Sometimes you take the breath. You pause. You remind yourself that everyone is carrying something you can’t see. You try to understand where the other person is coming from. You use every tool you’ve learned. You’ve done the work.
And sometimes you’re still pissed off.
You still lose your patience. You still say something and immediately think: “Well, I could have handled that better.”
I actually think we need to talk about this side of things more.
Because somewhere in the world of healing, nervous system regulation, mindfulness, and personal growth, I think we’ve accidentally created another impossible standard.
The perfectly healed human.
The person who never reacts. Never judges. Never gets jealous. Never loses their patience. Always communicates their boundaries calmly. Always recognises their triggers. Always knows exactly what they need. Always responds instead of reacts. Always finds the compassionate interpretation of someone else’s behaviour.
And preferably does all of this while breathing deeply, drinking enough water, getting eight hours of sleep, moving their body, and maintaining a consistent meditation practice.
I don’t know that person. I’m certainly not that person or even pretending to be.
And I’m not convinced they exist.
Sometimes I’m Not The Put Together One
Part of the reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is because, if I’m honest, last week I was feeling what I can only describe as an inner rage bubbling up inside me.
I haven’t entirely gotten to the bottom of it yet. There are probably a number of contributing factors. Maybe I’ll understand them better with time. Maybe some of it just needs to move through. And I have to allow it to do so.
But that day I wanted to shout at the sky. I wanted to yell f*** off to the universe.
Which, if you know me, probably isn’t the sentence you’d expect me to write.
And probably exactly why it needed to be written.
Because I’m not someone who usually swears a lot. Somewhere along the way I picked up the message that swearing was bad. That it wasn’t how you were supposed to express yourself. That even anger wasn’t really okay. “I’m just not an angry person,” is what I always say.
But lately I’ve noticed myself swearing a little more. And you know what? It feels kind of good. Not in an I’m-going-to-start-dropping-F-bombs-into-every-conversation kind of way. But there’s something strangely freeing about letting myself say what I actually want to say sometimes without immediately deciding whether it’s appropriate or what I’m supposed to feel.
It almost feels like I’m shedding something I didn’t know I needed to shed.
But the most interesting part wasn’t even the anger itself. It was telling a couple of friends about it. Letting them see me when I wasn’t the calm one. The helpful one. The person who had processed everything and could explain exactly what was happening.
Just—I’m angry. I’m sad. I don’t entirely know why. And today feels hard.
There was something strangely freeing about being witnessed there. Because I think sometimes we don’t just put pressure on ourselves to have it together, we start to build identities around being the person who does. And then it feels incredibly vulnerable when we suddenly aren’t.
But maybe we need to be witnessed there too. Not only when we’ve figured out the lesson. Not only when we can wrap the experience up neatly and tell everyone what it taught us. Sometimes we’re simultaneously angry and crying. Sometimes we don’t know what’s going on. Sometimes we just need to say—today sucks.
And none of that makes us less self-aware.
It makes us human.
When Healing Becomes Another Form of Perfectionism
Something strange can happen when we start doing this work.
We learn more about ourselves. We become more aware of our patterns. We understand our triggers. We develop tools that help us regulate. We get better at recognising when we’re activated.
All of that awareness can be incredibly helpful.
But if we’re not careful, we can take everything we’ve learned and turn it into another set of expectations we’re supposed to live up to.
Before, the thought was: I shouldn’t be so angry.
Now it becomes: I know I’m dysregulated. Why can’t I regulate myself?
Before: I shouldn’t have reacted like that.
Now: I’ve done so much work on myself. I should know better.
Before: Why am I like this?
Now: I thought I’d healed this already.
Same judgment. More sophisticated vocabulary.
And I think we’ve missed something important when that happens. Because if learning about your nervous system simply gives you more sophisticated ways to judge yourself, we’ve missed the point entirely.
The goal was never to become perfect. The goal is to understand yourself more deeply.
Your Emotions Aren’t Proof That You’re Failing
Anger, frustration, jealousy, resentment, sadness, disappointment, irritation—these experiences aren’t automatically evidence of dysregulation, immaturity, or unfinished healing.
Sometimes they’re information.
Anger might be telling you something crossed a line. Resentment might be showing you where you’ve repeatedly said yes when you wanted to say no. Jealousy might point toward something you deeply desire or something you’re afraid of losing. Irritation might be telling you that you’re overloaded and have been pushing past your capacity for too long.
And sometimes? You’re just having a bad day. Sometimes you’re tired. Sometimes someone catches you at the wrong moment. Sometimes you react before the calm, self-aware part of you gets anywhere near the conversation.
Not every uncomfortable emotion is a problem requiring immediate regulation. Sometimes the first thing it needs is simply to be acknowledged.
I’m angry right now. I’m hurt. I’m overwhelmed. I’m not handling this particularly well.
