Healing Isn't the Absence of Pain. It's the End of Abandonment.

What if healing isn't about getting rid of pain, but about no longer carrying it alone?

For years, I thought my job as a psychologist was to help people feel less.

Less anxious.

Less overwhelmed.

Less ashamed.

Less afraid.

And of course, that’s part of the work…

But after sitting with hundreds of people in therapy, I’ve started wondering whether healing is something altogether different. Because the people who seem to heal aren’t always the ones whose pain disappears.

They’re the ones who stop facing it alone.

That question has quietly changed the way I think about attachment, trauma, the nervous system, and even what therapy is for. I’ve spent years studying why people heal. Like many psychologists, I’ve immersed myself in attachment theory, neuroscience, trauma, somatic psychology, predictive processing, memory, Internal Family Systems, and the therapeutic relationship.

Each has given me a different lens through which to understand suffering. Attachment theory taught me that we develop in relationship.

Neuroscience taught me that the brain is constantly predicting and adapting.

Trauma research taught me that overwhelming experiences can continue to shape us long after they have passed.

Somatic psychology reminded me that the body carries stories the mind cannot always explain.

Internal Family Systems taught me that even our most protective behaviours are trying to help us survive.

For years, I held these ideas alongside one another. Each made sense. Each explained something important. But lately I’ve found myself wondering whether they are all pointing towards the same truth.

Perhaps every theory of healing is asking the same question.

How do human beings transform?

We often assume healing means feeling less of the “hard” emotions - Who wouldn’t want that?

But after sitting with hundreds of people in therapy, I’ve started to notice something.

The people who heal aren’t necessarily the people whose pain disappears.

They’re the people whose relationship to their pain changes.

At first, that feels like a subtle distinction.

I don’t think it is.

When we’re hurting, our instinct is usually to escape.

We distract ourselves.

We stay busy.

We criticise ourselves for struggling.

We overwork.

We numb.

We analyse.

We convince ourselves we shouldn’t be feeling this way at all.

Not because we’re weak.

Not because we’re broken.

Because somewhere along the way, our nervous system learnt that painful feelings weren’t safe to stay with.

Perhaps that’s one way of understanding trauma.

Not simply as overwhelming pain. But as overwhelming pain experienced without enough presence.

Imagine two frightened children.

Both experience fear. One is gathered into the arms of a calm, attuned adult who kneels beside them and says, “I’m here.” The other faces the same fear alone.

The event may be similar. The emotional experience is not. One carries fear. The other carries fear and aloneness. And those are very different burdens.

This is why I keep returning to one word.

Presence.

Presence is more than being physically near someone.

It is emotional availability.

It is remaining connected when another person’s experience becomes difficult.

Presence doesn’t immediately remove fear.

Or grief.

Or shame.

Or pain.

But it transforms the experience of carrying them.

Perhaps this is what attachment has always been describing. Perhaps this is what co-regulation really is. Perhaps this is why the therapeutic relationship matters so much. Not because the therapist possesses the answers. But because, week after week, they remain.

They don’t rush to fix.

They don’t ask you to stop crying.

They don’t become frightened of your fear.

They stay.

And in doing so, they offer your nervous system an experience it may never have had before.

Pain no longer carried alone.

I wonder if this is the common thread running through so many psychological theories.

Not that thoughts change us.

Or behaviours.

Or insight.

Or memory.

But that relationships transform the way pain is experienced.

I have come to believe that presence is the mechanism by which relationships reorganise the nervous system.

Over time, something extraordinary happens.

The therapist’s voice becomes less necessary. The steady presence you once borrowed begins to grow inside you. You find yourself responding differently to your own fear.

More curious.

Less critical.

More compassionate.

Less abandoning.

The external relationship slowly becomes an internal one. Perhaps this is what we mean by healing. Not that life stops hurting.

But that no part of us has to hurt alone anymore.

The frightened child within us doesn’t need us to make the fear disappear.

They need us to stay.

The grieving part doesn’t need fixing.

It needs company.

The ashamed part doesn’t need convincing.

It needs compassion.

Healing doesn’t happen because the pain disappears.

It happens because someone finally stays.

At first, that someone may be a parent.

Or a partner.

Or a trusted friend.

Or a therapist.

Eventually, if healing has done its quiet work...

that someone becomes you.

Perhaps healing is not the absence of pain.

Perhaps it is the end of abandonment.

ISSUE #1

Thank you for reading.

This essay is part of an ongoing exploration of what helps human beings heal.

I believe the answer may lie, not in eliminating pain, but in transforming our relationship with it through presence.