When Healing Feels Like You Are Going in Circles

Sometimes, even after doing deep and consistent inner work, you find yourself in the same emotional storms. You have been in therapy. You have explored your trauma. You have started recognizing patterns and you are learning to listen to your body. And yet, here you find yourself again, overwhelmed, shut down, reactive, or exhausted.

It can feel like you are going in circles and like nothing is changing. And in those moments, it is easy to believe the story that you are not healing. That something is wrong with you and that despite everything you have done, you are broken.

But that is not the truth. The truth is: healing is not linear. And it often does not feel like progress, even when it is. Remember that you are meeting deeper layers and are uncovering parts of yourself that once had to be suppressed just to survive. You are slowly building the capacity to stay with what was once unbearable. And often that means feeling more, not less. Sometimes it means revisiting the same pain, but from a slightly different place.

This is not failure. And this is not starting over. It is the work continuing, quietly, internally, and often invisibly to others.

The Weight of Collective Pressure: From Performance to Presence

Our culture often measures healing and success by what we do, by visible results, by how well we “function,” by how quickly we “get better.” There is an expectation to come back, to keep going, to perform our roles perfectly, whether as a worker, a partner, a parent or a friend.

But healing rarely works this way. When our nervous system is still carrying trauma, when our body and psyche are learning to trust again, the journey is often slow, cyclical, and unpredictable. The pressure to perform, to fix ourselves or prove that we are making progress, adds another layer of stress and disconnection from our true experience.

Instead, healing asks for something different: presence. Presence means showing up with compassion and curiosity to whatever is here now, even when it is uncomfortable or confusing. It means allowing space for rest, for tears, for uncertainty. It means honoring our body’s rhythms and needs over the timeline society demands.

This shift from performance to presence can feel difficult. It challenges our dominant cultural ideas about productivity and worth. It invites us to become a compassionate witness to our own experience, rather than being critical with ourselves demanding constant change and progress.

Navigating Inner Chaos: When Different Parts Clash

Inside us, especially after trauma, there are often many inner parts with different needs and feelings that coexist and sometimes conflict. There might be a part that desperately wants safety and rest, a part that pushes to fix or control things, and another that feels overwhelmed, scared, or numb. These parts often trigger each other, creating a complex emotional and somatic entanglement that can feel confusing and exhausting.

This internal complexity can be overwhelming. It is important to acknowledge and respect all these parts and not to push them away or try to “fix” them. Healing is about becoming a compassionate witness to our inner world, holding space for all parts to be seen and heard, and where our healthy, caring self can gradually grow stronger to provide support and guidance. This process takes time. And it is rarely neat or tidy. But it is where deep transformation lives.

When Healing Feels Like Drowning

We often speak of healing as a spiral, a layered, circular return that deepens our awareness each time we revisit an old wound. But what we do not always talk about is that sometimes the spiral does not feel like a deepening at all.

Sometimes it feels like a trap. Like being stuck in the same loop, again and again. Like waking up years into your healing journey wondering, Why am I still here? Why am I still attracting the same kind of partner? Why do I still feel broken inside? Why do I feel like I am more sensitive, more overwhelmed, more lost than before?

This is one of the most painful and misunderstood places in the healing journey and it is important that we explore it. Because the truth is healing does not happen in a vacuum. You are not just navigating your own inner world. You are healing within a society that is not designed for healing.

Our World Is Designed for Survival, Not for Living

We live in a world that rewards performance, speed, productivity, and emotional suppression. Our societies, especially after the Industrial Revolution, have been built around one dominant value: output.

We are praised for pushing through, for functioning, for achieving. We are not praised for resting, grieving, softening, or slowing down. We are not supported in feeling and we are not taught how to be present.

So when your body says no and you want to slow down, you are in many ways going against the current of an entire culture. And that is not easy.

Awareness Can Be a Double-Edged Sword

Sometimes the more we become aware of ourselves, our patterns, our trauma, our unmet needs, the more painful it becomes to exist in environments that deny those parts of us. You begin to see things differently. You feel more andnotice the distortion and stress. And that sensitivity, while sacred, can feel like a curse. It can feel like your awareness is betraying you, like you were “better off” before you started healing.

This friction you are feeling is not just emotional and mental. It is somatic. It is relational. It is structural. It is collective. When we begin to see the unhealthy patterns and dynamics in ourselves, in our families, and in the world around us, something in us wants to break free. But breaking free is often not immediate liberation. It can rather feel like disorientation and grief. It is also a nervous system that suddenly has no roadmap.

Because the truth is, even when a system is harmful, it still feels like home to the parts of us that learned to survive in it. Even chaos can feel safe if it is all we have ever known. So when you start to uncover these patterns, whether it is leaving an unhealthy job, setting boundaries in a codependent relationship, or choosing rest over productivity, you are not just making a new choice. You are rewiring your sense of safety. And that can feel terrifying.

You Were Never Meant to Do This Alone

One of the greatest myths of modern healing is that we must be completely self-sufficient. That self-regulation is the goal. That we must find all the answers within. But healing is not a solo journey, it is a human one.

Yes, we need to build an internal capacity and resources for self-regulation, but we also need to be held, to feel seen and to be supported. We are wired for co-regulation. We are meant to heal in relationship, in community, in contact with others who can sit with our pain without needing to fix it.

A Different Kind of Healing

Healing is not always about feeling better. Sometimes, it is about feeling more, more deeply, more honestly, and more fully. It is not about reaching a finish line where everything is resolved, but rather about learning how to meet ourselves with truth and tenderness, even when nothing feels resolved at all.

It is about remembering that our struggles are not signs of failure, but echoes of our inner trauma parts that still need care and that the work we have done is not undone by moments of chaos or collapse. Being human is messy, and healing asks us to stay with what is, and not to fix or force.

This work is not easy. It takes courage to keep meeting yourself especially when it feels like nothing is changing. But the fact that you are still here, still trying, still feeling that matters. That is the work. You do not need to have it all figured out. You do not need to feel good all the time. What matters is that you are showing up again and again with honesty, with tenderness, and with the willingness to begin where you are. That is enough. 💛

Questions for Reflection

• What expectations do I carry about what healing “should” look or feel like?

• Where do I feel pressure to “get better” instead of being present with what is?

• How do I relate to the parts of me that still struggle or feel stuck?

• In what ways have I grown, not in outcomes, but in how I meet myself?

If this post resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment and share your reflections, you are so warmly welcome in this space.

And if you are feeling called to explore these themes more deeply, I offer 1:1 and group sessions both online and in-person in Oslo.

Thank you for being here. 💛

Julia