Not as a confession. Not as a criticism. Just as information.
Because it’s difficult to work with something we’re simultaneously telling ourselves we shouldn’t be experiencing.
Regulation Isn’t Suppression
Learning to regulate your nervous system doesn’t mean learning how to make uncomfortable emotions disappear as quickly as possible.
The goal isn’t to become so good at regulation that nothing ever bothers you. That isn’t being regulated. That’s an impossible standard disguised as wellness.
Regulation gives us greater capacity to experience what’s happening without immediately being consumed by it. It gives us a little more room to breathe. Sometimes enough room to pause before responding. Sometimes enough room to recognise that we need to walk away.
And sometimes we won’t find that room until after we’ve already reacted.
That counts too.
Because awareness after the fact is still awareness. Maybe next time you notice halfway through. Eventually, maybe you notice right before. This is how we learn—not through perfection, but through repetition.
We Expect Perfection From Other People Too
I don’t think we only do this to ourselves.
Sometimes we expect other people to become perfectly healed humans as well. We think: they’re self-aware, they should know better. They’ve been in therapy for years. They talk about boundaries all the time. They teach this stuff. How could they react like that?
I know I’ve been guilty of this too.
But knowing something doesn’t make us immune to being human. Someone can understand their nervous system and still become activated. Someone can be deeply compassionate and still lose their patience. Someone can have excellent boundaries and occasionally fail to communicate one. Someone can love you deeply and still disappoint you. Someone can have done years of healing and still have blind spots.
None of that means we have to tolerate harmful behaviour. Understanding someone’s humanity doesn’t require abandoning our own boundaries.
But we do need to leave room for the reality that growth and imperfection can exist in the same person.
Including us.
Acceptance Isn’t Letting Yourself Off The Hook
This is where people sometimes get nervous about self-compassion.
If I’m compassionate with myself, won’t I just keep doing the same thing? If I accept that I reacted badly, aren’t I excusing it?
Nope! I don’t think so.
Acceptance isn’t saying “it doesn’t matter what I did.” It’s saying: “this is what happened. Maybe I was activated. Maybe I was hurt. Maybe I said something I regret. Now that I’m not spending all of my energy fighting the reality of what happened or attacking myself for it—what do I want to do next?”
Maybe I apologise. Maybe I repair something. Maybe I set a boundary. Maybe I recognise a pattern. Maybe I decide I want to respond differently next time.
Acceptance isn’t the end of the process.
It’s often what allows us to see clearly enough to choose what comes next.
A Little Experiment
Think about the last time you had a reaction you judged yourself for. Maybe you snapped at someone, got jealous, lost your patience, shut down, or became defensive over something that seemed insignificant.
Instead of immediately analysing what you should have done differently, go back to the moment with curiosity.
Ask yourself: what was happening for me? What did I feel in my body? What emotion was underneath the reaction? Was I tired, overwhelmed, hurt, sad? Was something important to me being threatened? Was there a boundary I hadn’t communicated?
Then ask: what was this reaction trying to communicate?
You don’t have to agree with how you expressed it to become curious about why it appeared.
And then perhaps the hardest question of all but I think the most important for rewiring: can I let myself remain a good person who had an imperfect moment?
Because you will have more of them. So will I. So will every person we love.
There will be days when you pause, breathe, access your compassion, communicate beautifully, and think—wow, look at me go.
And there will be days when you absolutely do not.
Both versions are still you. And both deserve your curiosity.
Maybe Growth Looks Different Than We Thought
Because here is what I believe.
Healing isn’t becoming someone who never loses their shit again.
Maybe it’s losing your shit and noticing sooner. Maybe it’s recognising what was happening underneath the reaction. Maybe it’s catching yourself halfway through an old pattern. Maybe it’s apologising without collapsing into shame. Maybe it’s setting the boundary before resentment builds. Maybe it’s having compassion for the version of you who didn’t handle something perfectly.
And maybe sometimes it’s simply saying: “that wasn’t how I wanted to show up. I’ll try again.”
Without turning one imperfect moment into evidence about who you are.
Because there’s a big difference between I did something I don’t feel good about and there is something wrong with me.
One gives us somewhere to go.
The other keeps us stuck.
Healing doesn’t remove your humanity.
It gives you a different relationship with it.
And maybe growth isn’t measured by how rarely you lose your shit.
Maybe it’s measured by what you learn about yourself when you do.
If any of this resonated or if you've been carrying your own version of this lately—I'd love to hear about it in the comments or send me a DM. This one felt vulnerable to write and I'd love to know how it landed.
With love,
Courtenay—Sacred Wave Wellness
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Love your honesty! People in the trenches always make the best healers, though the average wellness-seeker doesn't always get that. You explained so well how sitting with your most vulnerable moments is how real healing happens.