In the landscape of some modern therapy and social-media healing, we’ve entered a strange paradox. We validate, affirm labels, and empathise; sometimes to the point of paralysis. “Your truth” becomes the final destination, rather than a bridge to the deeper, evolving truth that lives beneath old stories.
Yes, every person deserves validation for their pain. This could well be a pendulum swing from an old, very damaging ethos of 'pull up your bootstraps and push through'. So in the evolution of our growth collectively, I trust this swing is necessary. But when validation becomes the therapy; when we keep people sitting in the story, justifying their response to life due to their external circumstances, rather than walking through it in new ways that allow them to live well amidst what will be a challenging life for most of us; we rob them of the evolution and sense of being home in themselves that they seek.
Neuroscience shows that the brain learns through prediction and correction. If our nervous system only rehearses the story of pain, danger, and injustice, it will continue to predict danger and wire it in. Healing requires new experience, new prediction; the felt sense of safety, choice, and possibility. We cannot get this if we out source it all to others.
Depth psychology teaches that projections; from family, culture, religion, gender, all cloud the mirror of the true Self. The goal of good therapy is not to polish the story of our conditioning, but to help us see what’s underneath it: innate authenticity. The place within that knows peace not because life is perfect, but because we are connected to what is real and enduring.
A skilled therapist offers both: the validation that soothes a nervous system never seen, and the compassionate confrontation that cultivates maturity. This means building skills to live well after pain, not in it forever.
Life is unpredictable. Loss, trauma, joy, ending; they come for all of us. Maturity is learning to meet this reality with emotional flexibility, without entitlement, judgment, or apathy. Therapy that stops short of this soothes the ego but leaves the soul stagnant.
Pain is tender, yes, but it doesn’t make us inherently special or entitled. When we buy into the idea that suffering should confer special treatment, we risk entering a kind of “challenge olympics” and co-create a culture of victimhood and comparison to others that fosters narcissism, empathy loss, and self-victimization.
Unchecked, this leads to over-control: trying to manipulate (most often unconsciously) people to meet our needs, blame others, and rigidly managing life so it does not cause us discomofrt. This is a recipe for incredibly high anxiety, poor health, low distress tolerance, and inflexibility.
We need approach these tendencies with compassion, because we come by these coping skills honestly - usually amidst adversity, while simultaneously teaching new more adaptive skills that help us ride life’s waves rather than fight them. These are skills like radical acceptance, emotional regulation, building our own self worth not reliant on others validation, appreciating our own strengths and gifts, embodied mindfulness, and learning skills to tolerate some distress that is part of normal everyday life.
There is never anything shameful about being victimised; individually or collectively. Denial of harm perpetuates this cycle and recognition is essential for our collective healing. And, as individuals once our basic needs are met, healing requires meeting the victimised parts within us: giving them voice, choice, safety, protection, as the adult we are now, and reconnecting them to their innate dignity.
If we remain fully identified with the role of victim, we unconsciously look for rescue; often in the form of a benevolent “parent” figure, an idealised romantic interest, a leader, or guru. From this disempowered place, we can seek others to choose us, to give us the validation and perfect mirror we may have missed in childhood. This puts immense pressure on relationships, and inevitably leads to what we fear most; rejection or abandonment. This is not a cruel happenstance if this keeps happening. It is an arrow pointing to the parts of you needing connection to present moment safety, choice, agency, reparenting, and often new skills.
We can also inadvertently attract and opt in to systems or people that mirror the same imbalance of power we wish to escape. Welcome to our modern paradigm of societal power. Most of us are living in blame about our current government not rescuing us, and the shock that they are in fact a perpetrator. And yet, we are still too scared and disempowered to reclaim power, which, as the 99% of the population; we do hold, relative to the 1% in power. This is why, for me, it is crucial each individual does not deny the power of change and choice, because empowered individuals will be able to mobilise together as a collective to effect societal change and rescue ourselves.
Depth psychology calls this the drama triangle (Karpmann 1968), the endless cycle of victim, rescuer, and perpetrator. Therapy that understands this helps emancipate people from it, guiding them into adult agency, choice, and creativity for the reality they are living in. Healing means moving from 'someone save me' to 'I can meet life as it comes'. When we over-validate people’s labels and stories, we deny them this chance to live a full, mature, and sovereign life.
Trauma robs us of resilience through zero fault or weakness of our own. It occurs when our inner or outer resources weren’t a match for what we faced. But not everyone who meets adversity develops trauma, and many who do entounter it, can recover when basic needs are met. How they do this, is through growing back resilience, finding meaning, and radical acceptance of life as it is, which will start our grieving process, and end in us being able to meet reality as it is without resisting it, judging it or fighting it.
Resilience is a delicate interplay of nature, nurture, and support. For those who faced adversity without enough buffering; love, safety, or understanding; we can grow not resilience but protection: chronic stress responses that brace for impact, and personality adaptations to stay safe or connected. These strategies are valiant and adaptive at the time we formed them, usually as children. But as adults, life will eventually show us they are past their use-by date.
