Healing Has Become Another Form of Perfectionism.

Caroline Huckeba
Aug 1
3 min read

Nowadays, we are constantly told to evolve, heal, and improve ourselves, while also practising self-love in the present tense. But the fully healed version of ourselves we long for is not coming.

We will be forced to find love, friendship, meaning and happiness, all whilst still unhealed. Because everyone will always be healing from something. There will never be a final form where all grief resolves itself neatly, and we emerge as a regulated person who drinks enough water and gets hit by a car and just simply says, “…let them.”

Everywhere I look, there is another belief system trying to explain suffering through self-improvement.

Mel Robbins says, “If you made the changes you’ve been avoiding, you’d be living the life you deserve.”

The pseudo-scientific version says: if you perfect your vibrations, you will attract your perfect life. The advertising version says: if you buy this product, you will become better.

If you grew up in a broken family, maybe you heard some variation of: if you were less lazy, less emotional, less fat, less difficult, your life would improve. All of them contain the same fundamental belief: your suffering is evidence of personal failure. Your life hurts because you have failed to optimize correctly.

Even internet therapy language starts collapsing into absurdity after a while. I’ve never read The Let Them Theory, but sometimes I wonder if the message is just:

“He cheated on me with my cousin, then totalled my car.” LET. THEM!

The performance of certainty seems to sit underneath all of this. Everyone wants a clear explanation for pain. Everyone wants suffering to be solvable if approached with enough discipline, enough mindset shifts, and enough boundaries.

I think about this line from Martyr! constantly:

“The performance of certainty seemed to be at the root of so much grief. Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their certainty.” ― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

We want to believe “the pain we feel comes from them, not ourselves,” because certainty is comforting. If the source of pain is external, then suffering becomes manageable. But people eliminate things constantly and remain unhappy.

The next relationship comes, and something still hurts. The better job, the new city, the cleaner diet, the improved self-care routine, and still something hurts. Not because change is meaningless, but because pain is part of being alive.

The average human life is around 40,000 weeks.

I am one person with limitations.

I will fall in love a limited number of times.

I will have true friendships a limited number of times.

I will experience a limited number of versions of myself.

I can only choose a few paths because choosing one life means losing others.

There are not endless options. And I think part of modern misery comes from pretending there are.

We live in a time where love and friendship feel both endless and empty. Dating apps, networking culture, and social media; everything creates the illusion that people are infinitely replaceable. Infinite access has produced a strange emotional disposability.

Reality says there is no perfect time to love one another. There is only a brief window where we are all alive together at the same time. While I can still walk with you, run with you, call you, and hold you. Before one of us leaves, changes, or dies.

Carl Rogers once wrote, “When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

Today, there are people I love still walking around alive under the same sun and moon as me. Dishes sit unfinished in sinks, laundry remains unfolded, music plays quietly from another room. Somewhere, a woman laughs so hard she snorts wine through her nose. Somewhere, two friends linger beside a car long after saying goodbye, neither willing to be the first person to leave.

Despite everything unfinished about us, it is enough.