After The Healing

The weirdest part of healing is when it finally works. The chaos quiets down, your nervous system stops scanning for danger, and instead of instant bliss you feel… disoriented. If you’ve spent years doing therapy, trauma healing, inner child work, journaling, retreats, plant medicine, and personal development, that empty space can mess with your head. Your mind starts whispering: Are you delusional? Are you missing something? Don’t you have something to fix? 

We unpack why “being okay” can feel unsafe after a life in survival mode and how hypervigilance trains you to equate calm with risk. I share the identity shift that happens when old roles fall away and healing becomes the thing you orient toward. Then we step into what comes next: self-love as a daily practice, learning how to exist without constantly correcting yourself, and building real safety in relationships without overgiving or abandoning who you are. 

We also redefine power for the living chapter. Power doesn’t always look like productivity, proving, or being visibly impressive. Sometimes it looks like discernment, presence, self-respect, letting people misunderstand you, and choosing friendships that feel reciprocal, simple, and fun. If you’ve been wondering what you want after all the awareness and breakthroughs, this conversation helps you name it and claim it. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s tired of “fixing,” and leave a review with the one thing you want more of in your living chapter.

Transcript

Welcome And The Real Work

0:01

Hello and welcome back to the Spiritual Shit Show. My name is Julie Nguyen and this podcast is where the magic meets the mess. We are talking about spirituality, and what I am learning is the more spiritual you become, the more human you are required to be. In today's episode is for anyone who has been doing their work, and if you're like me, I've been doing. The self-help, personal development, healing, inner child, family trauma, blah, blah, blah, for a really fucking long time. The healing work, the therapy, the journaling, the processing, the learning, the going to the retreats, the doing the plant medicines, the understanding of my patterns, understanding and grounding and learning about nervous system. Taking the courses, taking the classes, understanding the trauma, understanding the family dynamics, understanding the loss of the identity and the roles that I have played up into this life. Oh my God.

When The Healing Finally Lands

0:56

And then thank the Lord. Something shifts. That's where I'm at now, and let me tell you, equally feels that shit crazy because life doesn't feel as chaotic and I'm not spiraling the same way and I'm not panicking the same way, and I'm not anxious and I'm not searching for answers, and my mind doesn't have to track what I have to fix today. And all the work that I have been desiring has landed. Some days, instead of feeling peaceful, which I feel like I should, I actually feel a little disoriented. I almost feel like I'm losing my mind because I'm realizing that I'm used to tracking everything and finding the danger in the day. And needing something to hook into, or I would give my brain something to heal for the day. 'cause I was so used to healing something that my brain got really creative and would give me things to heal or to panic about, or to dissect or to have an aha moment about. And if you are like me, somebody who is really used to working diligently on yourself, and suddenly there's space that, oh my God, the healing has actually worked. The mind goes, wait, what is this? What's this? Quiet? I don't have to

Identity Loss And Survival Healing

2:31

heal anything. I don't have to fix anything. For me, my identity after I left my business and I didn't have an identity anymore, I wasn't Miss Julie. I wasn't an entrepreneur, I wasn't a dance studio owner. I wasn't a dance teacher. And I also lost, my family and I, it was just horrible. It was really, really horrible and. Then I got right into healing mode and I was healing from the loss. I was healing from the family rupture. I was healing from identity crisis and change. I was healing from leaving. You know what? I knew to be who I was, which is a dance teacher and a teacher. I was healing from trauma and healing from expectations and healing from. A life that I honestly desire to escape from and landed into the void. So healing became actually what I would orient to, and I found myself in the healing process. It became very beautiful and the healing was very necessary, and it brought me into understanding at a much deeper level. Self-forgiveness, self-compassion, understanding, and this next chapter is called Self-Love. And in this next chapter of self-love, I'm realizing that there's no emergency. There's no big problem to solve. I don't have relationships or things to fix or forgive or resolve or let go

Self-Love And No More Emergencies

4:11

of. I just now have space and space can feel terrifying if you're not used to it. Because when the nervous system has been in hyper vigilance, fight or flight for so long, being calm can feel weird. It can feel unfamiliar. I honestly can say I've never actually been a hundred percent, mean, who's a hundred percent happy anyways, but I always masked my anxiety with my gorgeous smile, and I avoided. This buzz that was always in my body, this buzz of anxiety and anxiousness really, and I masked it with dance and movement. So I'm sitting here asking, so what happens after healing? What happens when you're no longer in survival mode? What happens when you can really honestly say like, all of my old dreams, I don't desire anymore because maybe there is a part of me that dreamt the dream out of survival mode, out of clinging to an old identity, a role. The pain, I don't know. For me, for many years, I knew exactly who I was. I was a dance studio owner. I was a teacher, I was a choreographer, I was a leader. I was constantly creating things. I was always, always, always creating combos and choreography. I was building things. I had

Feeling Safe Without Fixing

5:51

a business. And I was powerful in a very visible way. People in the community knew who I was. And then that chapter closed and then I spent years, a painful amount of years rebuilding, still rebuilding. Trying to understand myself, understanding my nervous system, understanding my fucking patterns, understanding how and why I showed up in relationships the way I did, understanding how and why I overgive. Understanding why I overperformed, understanding why I felt responsible for everything and worthy of nothing. And now that I feel more calm, these are the moments when my mind says, are you delusional? Are you pretending everything is okay? Are you missing something? Should you be suffering actually right now? Are you not? Don't you have something to fix? Don't you have something to prove? Shouldn't you be on your website and, claiming what a powerful teacher and healer you are. Shouldn't you be working on your