Our body will express the stress of these old adaptations of over functioning or of avoidance. Our relationships will mirror the wounds not yet tended to. Our work life will awaken unhealed patterns. Life mirrors our pain; not out of cruelty, but to invite consciousness and growth. Why is there a belief we should be happy all the time? This is causing such suffering. Teach people that growth IS uncomfortable, so they learn to meet it with acceptance, choice and agency, instead of trying to make it go away, thus causing more suffering!
Carl Jung said, “The first half of life is devoted to forming the ego, the second half to going inward and letting go of it.” Trauma and challenge are not exceptions to life; they are life, calling us toward wholeness and self actualisation.
One of the most overlooked aspects of resilience and growing nervous system capacity is the need for active participation in life. The simple, profound act of noticing that we have choices, and engaging with them moment by moment. The classic study by Langer and Rodin (1976) in a nursing home illustrates this beautifully. One group of residents was given choice; which plants to care for, what movies to watch, how to spend their time. Another group had choices made for them. Those with autonomy became happier, healthier (biomarkers showed less inflammation and better cellular health), and more engaged. Those without it declined more rapidly and their biomarkers showed increased ageing and inflammation. The conclusion: choice is life-giving. Agency protects vitality. Engagement in life grows happiness. When we do not compassionately call people into noticing where they deny this choice in their daily lives, we don't help them.
Neuroscience affirms this. When we act intentionally, we downregulate chronic stress responses. The brain learns that we can influence outcomes, that we are not helpless. Each moment of conscious choice signals safety to the nervous system and strengthens our sense of agency. This is why in Befriend, our first practices are about giving back people agency in how they respond to the present moment of symptoms, emotions, challenge. Through this practice they begin to experience profound benefits.
But this takes practice. Social media has popularised a hyper-simplified view of “nervous system regulation”, or "trauma release", as if we can breathe, tap, or affirm our way into peace. In reality, a good life is based on building stable self relationship, practicing skills, and much as we don't want to acknowledge genes, our personality is partly genetically endowed. This means we will all have strengths and weaknesses to work with throughout life.
Resilience is learned. Self-compassion is practiced. Happiness is cultivated. Choosing to participate in life; to speak truthfully (incuding to yourself), to move your body, to act in alignment with your values; builds self-esteem and integrity, in a way that no one outside you as an adult can ever I've you. You begin to feel worthy not because of achievement, but because your inner and outer worlds align. Participation is practice in daily life. Each small act of engagement teaches your system that life can be met, not avoided. That safety grows through action, not retreat.
I know this from personal experience, having had quite a lot of neuroticism in my personality (a chronic tendency to worry, approaches the future with dread, reflects on personal weaknesses, and in general finds it difficult to enjoy life to its fullest) until learning to acknowledge this in my recovery. Not being willing to see and accept this as part of me would have led to me continuing to justify why it was there, the story of my struggle (which did matter, AND it was not all of me), getting me stuck in huge cycles of distress. Knowing I could notice this part of me non judgementally from my mindfulness skills I was growing, allowed me to build a new relationship with this trait when it popped up, and cultivate and practice the opposite capacities in daily life; like acceptance instead of hyper reacting to things, emotional regulation skills instead of justifying my reactions based on circumstances, and growing stablity in myself with routine, with taking action in accordance with my values, with building self esteem based on who I AM not what I do or achieve or get from others in validation or attention. Over years, this has changed my personality orientation. Is that trait still in me? Of course! And, it is not in the drivers seat as it would be if someone had validated why it made sense that I was distressed constantly.
Grief, loss, challenge, illness, death, rebirth are continual. These are not pathologies. They are nature’s rhythm moving through human form. When we label natural suffering as disorder, we rob it of meaning. Nature trusts its seasons. It doesn’t hold onto autumn for fear of winter. So too must we learn to accept our own seasons in life; develop psychological adaptability; to move through change without defining ourselves by it. Never invalidate pain. But don’t fragilize people either. Do not let trauma become their identity. The real art of therapy and of being human is to help people face the rawness of existence and discover that they are strong enough to stand in it.
In the Befriend approach, we see that healing is not about erasing the past but integrating it. It’s about meeting pain with compassion while building the inner muscles to participate in life fully. When therapy stops coddling and starts cultivating, people awaken to their inherent dignity; the quiet knowing that even in suffering, I can meet life as it comes. That is not bypassing. That is evolution. None of us got to choose the hand we were dealt. Is this fair? This is the wrong question. Life is not about fairness. It is about meeting reality so we can play the hell of the card we have been dealt. For those with basic needs met, this is possible. And the sacred responsibility is to embrace our potential for growth; so we can help others who cannot yet help themselves, who truly do not have a voice. So please invite your awareness to notice that in your humble, small moments, you have choices. Tiny micro choices when noticed and shaped from our values, will change our lives.
