The difference between coping and healing

On coping, avoidance, and emotional exhaustion

I think I spent a huge part of my life trying to look unaffected. That’s the funniest part now. I wanted people to think I was chill about everything. Chill about losing people. Chill about being treated badly. Chill about getting ignored. Chill about feeling replaceable. Meanwhile every small thing used to sit inside me for months. One weird tone in a text could ruin my entire night and I would still sit there acting normal like I wasn’t mentally replaying the conversation for the hundredth time.

And somewhere in my twenties I became really good at surviving myself. I knew exactly how to avoid my own feelings. I knew how to keep my brain busy every second of the day. Music in my ears while walking. Videos while eating. Scrolling until my eyes hurt. Random obsessions every two weeks. Getting attached to people too fast. Staying awake until 4am simply because silence made everything louder. I kept calling it “moving on” when half of it was just me finding newer distractions.

I think a lot of us secretly live like this. Functioning. Scrolling. Posting pictures. Laughing in group chats. Going outside. Meanwhile something inside us still feels stuck in an old version of our life that everybody else already forgot about. And that feeling is horrible because people stop checking after a while. Time passes so everyone assumes you’re okay now. Meanwhile certain memories still hit like they happened yesterday. Certain people still have access to versions of you that nobody around you even knows existed.

Sometimes I wonder how many people are carrying pain they can’t even explain properly. Pain that sounds stupid when said out loud. Pain that came from feeling unwanted too many times. Feeling easy to leave. Feeling hard to love. Feeling like everyone gets a softer version of people while you only receive what’s left of them. That type of pain follows people into everything. Relationships. Friendships. Even happy moments. Especially happy moments.

I used to think healing would feel obvious. I thought one day I’d wake up and suddenly feel lighter and wiser and completely over everything that hurt me. Instead it looked embarrassing. It looked like realizing I was still hurt by things I claimed I didn’t care about anymore. It looked like admitting some people changed the way I see myself. It looked like understanding that half my personality was built around avoiding rejection.

A few days ago, one of my subscribers, Keesha, sent me a piece about emotional wounds and healing and I had to sit there after reading it because it felt too familiar in the worst way. Especially the parts about coping. Especially the parts about carrying things for years without even realizing how heavy they became.

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KEESHA’S ESSAY:

We talk about emotional pain it’s something you decide to do “move on” “get over it” “don’t think about it anymore” But emotional wounds don’t work that way.  People may minimize your experience, tell you it wasn’t that bad, or push you to move on before you’re ready. Emotional wounds are personal. No one else has lived your inner world. Your healing doesn’t need their approval.

They don’t disappear just because were exhausted from carrying them. Healing asks us to face the parts of ourselves we’ve spent years avoiding.

Sometimes, the heaviness starts long before you even understand what it is. Feeling heavy because you’ve been carrying something deep from a very young age. Realizing it later in life doesn’t happen on one random Thursday morning. It builds up over time. Childhood trauma can change the way your brain develops. You might forget painful but important events. You might feel like there’s a black spot in your memory, and that emptiness can make you question everything. Do I even want to remember?

The answer is probably not what you want to hear but yes, remembering is part of healing.

A careless comment from childhood can still influence how we see ourselves years later. We don’t just remember what happened. We also walk away with beliefs like “I don’t deserve better” So healing isn’t only about the original pain. It’s about unlearning the beliefs that grew around it and learning to see ourselves with new eyes. Unlearning these beliefs is hard but an important step.

Healing is uncomfortable. It’s sitting with thoughts you’ve been running from.

Fixating on new hobbies every week, drowning yourself in school or work, or doing the opposite like starting your day, doom‑scrolling, taking nap after nap. None of that is healing. Those are coping mechanisms. They help you survive, but they don’t help you heal. And eventually, what you’ve been avoiding will collapse on you. Suddenly you feel further from healing than ever. Suddenly you feel like nothing matters, like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

But there is. You can heal in any state you’re in, but you must want it.

