Best For:
Readers questioning traditional ideas of healing, people exploring alternative ways to process emotions, and nature lovers interested in honest reflections on mental health.
The Essence:
Read Time: 🕰️ 9 mins| Weight: 🫂 medium| Mood:🪞Reflective & Honest |
The Vault:
- Setting the vibe – The Handsome Devil
- What works for others & why capitalism ruins it for me
- My solution & the real lesson
Don’t name it just tell us why it wasn’t good for you:
Not for Me:
Some prompts don’t ask for opinions. They ask for honesty.
This one challenged me to describe something I didn’t enjoy without ever naming it. That made me think less about the thing itself and more about why it never worked for me.
This isn’t an argument against your typical healing spaces. Millions of people have rebuilt their lives through them, and I genuinely believe that’s true. This is simply an explanation of why my own brain never lets me experience them the same way.
Sometimes healing isn’t about rejecting a tool. Sometimes it’s about recognizing that the tool and your mind don’t speak the same language.
The Vibe:
Let me pull out my Bic lighter and spark my pre-rolled joint. I’ll open up my Spotify app next and scroll until I land on “Savage” by The Handsome Devils. Don’t fret I’ll press play, and let the first notes settle into the silence.
That’s how I would set the vibe of this conversation.
Not in a waiting room and not on a couch. There will be no fluorescent lights or clipboard balanced on crossed knees.
Just me, the trail, and the kind of honesty that only seems to find one when no one is expecting it.
What Works for Others:
There is something that countless people swear by. It has Ben known to help rebuild lives, repair relationships, and carry people through some of their darkest seasons.
I don’t doubt that for a second. The thing just doesn’t work for me. Obviously not because I don’t believe in healing. I also do not think people who benefit from it are wrong.
It doesn’t work because of one thing I can’t seem to silence.
The Money.
Ruined by Capitalism:
The second a price tag enters what is supposed to be one of the most vulnerable conversations of my life, something shifts in my brain.
The conversation stops feeling genuine and it starts to feel transactional. I know that’s an oversimplification. I know professionals deserve to be paid for years of education, training, emotional labor, and time. I don’t expect anyone to work for free.
But knowing that intellectually doesn’t change how it feels emotionally. Every sentence becomes tangled with the fact that I’m paying for the hour.
So then every question starts to feel like it is a part of a service. Every response reminds me that the clock is running.
Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter to my emotional lizard brain. That’s simply how my feelings experience it.
We all know healing doesn’t have a universal recipe.
The Problems:
So, I never stop wondering if I’m having a genuine conversation or participating in something I purchased.
Once that thought showed up, vulnerability packed its bags and moved out. Ironically, the place where I process my life best costs almost nothing.
On trail:
There is something in the sound of boots against dirt and the rhythm of my breathing as another hill steals my attention.
It is somewhere between creek crossings and gorge overlooks, that my thoughts stop performing. Here they stop trying to sound reasonable and organized. Here I become honest.
Nature doesn’t have a habit of interrupting. I never caught it trying to redirect the conversation.
It doesn’t give a damn about the time or the clock. Nature exists while I untangle whatever I’ve been carrying.
I spend hours arguing with myself. I may realize I was wrong. Or even forgive someone. I forgive myself often in nature.
I love it when I don’t solve anything at all. I always leave knowing the things happening were lead by me.
Peoples Needs:
Some people need a conversation, some need community, others need movement.
And some people need all of the above.
I need miles beneath my trekking shoes and enough quiet to hear what I’ve been avoiding. I’m not writing this to convince anyone to abandon what works for them.
If you’ve found peace somewhere, I hope you hold onto it. I’m only saying that I finally stopped trying to force myself into someone else’s definition of healing.
The moment I accepted that, I stopped feeling guilty for healing differently.
And maybe that’s the real lesson.
Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do isn’t finding the method everyone recommends. But finding the one that finally lets us hear ourselves.
Whatever You Choose:
I honestly don’t think there’s one correct way to heal.
Some people find freedom in conversation. Others find it in medication, art, community, faith, movement, or quiet. None of those paths invalidate the others.
For me, healing begins the moment the transaction disappears. It begins when the clock stops mattering, when no one is waiting for an answer, and when the only expectation is to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I’ve stopped apologizing for that.
Maybe the goal was never to heal the way everyone else does. Maybe the goal was simply to find the place where honesty has room to breathe.
TLDR:
Many mainstream things are helpful to countless people, but the financial transaction of some keeps my brain from ever feeling fully vulnerable.
I process life best on hiking trails, where there is no clock, no invoice, and no pressure. This isn’t about yucking someone’s yum. It’s about accepting that healing looks different for different people.
Read More:
Sustainable Hiking. Bucket List Hikes.
You are Welcome to:
Please feel free to respond on your own blog, in the comments, or where ever else you see fit. I look forward to your take on the prompt.
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