12 Common Healing Pitfalls That Keep You Stuck (And How to Break Free)

When you’ve been living with chronic symptoms, whether it’s IBS, anxiety, pain, fatigue, or flare-ups that never seem to end, it’s normal to feel desperate for answers. You may have tried endless diets, supplements, or treatments, only to find yourself back at square one.

The truth? Healing is possible.

But there are common mistakes, what I call healing pitfalls, that can keep you stuck in the cycle of symptoms even if you’re doing “all the right things.”

In this post, I’m sharing the 12 most common healing pitfalls I see (and experienced myself), along with the shifts that can help you finally move forward. If you’ve been wondering why your healing hasn’t been clicking, chances are one or more of these patterns are at play.

1. Resisting the Work

Resistance is normal. Your brain is literally wired for predictability, it wants what’s familiar, not what’s new. From a nervous system perspective, predictability feels safer than change, even if that change could bring relief.

That’s why practices like nervous system regulation, somatic tools, or brain retraining can feel uncomfortable at first. They’re unfamiliar.

👉 What helps: a combination of self-compassion and self-parenting. You may need to push through the initial discomfort with a gentle mantra. One that helped me was:

“I refuse to be the source of my own suffering, so I will ________.”

Fill in the blank with the small step you’re resisting, like practicing breathwork, practicing somatic tools, or pausing to regulate when needed. Over time, those little acts add up to safety and predictability in the new pattern.

2. Holding on to your Illness

This one’s tricky because it usually happens subconsciously. Chronic symptoms often come with hidden “benefits.”

For me, flare-ups gave me a way out. They gave me permission to stop pushing, to rest, to excuse myself from obligations I didn’t want, and to let go of the pressure of perfection.

They also acted as boundaries my body set for me when I wasn’t able to set them myself. If my friends and family wanted to do things I didn't want to do, I would say yes until a flareup forced me to step back. Being sick felt safer than setting boundaries, allowing myself to rest, and being imperfect.

👉 What helps: getting radically honest about what you gain from being sick. Then, start learning to give yourself those same needs like rest, boundaries, compassion, permission, without relying on symptoms.

3. Not Believing Healing Is Possible

If you don’t believe it’s possible to heal, your brain won’t fully engage in the work. That’s not woo-woo, it’s neuroscience. The placebo effect proves how powerful belief is.

👉 What helps: surrounding yourself with success stories. Listen to podcasts, read blogs (like this one!), and remind yourself daily that your nervous system is plastic, it can change.

I’m living proof that IBS, MCAS, anxiety, and chronic symptoms don’t have to last forever.

4. Focusing Too Much on Symptoms

When you’re in pain, bloated, or anxious, it’s natural to obsess over symptoms. But here’s the paradox: hypervigilance reinforces the pain and symptom loops.

Instead of tracking symptoms, focus on small wins regarding your state of being:

• Are you calmer? Are you actually exhaling fully?

• Do you react less quickly?

• Are your relationships improving?

• Is your self-talk more compassionate?

Those shifts signal that your nervous system is regulating, even if the symptoms haven’t fully caught up yet. Healing starts at the level of state, not symptoms.

5. Believing the False Alarms

Early in healing, your brain is still on high alert, scanning for danger. A simple gas bubble in the gut can trigger a pain alarm and spiral you into fear.

👉 What helps: reminding yourself, “This is a false alarm. My body is safe.”

If you let fear jump in, you fuel the fire. But if you stay calm and reassure your system, you stop reinforcing the danger loop.

6. Offloading Your Healing to Others

This one is hard to hear, but important: no one can heal you but you. Coaches, therapists, friends, or partners can guide and support you, but the actual rewiring, the nervous system regulation, the moment-by-moment practice? That’s yours alone.

Healing requires self-ownership. And that’s good news, it means you’re not powerless. You do have the tools within you.

7. Reading About the Work Instead of Doing It

Knowledge is important, but only up to a point. If you find yourself endlessly reading books, blogs, and Reddit threads without practicing much, you’re stuck in the “learning trap.”

👉 What helps: commit to doing the practices daily, even if they’re imperfect. Nervous system healing happens through repetition, not information. If you feel like you don't have time to do the practices, stop reading about them and use that time to do them ;)

Remember: knowing is not the same as embodying.

8. Doing the Work with Urgency and Desperation

Most of us with chronic symptoms already live in fight-or-flight. When you approach healing with urgency, “I need these symptoms gone now!”, you’re reinforcing the same dysregulated state you’re trying to escape.

👉 What helps: practicing from a place of surrendered engagement. Do the work, but do it with faith, patience, and consistency. Healing unfolds in the long game.

9. Not Creating a Healing Container

Healing doesn’t happen in chaos. If you’re running on stress, overcommitment, or constant distraction, your nervous system never gets the signal of safety it needs.

👉 What helps: creating a healing container. This could mean:

• Setting aside a daily time for regulation practices.

• Creating an environment (like soft lighting, quiet music, or a cozy corner) that signals safety.

• Simplifying your schedule to prioritize rest and regulation.

Think of it as tending to a garden. Healing grows in the soil of consistency and safety.

10. Googling (and Googling, and Googling)

We’ve all been there: desperate 2 a.m. Googling, bouncing from Reddit threads to research papers. From the outside it looks calm, but inside? Your nervous system is in full panic mode.

👉 What helps: noticing when the urge to Google is actually your nervous system seeking reassurance. Instead of searching, pause and give yourself internal reassurance, through self-soothing, soft touch, or discharging sympathetic energy with movement.

Yes, Googling may have brought you here (and I’m glad it did!). But continuing the cycle can keep you stuck.

11. Not Being Indifferent to Outcome

This may sound counterintuitive, but if you’re doing practices only to get rid of symptoms, you’ll stay stuck. Why? Because that pressure keeps your nervous system in hypervigilance.

👉 What helps: reframing your intention. Don’t practice to “fix” pain. Practice to shift your state, to feel safer in your body. The longer you spend in regulated states, the more symptoms naturally fade.

Healing is about playing the long game, not chasing quick fixes.

12. Relying Only on Mindset

Mindset work, affirmations, reframing, CBT, can be powerful. But here’s the catch: when you’re in fight, flight, or freeze, your prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that handles logic and reasoning) goes offline.

That’s why you can’t “think” your way out of a trauma response.

👉 What helps: body-based practices that reach the subcortical brain and autonomic nervous system. Somatic tools, vagus nerve stimulation, breathwork, and gentle movement send signals of safety where mindset alone can’t.

Think of it this way: trying to use affirmations to stop a trauma response is like trying to reason with a fire alarm. It won’t work, you have to turn off the alarm at the source.

Final Thoughts: Healing Is a Process, Not a Straight Line

If you see yourself in any of these pitfalls, please don’t use it as another reason to criticize yourself. Awareness is the first step to change.

Healing requires patience, compassion, and consistency. It requires learning to give your nervous system what it’s really craving: safety, rest, boundaries, and connection.

You can break free from the cycle of symptoms. You can rewire your brain and nervous system. And you don’t have to do it perfectly, you just have to start.

Want Support on Your Healing Journey?

These are the exact pitfalls I help my 1:1 clients avoid as they work on nervous system regulation and symptom relief. If you’re ready for guidance, accountability, and personalized practices, I’d love to support you.