Why Healing Takes Time: The Case for Slow Growth

Thrashing

I remember describing to someone what it felt like when I was in survival mode, desperate to be free.
“I feel like I am drowning. I am in the ocean, and I am underwater; it’s dark, but I can see the surface. I am fighting so hard to get there, and sometimes I do break to the surface only to gasp for air and sink again. I feel like my chest will explode. I can’t breathe.”

When someone is drowning, instinct often makes them flail — expending energy, burning oxygen, and speeding up the process. Rescuers are warned to be careful, because a panicked person can pull them under too.

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What We Do in Survival Mode

Healing in survival mode often felt the same for me. I wanted so badly to escape the collapse of my world that instead of letting my body float and gather oxygen, I thrashed.

This is where it’s tempting to make rash decisions that bring temporary relief. To lash out. To cling to others so tightly that it’s hard for them to help. To feel utterly alone, when in reality, people may be waiting for us to be open enough to accept their help.

Unfortunately, this is also when many of us attract unhealthy people. Predators who feed off the high of being rescuers, of being needed. At first, they appear helpful — offering solutions and outlets. But those solutions come with strings, and before long, we’re further from shore, tangled in their chaos. Later, when healing begins and the “neediness” fades, their resentment often lashes back at us.

This is why survival decisions matter. When we act only to escape the agony of the moment, without pausing, breathing, or seeking wisdom from those who’ve walked this road before, we may find relief. But relief is not the same as growth.

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Surviving Isn’t Growth

It’s like falling asleep with a cigarette and setting your house on fire. If you make it out, you’ve survived. But if you keep falling asleep with a cigarette, eventually you’ll burn the house down again — or not make it out at all, going down in the flames you created.

Survival has its place. It’s what gets us out of the burning house, what keeps us breathing when the waves pull us under. But survival isn’t meant to be the destination. It’s meant to be the doorway. Growth comes after survival — when we begin to look at the patterns that kept us stuck and choose differently.

Sometimes survival mode isn’t about repeated patterns at all. Sometimes it comes from illness, loss, or life circumstances that no one could prevent — because let’s face it, life happens. Even then, survival is still just the first step. Growth comes in learning new ways of living — ways that fit this changed reality. Without that, healing can stall, and we find ourselves surviving again and again without moving forward.

I lived this cycle for a while. I could survive, but without changing patterns, without choosing a new way of being, I wasn’t truly healing.

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The Shoreline Carving

Growth and healing have been slow for me — like waves carving the shoreline. The tide comes in and retreats, again and again, and over time it reshapes everything. Progress often felt invisible in the moment, but it was the repetition — the slowness — that created something lasting and new.

I’ve learned that healing is not linear. Life is a cycle of highs and lows, ups and downs. The key has been learning to enjoy the highs without gripping them in fear, and to move through the lows with the reminder: this will pass; it has before.

Understanding the normalcy of these cycles has helped me feel less hopeless. Each experience is unique in its unfolding, but the fact that I am experiencing highs and lows is not unique at all.

That reframing has made the highs more enjoyable because I can be fully present, knowing they will pass and more will come. And it has made the lows less devastating, because I know they won’t last forever.

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The Invitation

Healing takes time. It isn’t weakness to move slowly — it’s wisdom. For me, slow has been the only way anything has truly lasted.

I think of the shoreline often. The waves never rush to carve something new; they just keep coming, steady and certain, shaping the coast grain by grain. That’s how healing has felt for me — slow, repetitive, but real.

If you’re in a season of survival, I hope you know you’re not broken for moving at a pace the world doesn’t celebrate. Slow doesn’t mean stuck. Slow means rooted.

So, I’ll leave you with this: what small, slow shift are you allowing yourself this week?