There are at least 2 necessary aspects to any thorough healing process.

1) Unhooking the dysfunctional/painful.
2) Cultivating the functional/joyful.

One w/o the other is debilitating.

(2) outside the context of healing is just what happens psychologically when you're living life well--
Having a blast, building skills, contributing, entering flow states, feeling supported, going surfing, having sex, being in affirming environments and legible, healthy cultures.

When you're doing this, you're developing IFS-style "parts" that have what we might call virtues or embody states of empowerment-- they have craftsmanship/skill, they believe love is possible, they are capable of trust and self-trust, they believe they can learn, etc.

Part of doing (2) in the context of healing means doing it together with (1).

This might mean creating "selves" via (2) that then come back for the suffering (1) parts, or bringing already empowered (2) energies to (1) parts.

(2) is cultivated in service of (1) by finding "meta" states which are spacious, wise, loving-- maybe via meditation, or disidentifying from traumatic stories as not-reality, or realizing our strengths apply to areas we feel weak.

However, (2) WITHOUT (1) in the context of healing is debilitating.

Here, you pave over undeveloped seeds of pain that could grow into incredible knowledge about the world & self if you took the time to process them thoroughly into new models, new actions, new self skills.

(2) without (1) in the context of healing means we can't learn from suffering, only from goodness.
(2) without (1) also eventually creates a giant buildup of avoidance.

"Heady" therapies sometimes learn into this pitfall (CBT, for example).

It's great to learn from goodness! But, I dunno if y'all noticed, but we all definitely suffer, and collect trauma, and get horribly confused. So we have to find a way to transmute that into goodness.

Now. Let's explore the other pitfall.

(1) w/o (2) often creates a therapeutic culture of weakness, of trauma as idol worship. You may learn in detail what happened to and hurt you, but without bravery, choice, self-love, acceptance-- qualities cultivated via (2)-- you'll be *defined by it.* You won't gain new power.

This is where trauma BECOMES your identity. This is why I want to murder people on the damn street who say "you never recover from PTSD" (Case study, by the way, me-- I have recovered from PTSD, if not fully then damn near, so quiet down you despairing, projecting mofos)

Because you don't believe you have any real strength or goodness, you turn your trauma into a weird kind of goodness.
"I am not bad because I am hurt," say.

(if one common formulation of the traumatic belief is "I am bad," this is the weakest, if viable, form of refutation).

(1) w/o (2) is also common in cultic environments that focus on trauma processing, as peoples' true strengths/agency are repressed for the sake of the whole and the leader's ego, so the members are left with no self-anchored goodnesses with which to actually let go of their past.

They dig around in the muck day after day but are simultaneously repeatedly disempowered, which means there is no balm for the open wounds. However, this is a much more complex situation, so I won't linger.

Now for a few daring political implications.....

A wildly degraded version of (1) without (2) is currently flavoring the liberal politic climate, of course.
"Power is bad."
"Woundedness = goodness"
"Trauma and pain are justification for holding office, for taking any action, etc."
(See AOC)

A degraded form of (2) w/o (1) is flavoring certain rightist groups that attract young men, right now.

The repression of weakness, otherness, & pain they apply to themselves they all apply to all, expressing contempt & insensitivity towards healable pain in favor of "strength"

("Strength" without acknowledgement of powerlessness, vulnerability, or confusion in the self or others is just rigidity, by the way. Which is not, in my book, a particularly admirable trait, if an understandable one.)

THE DEGRADED FORMS OF BOTH OF THESE POLITICS CONTAIN THE BELIEF "HEALING IS NOT POSSIBLE."

"Healing is not possible therefore don't hurt people."
--the SJW left

"Healing is not possible therefore be strong, & if you're not you deserve ostracization, sissy"
--the alt-ish right