For a long time, I found comfort in my own sadness. It felt familiar, almost safe? But deep down, I knew I didn’t want to live like that forever. I got help, but not all help works for everyone. I tried multiple therapists, but something always felt off. I didn’t want to talk about the events. I didn’t want to face them head‑on. I needed something different. Talking therapy isn’t the only therapy that exists. Music can be therapy. Art can be therapy. Movement can be therapy. It might sound strange, but music saved lives when words couldn’t.

Maybe none of that is for you. Maybe you don’t want therapy at all

If you don’t want therapy, therapy won’t work.

Maybe your healing looks like lying in the grass, writing in your journal, meeting friends, eating dinner with your family, or taking long walks. Healing is a process, and everyone chooses a different path.

But again, coping is not healing.

Healing is honesty. It means admitting that something hurt you more than you wanted to acknowledge. It means facing the fact that you stayed in situations that damaged you, ignored your intuition, or accepted less than you deserved. It means admitting you’re still angry, still grieving, still afraid.

Some days you feel strong the next day somethings pull you back into the past. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. it means you’re human. You revisit the same themes, but each time with more strength. It’s all part of the healing prosses. Healing is not about forgetting. That what you’re trying to achieve with coping.

Healing is acceptance.

Learning how to live with it without it consuming your mind. Talking about it without crying before starting your sentence. Asking for help isn’t a weakness although it might feel like it. Healing is a strength not everyone gets to touch. Healing doesn’t erase the past. It doesn’t make you forget. It doesn’t turn you into someone who was never hurt. What it does is change your relationship to the memory. It helps you reach a place where the past no longer controls you or defines you. Healing isn’t about erasing what happened.

It’s about reclaiming your story.

you don’t heal by becoming who you were before the pain. You heal by becoming someone new. Pain changes you, but healing changes you too. You grow boundaries.

Healing isn’t a return.

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After reading her piece I kept thinking about how easy it is to confuse coping with healing, especially in this generation where everyone knows how to hide inside distractions. I do it too. I romanticize isolation and call it peace. I disappear emotionally and call it independence. I pretend I’ve detached when deep down I just expect disappointment before anything even begins.

There are so many things I personally used as coping mechanisms while convincing myself I was healing. Making jokes out of things that genuinely broke my heart. Acting unserious about people I cared about deeply. Staying emotionally unavailable so nobody could hurt me first. Keeping myself constantly entertained so I wouldn’t have to sit alone with my thoughts for too long. Getting attached to temporary people simply so life would feel exciting again. Pretending I was over things simply because I got tired of hearing myself talk about them.

And I think the scariest part is how familiar sadness can become after a while. Familiar enough that peace starts feeling uncomfortable. Familiar enough that healthy things feel suspicious. Familiar enough that chaos feels more natural than stability. I’ve seen people return to the same pain simply because at least they knew what to expect there. I’ve done it too.

Healing forced me to admit things about myself that I spent years avoiding. I had to admit that I wanted love from people who clearly couldn’t give it to me. I had to admit that I kept shrinking myself to feel chosen. I had to admit that some of my “self awareness” was actually self destruction wearing glasses and sounding intelligent.

And honestly I still think healing feels lonely sometimes because nobody really talks about the grief that comes with changing. Some people only know the broken version of me. Some friendships were built around my sadness. Some versions of me had to disappear completely for me to survive my own life better. That hurts too.

I think coping keeps pain alive quietly. Healing forces it into the open. That’s why healing feels heavier at first. Everything finally has a name. Everything finally has a face. Everything finally stops hiding behind distractions and starts sitting directly in front of me.

Still, I’d rather face myself honestly than spend another year pretending I’m fine while my entire inner world is collapsing in silence.

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About the Co-Author:

Keesha is a 19-year-old writer based in Belgium with Nigerian roots she is still learning to explore and understand. Drawn to literature, film, and lately the mysteries of space, she spends much of her time searching for meaning through stories, reflection, and curiosity. After stepping away from high school due to mental health struggles, Keesha began rebuilding her life through healing and self-discovery. She is currently pursuing adult education with hopes of studying neuroscience in the future. Through her writing, she explores identity, growth, and the inner worlds we quietly carry with us.

Co-Author Substack ID: Keesha

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