There’s a popular myth in wellness and therapy spaces: that healing turns you into a gentler, more tolerant, endlessly gracious version of yourself. That growth makes you quieter. More agreeable. Kinder.

But that’s not always true.

Sometimes healing makes you sharper. Less patient. More boundaries. Sometimes healing teaches you to say “no” without apologizing, to walk away mid-sentence, to question what you used to accept — not necessarily with kindness, but with clarity.

We don’t talk enough about how healing can shrink your tolerance, not expand it. Growth doesn’t always mean your bandwidth gets bigger. Often, it means your bandwidth gets clearer and helps you define what you no longer make space for.

Healing might make you harder to be around for the people who benefitted from your dysfunction and self-abandonment. If you learned to please people, tolerate dysfunction, or center everyone else’s needs to keep the peace, your healing might look like confrontation.

The Necessary Nuance

Confrontation doesn’t mean conflict for the sake of control or release. It’s not a license to weaponize your growth or center your righteousness. Healthy confrontation isn’t about being “right”… it’s about being real. It’s about showing up with clarity, not condescension.

Healing doesn’t give you the upper hand. It gives you an understanding of yourself first. And that understanding invites you to pause before you confront, to examine your intention, to suspend your “rightness” long enough to stay curious, even when you’re hurt. That’s the hard part. But it’s also the healing part.

Written By: Dr. Shatiea Blount, LCSW-C