When Healing Makes Your Old Life Feel Like a Mirage

The shocking double-take of realizing how much lighter life can be. (Estimated reading time: 4 minutes)

 
Most people don’t realize just how much they’re carrying — until they finally set it down. For years, even decades, we walk through life believing that the heaviness we feel is simply who we are. The constant stress in our body, the background hum of worry, the difficulty connecting with others — all of it feels “normal” because it has been with us for so long.

But healing changes that. One day, after doing the work to untangle old wounds, you may look back in astonishment and wonder: “How did I ever live like that?” It can feel almost surreal, like your old life was a carnival mirror version of reality — distorted, heavier, duller — and suddenly, you’ve stepped into the clear.

Compounding Experiences Create a False Normal

Childhood and early experiences don’t just fade away; they layer, shaping how we feel and what we expect from life. Trauma, neglect, or even subtle patterns of dismissal compound over time, carving grooves in the nervous system and creating perceptions that become automatic.

When these grooves go unhealed, they don’t just shape your past — they keep repeating in the present. Over time, you stop noticing how tense, guarded, or disconnected you feel because it’s the only state you’ve ever known.

As Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score, “Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.” Without healing, that imprint becomes the lens you see through — even if it’s cracked and clouded.

The Shock of Feeling Different

When true healing begins, the shift can be so profound it almost feels like stepping into another person’s life. People often describe:

• A lightness in the body they didn’t know was possible.
• A quiet mind where chaos once lived.
• A warmth of connection with themselves and others that feels brand new.

It can be disorienting at first. Imagine carrying a heavy backpack for thirty years, and one day someone takes it off. You might stumble not from the weight, but from its sudden absence. That’s the miracle of healing: you do a double take and realize your “old normal” was never the truth — just a mirage built from survival.

Seeing Your Old Self Like a Doppelgänger

This moment of recognition can feel like looking back at a stranger. The exhausted, anxious version of you was real, but not the whole truth. Healing allows you to meet the version of yourself that was hidden beneath survival — your clarity, your ease, your joy.

Gabor Maté, in When the Body Says No, explains that suppressed emotions and unhealed pain silently shape both health and behavior. When released, it’s not just relief you feel — it’s a reunion with the you who’s been waiting all along.

Healing Takeaway

Healing isn’t about becoming someone new; it’s about realizing the distorted life you thought was “you” was only a survival pattern. When you step out of the mirage, life feels lighter, brighter, and more connected than you ever imagined. And once you experience that double take, there’s no going back — only forward into freedom.

Write down one thing you’ve held onto for far too long and are ready to put down.

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References & Recommended Reading

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. — foundational work on trauma, healing, and the body-mind connection.

• Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No - A powerful look at how stress and suppressed emotions manifest as physical illness.
• Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - A body-based approach to releasing trauma and restoring natural healing rhythms.
• Bruce Lipton – The Biology of Belief - A groundbreaking look at how beliefs and perception influence biology and self-healing through

With care from my heart to yours,

Shannon

Shannon Sanguinetti M.Sc. | Founder of Repor - Where Science Meets Soul