You Can’t Keep Running from the Pain
Healing doesn’t happen in avoidance. It begins the moment you stop running.
I used to believe that if I could just outrun the pain through distractions, new relationships, staying busy, or numbing out I’d eventually leave it behind. But pain doesn’t work like that. It’s not something you escape. It’s something that waits. And wherever you pause whether that’s a week, a year, or a decade it’ll still be right there, asking to be heard.
You can’t run from what’s inside you. You can only delay the moment you finally face it.
There comes a time in your healing journey where you have to make a choice: keep running from the pain, or run into it with everything you’ve got.
Because what you're actually running from isn’t just pain. You’re running from yourself from the parts of you that were silenced, betrayed, dismissed, or never taught how to cope. You're avoiding the mirror because you're afraid of what you'll see: the shame, the regret, the rage, the grief. But you have to confront that reflection. You have to listen to the parts of you that are screaming beneath the surface the angry parts, the broken parts, the parts that still don’t understand why it all happened the way it did.
And more importantly, you have to love them.
You can’t shame your way into healing. You can’t ignore the wounded pieces and expect to feel whole. That’s not how this works. If you're going to heal, you have to pull those pieces out from the shadows and sit with them like they matter. Because they do matter. Every part of you yes, even the ones that lash out, even the ones that sabotage, even the ones you’re ashamed of are trying to protect you the only way they know how.
They're not your enemy. They’re your history.
We live in a culture that tells us to “just move on,” “think positive,” or “let it go.” But that’s not healing that’s bypassing. And all bypassing does is bury the pain deeper until it starts manifesting in your relationships, your choices, and your mental health.
You can't bury pain and expect it to disappear. You bury it alive and it grows.
True healing starts when you stop abandoning yourself. It begins when you look in the mirror and say, “I’m willing to listen now. Even if it hurts. Even if I don’t have all the answers. Even if I’m scared.”
Eventually, if you stay in that space long enough with honesty, patience, and compassion you’ll reach a turning point. A day where something cracks open inside you, and instead of fighting your pain, you understand it. You forgive yourself for not knowing better. You finally start to feel compassion for the younger version of you who was just doing the best they could to survive.
That moment is powerful. Because the day you forgive yourself is the day the war in your mind begins to quiet. The shame starts to dissolve. The noise in your head, the one that tells you you’re not enough, that you’re broken, that you’re unlovable it loses its power. And in its place, you start to hear something you haven’t heard in a long time: peace.
That’s what healing sounds like. Not silence from the world but silence from within.
The angry parts? They were just looking for validation. The mean parts? They were trying to protect your heart. The sad parts? They were begging to be held. All of them need the same thing: love.
So no you can’t keep running. Not if you want real peace.
You have to run into the pain, not away from it.
And when you do, you’ll meet yourself in the fire.
Not to be burned but to be reborn.
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