You Don’t Have to Be Positive to Heal: Embracing the Messy Middle

There’s a quiet kind of pressure that floats around healing spaces: the idea that we have to stay positive in order to get better. That to be worthy of growth, we must carry ourselves with gratitude, optimism, and a perfectly curated morning routine. And while all those things can be supportive, they are not the requirements for healing.

Healing, more often than not, is gritty. It’s slow. It’s full of contradictions and backslides. There are mornings when you wake up with some hope and softness in your chest, and afternoons where you wonder if you’ve made any progress at all. That’s not failure. That’s the work.

The truth is, you don’t have to be positive to heal. You don’t have to be polished. You don’t have to pretend. You just have to stay in the process.

The Myth of Constant Progress

It makes sense why we cling to positivity. It's comforting. It helps us believe in change. And in a world that prizes productivity and clarity, the slow, tangled parts of healing can feel shameful or wrong. But healing doesn’t follow a straight line. It rarely announces itself with dramatic transformation. More often, it sneaks in through micro-shifts—a deeper breath, a slightly softer reaction, a tiny boundary held.

And sometimes, the deeper work looks like regression. Like getting more tired before you get stronger. Like grieving the things you didn’t realize you were carrying. Like sitting in the muck with no answers and choosing not to numb out.

That is healing, too.

You Are Allowed to Struggle

There is space in your healing for sadness, frustration, numbness, and even hopelessness. Those feelings are not detours—they’re part of the road. You don’t have to "snap out of it." You don’t have to force a silver lining. You don’t have to tidy up your pain to make it digestible for other people.

In fact, trying to force positivity can sometimes create more suffering. It adds another layer—the feeling that we are somehow failing at healing because we still feel bad. That we’re doing it wrong because we’re still scared or sad or disconnected.

What if, instead, we allowed those emotions to be part of the process?

What if healing included the full spectrum of our humanity?

The Messy Middle is Sacred

The middle part of healing—that foggy, uncertain, neither-here-nor-there space—is incredibly rich. It’s where real integration happens. It’s where we unlearn old survival strategies and practice new ones. It’s where we begin to show up differently, even when we don’t yet feel different.

It’s also where many people give up. Not because they’re weak, but because they think it’s supposed to feel better by now. Because they haven’t been told that the middle is where most of the real work happens.

That’s why it helps to have support. Not cheerleading, not toxic positivity, but grounded, compassionate support. Tools and voices that remind you: what you’re doing is enough. What you’re feeling makes sense. You haven’t missed your chance.

If you're in this place, the Nervous System Reset Toolkit might be a gentle companion. It’s not here to fix you, but to support you. To offer grounded, body-based tools for regulation, for steadiness. Not so you can "be positive" — but so you can feel a little safer in the middle.

Healing is a Relationship, Not a Destination

One of the most freeing shifts in healing is realizing it isn’t about arriving at some perfect state. It’s about building a relationship with yourself that is rooted in kindness, curiosity, and trust.

Some days, you’ll feel connected. Some days, you won’t. That’s okay.

The point is not to avoid the mess but to learn how to be with it without collapsing. To remember that healing isn’t something you perform. It’s something you live. One moment, one breath, one pause at a time.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are right in the middle of something that matters.

And even here, you are healing.

Take good care,

Julia