“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” ~ Marie Curie
I almost didn’t go to my cousin’s wedding.
Not that I didn’t want to celebrate him. i did But the thought of walking into a room full of people who knew my version from two years ago seemed unbearable.
They knew that version well.
The one who cries on the bathroom stall at family gatherings. Who laughed through dinner while silently replaying an argument from three days earlier. Who drank a little too much at Christmas because it was easier than experiencing everything out loud to a room full of people who seemed perfectly fine.
I was not well then. And I wasn’t sure I was fine now.
So I almost stayed at home.
But I went. And somewhere between the ceremony and the reception, my aunt pulled me aside and said something I didn’t expect.
“You seem different,” he said. “Lighten up. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
I walked home that night in silence, wondering what he had said.
lighter.
I didn’t feel light. I still had hard days. I still overthined things. I still find myself occasionally slipping into the old patterns—the quiet background hum of people-pleasing, self-doubt, anxiety that I’ve carried for so long it felt like part of my personality.
But apparently, from the outside, something has shifted.
And I had missed it completely.
I kept thinking about those words in the weeks that followed, wondering how anyone else could see a change that was invisible to me.
The problem of seeing yourself heal
Here’s what no one tells you about healing: You are the worst person to measure your own progress.
When you’re inside it – living it every day – you don’t see the changes. You will see the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
You saw Panic Attack last Tuesday. Not that you’d eat them three times a week.
You see the night spiraling over a text message. Dozens of times recently when you don’t.
You see that moment when you almost apologized for something that wasn’t your fault. All the time you don’t stop yourself before the words leave your mouth.
Progress is hidden from the person who makes it.
I spent months working—therapy, journaling, sitting with uncomfortable feelings instead of running from them—and truly believing I was getting nowhere, that I was broken in some fundamental way that couldn’t be fixed. That cured other people, but maybe I was the exception.
At the time, I was recovering from chronic stress and burnout. Slow learning has become less of a self-improvement goal and more of a necessity. A difficult period of major life changes and trauma forced me to rethink how much pressure I put on myself on a daily basis.
I kept a journal during that time. Not consistently, not gracefully – just sporadic entries whenever things feel particularly heavy.
About a year in, I went back and read from the beginning.
I had to stop halfway.
Because it wasn’t boring. Because I hardly knew the person who wrote those words. disastrous Constantly apologizing—even in his personal journal, to himself, for having feelings. As he described himself, he was fundamentally too much and at the same time not enough.
I sat with that journal in my lap for a long time.
I cried then. Not exactly out of sadness. From something close to grief – how hard she was on herself. And something else too, something cool.
Relief. Because I was no longer his.
Cure does not announce itself
I think I hope it feels like a moment of healing.
A clean before and after. One morning I woke up and felt truly, completely fine. A conversation where I finally said the right thing. A day when anxiety barely… raised.
It doesn’t work like that. Or at least, it didn’t for me.
It worked like this instead:
I noticed one afternoon that a friend canceled our plans at the last minute, and I wasn’t devastated. I was mildly annoyed, as most people would be, and then I went on with my day.
Six months ago, this cancellation would have sent me into a spiral. I assumed I had done something wrong. That they were pulled away. That I was too much, or not enough, or somehow deserved to be discarded.
But that afternoon I just… didn’t go there.
I ordered takeout and watched a show I wanted to see. It was totally awesome.
And that was the point.
Another time, a colleague said something dismissive in a meeting. Something that, in a previous version of my life, would have been rent-free in my head for weeks. I’d replay it endlessly, trying to figure out what I’d done to deserve it, making reactions I’d never actually say.
This time, I thought about it on the drive home. Decided it says more about them than me. And then let it go.
Just like that.
I didn’t even realize I did anything else until that night when I noticed I wasn’t thinking about it anymore.
That’s what healing actually looks like. Not the grand revelation. Quietly act differently without noticing that you have changed.
The measuring stick was wrong
For too long, I was measuring my healing against the wrong thing.
I had to measure it against the perfect.
Again against overthinking. Never feel anxious. Never fall into old patterns or have a hard day or say yes when I wanted to say no.
On that measure, I consistently failed.
But Cure never became a person who didn’t struggle. It was about becoming a person who struggles differently.
who recovers quickly. One who catches himself mid-spiral and chooses not to end it. Who feels the pull of old patterns and recognizes it for what it is – fear, not truth.
A friend of mine who has been in recovery from alcohol for several years once said something that stuck with me.
“People always ask me if I’m healed,” he said. “I tell them that’s not the right question. The right question is: Am I living better than I am? And the answer is yes. Every single day.”
I’ve thought about it a lot.
Am I healthy from overthinking? no Am I living better than I am? absolutely
And somewhere along the way, I stopped needing to be the same thing.
I wish someone had told me
I wish someone had told me in the beginning that healing would be invisible to me almost the entire time.
That I’d do the work and feel like nothing was changing, and then one day a stranger – or an aunt in marriage – would say something that stopped me in my tracks.
That I would go looking for evidence of my own progress and not find it, because the biggest changes aren’t dramatic enough to notice right now. They just… the absence of suffering used to be that constant.
I wish someone had told me that the goal isn’t to get to the point where hard things stop happening. It’s getting to a point where hard things happen and you’re not completely detached like you used to be.
I wish someone would have told me to stop comparing my current chapter to my worst chapter and then declaring myself not healthy enough. It’s like comparing a book’s middle chapters with its darkest opening pages and deciding it hasn’t improved.
If someone asked me to go around sometimes. Looking back at the road I’ve already covered instead of just looking at how far I still have to go.
turn around
Last month I dug out that old journal again.
I’ve had a rough week – old anxieties coming back, a few nights of poor sleep, a day where I found myself so people-pleasing that I thought I’d moved on.
I felt like I was back at square one. So I read a few entries from two years ago. And just like before, I barely recognize him.
Because he wasn’t weak. She was not. He was doing the best he could with what he had. But the weight he carried—the constant apologizing, the fear of taking up space, the way he talked about himself—was so heavy.
I no longer carry that weight. Some days it still shows. Some days I still feel the edge of it. But I don’t live under it like I used to. And it’s nothing. That’s all.
If you’re in the middle of this right now—working and feeling like nothing is changing—I want to ask you to gently turn. Not to be there. Not to live in the past. To see how far you have already walked.
Because you’re not where you started. Even if it doesn’t look good. Although no one has said yet.
you are different Cool in a good way. Strong in that way. You can’t see it yet.
But you will.
about Dakota J. Dawson
Dakota Jay Dawson writes about emotional sovereignty, healing, personal growth, emotional wellness and self-sabotage recovery. Her work focuses on emotional boundaries, breaking free from self-sabotage, and learning to keep your peace without apologizing. He writes about stoic isolation and the patterns that hold us back—people-pleasing, overthinking, toxic guilt, and the quiet way we stand on our own—and finally offers gentle, practical strategies for choosing ourselves. Get his ebook, Stop letting everything affect you— free here at a promotional price.
