can change with the proper interventions and care. That’s the basis of trauma healing.

In reality, there was no good or bad news. Only information. I was the one attaching value to a reality that did not exist.

We humans do that all the time. It causes us much disappointment, frustration and anger when things don’t line up according to our wishes and expectations. We may even spiral into self blame, a loss of self confidence and feel shame if we fail to get the results we thought we should, or could.

What we may not have known, or been misinformed about by someone, is that what we believed to be possible was actually not. Healing and growth is one such reality. I will come back to why and how in a minute.

Healing, wellness and trauma has become big business now.

In the United States alone, we estimate that the wellness market has reached $480 billion, growing at 5 to 10 percent per year. Eighty-two percent of US consumers now consider wellness a top or important priority in their everyday lives, which is similar to what consumers in the United Kingdom and China report (73 percent and 87 percent, respectively).- McKinsey & Company

The Global Wellness Institute’s 2024 Economy Monitor reveals that the wellness economy reached a new peak of $6.3 trillion in 2023 and is projected to grow nearly $9.0 trillion by 2028.

There is an influx of data that shows us wanting more science and data backed wellness products and services.

Somewhere along the way, companies figured out that our trauma, brokenness, poor health, loneliness and social isolation was worth trillions of dollars.

So did some self help celebrity gurus who have made a tidy profit from dispensing platitudes about human potential, pithy mantras to find peace, and by hosting rah rah events at which we are led to believe that anything is possible if we just think positively and believe in ourselves.

I told you I would come back to what truths about healing and growth were withheld from us

This Rah- Rah shit and self help approaches are limited in how they serve those seeking change. They can actually harm us.
Trauma is a serious and complex response to a difficult event/events, and is often, if not always, inter-generational in origin, which makes it extremely complex to unpack . It takes partnering with a experienced, credentialed and trained professional to treat. This treatment takes time, tenacity and patience.
Any self help or wellness activity, retreat or product is an incomplete and temporary fix without us experiencing any lasting internal changes.
While many experts in the wellness space are doing genuine service to alleviate human suffering, many individuals who claim the title of wellness leader, guru, expert, healer, author and influencer have found a way to manipulate those who are in pain and are vulnerable enough to be seeking relief at any cost. They sell an illusion of wellness.
Healing is hard work.
In a world of social media, thousands of megaphones, and human disconnection, it has become very difficult for us to find our voice and self.
For those of us have been part of the rat race, willingly or unwillingly, we now know that achievement and success doesn’t help to feel good and whole on the inside if we have unaddressed trauma or other mental health issues.

Sounds pretty depressing.

Don’t worry. It’s not! I saved the best for last!

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Here’s the truth about not only healing and growth, but transformation and transcendence.

Everything we need is within us. If there has ever been a mantra to repeat all day long, it’s this one.
Life is hard (it always has been) so we need to stop feeling weak because we are challenged by it. And we have to stop pretending we are okay at all times. Doing just these 2 things relieves a lot of our stress and reduces our modern day suffering.
We are not designed to solve our problems alone and by ourselves. It is an act of courage to ask for help. That requires us to be vulnerable. And it demands we give up the socially validated label of being independent. We are interdependent through and through. We can help ourselves by asking for help.
No wellness product will be as helpful to our health as regularly talking to our best friends. And by talking, I mean sharing our troubles, fears, joys and successes. It is the keystone of what makes life worth living.
Healing is a relational process. We heal in relation with another human being. We heal in the formation of a relationship with another human being. That is the cornerstone of wellness. It’s all about connection, genuine emotional intimacy, the ability to be vulnerable with another human being and experiencing that connection within ourselves.
As I said in the beginning, our brain is malleable. It has the capacity to reorganize and form new networks when we provide it with repetitive, targeted and specific input. That is the unit and basis of change, transformation and transcendence. But we must be patient. It takes time. And it takes repetition over time. (To learn more about Neuroplasticity)
Unlocking our unconscious is the key to gaining awareness of our inner world experience. It helps us connect the dots between what drives our motivations, our decision making and our behaviors. Gaining self awareness is what is most helpful in making the changes we seek.
Everyone is challenged in some dimension on any given day. If someone is making life look very easy to you, they are either working hard at that and not being forthcoming about their efforts to you, or lying, in denial, or self medicating themselves to avoid looking at their reality.
Don’t listen to what the above individual offers you as advice or wellness product. Find the person who is brave enough to be humble about their strength and determination and is willing to share how they tackle problems. These true higher beings are busy overcoming what life presents to them and are honest about the complexity of life. That doesn’t mean they are not joyful and at peace. It just means they practice being there and are committed to that practice.
Stop trying to be happy. This stupid and immature expectation is truly killing us. Work to align with your true self. Work to make your life livable to begin with. That’s a noble pursuit and eventually it leads to transformation. It’s really okay to be okay, not ecstatic. We exist in times where we are being force fed sanitized and prescribed versions of life and shown caricatures of living. It’s hard to transmit simple pleasures over social media and in ways that fit the attention span we have been left with after a steady assault on our focus. So, don’t tune into anyone else’s propaganda. Tune it out.
Don’t panic if you don’t know or remember who you truly are. You have not lost yourself. You’re in there. Read points 1-9 and start with some small steps. You will get to where you want to be.
Healing is a continuum. Not a commodity. It’s a day at a time deal but having a strategy and plan is necessary. Keeping that plan flexible is important.