Building Calm Relationships And Standards

7:04

podcast? Ugh, I don't wanna be doing any of it, actually, and here's why. I have realized that I have been working on my fucking self for my entire life. I have always thought that there was something that I was disconnected from family. My family was ruptured at a very young age. I was disconnected from unconditional love. Makes sense. My mom passed away when I was three, and I'd never have had guidance, maternal guidance my entire life. So this stuff fucking makes sense and because I have always. Thought there was something inside of me that I needed to fix, that I was disconnected from something, love, guidance, support a strong foundation. And then in my adult life, when I felt that rupture again and I spiraled back into healing for survival mode, I'm now realizing and questioning how much have I actually been living. What does it feel like to just live? I am learning now this really peculiar space of what it's like to exist without constantly trying to fix myself. That feels really odd, and it's actually a statement. I don't know if I've ever heard anybody say before. I am learning how to exist. Without constantly trying to fix myself, I am learning how to feel safe in relationships. I am learning how to be embodied in myself. I am learning how to not overgive, not abandon myself. And it feels awkward. It feels disorienting, actually. And I think it's because when you stop performing or fixing or healing, or your brain's trying to constantly do something to make something right, because you have been locked into the trauma loop of fight or flight.

Redefining Power Beyond Productivity

9:20

And your system has always been searching for safety, and when you finally recognize that you've done enough healing work on yourself, have you tried love? Have you tried loving yourself? Have you tried practicing what safety feels like, what abundance feels like, what self-worth feels like, what deservability feels like? But when I stop doing all of the things that were familiar to me, now, my system is like, are you still liked? Do you not care that you're not really relevant? Are you interesting? Do you have anything powerful to say? I enough. Stillness can feel very vulnerable and scary. Actually. Being okay with being okay feels really unfamiliar and I'm curious. Of maybe this is the space where authenticity lives. I have been practicing being in my body. Not searching for something to fix or heal or understand. Really aware, annoyingly aware of when my brain wants to hook into something, somebody to be mad at, somebody to gossip about, somebody to be like, oh, they triggered me. And then going towards feeling

The Living Chapter And Integration

10:46

my feet on the ground. Feeling my energy and my light in my body. Letting silence exist, letting connection be simpler. Catching myself in friendships or relationships when I'm overgiving, when I desire for the interaction to go well or to be liked. And what I'm realizing is that healthy connection feels less dramatic than what we expect. And within myself, I had this realization, I was like, oh my gosh, I am upping my standards and my relationships and friendships. I am no longer overgiving. I am no longer showing up into spaces that are not reciprocal. I want to surround myself with people who I feel inspired and happy, and just are so grateful for the time that we get to share together where the connection is simple and safe and fun. I think what I'm learning. Now is how to move into what it's like to live learning how to trust my internal knowing, learning how to allow life to be simpler. Learning how to allow relationships just to become more organic and magical. Learning how to let go of relationships where I abandon myself. That's a powerful one. Where in my life do I abandon myself or abandon parts of myself? Where in my life do I downplay who I am? Where in my life do I settle? And learning how to trust that my power for so long, I was like, I miss these parts of myself. I miss being important. I miss being a leader. I miss making, money. I miss, feeling powerful, and it's really hard to sit with that. That power did not disappear. It just evolved. And that power does not always look like productivity. That power sometimes looks like clarity, self-respect, discernment, presence, fun, abundance, being grounded, happiness. Power sometimes can also look like no longer negotiating your worth in every interaction. No longer proving yourself. Power sometimes looks like not overexplaining who you are. It's a big one for me. power, and I'm hearing this from myself right now. Power sometimes looks like letting people misunderstand you, not like you not want to come to your events and still being okay. And I think what happens after a lot of healing work is you begin to realize that life is not meant to be one long self-improvement project. At some point, you get to live. You get to create, you get to choose relationships that feel reciprocal. You get to choose ease and happiness and abundance. You get to experience joy. Without explaining it, you get to feel calm without assuming something is wrong. You get to exist without constantly fixing. And maybe this next chapter is not the healing chapter. It's the living chapter. It's the happiness chapter. It's the joy chapter. It's the abundance chapter where you bring everything you have learned. Into real life, into relationships, into work, into your body, into your choices, and maybe feeling a little disoriented for a minute is actually a sign that something new is stabilizing. Maybe it's just that calm feels unfamiliar. I know it does for me. Unfamiliar does not mean wrong. Unfamiliar means you are no longer living in the same internal environment. The work worked. Allow yourself to experience what happens after healing. You begin to remember who you are. Without the survival patterns. Ugh. It's a tricky one 'cause we can find ourselves going back to the old survival patterns 'cause it's what we know. And I am here to tell you that the version of you, the version that you are now, the one you allow yourself to see after the healing. This one might feel quieter at first, but. You might also feel way more authentic, more grounded, more free. And if you are in this space too, thank you. 'cause it makes me feel not so alone, not so crazy. And together, may we remind each other that we are integrating into new spaces. The work has worked. We heal so we can be healed. So what happens after? What do we want after the healing, after the awareness, after the aha, after like, oh my God, I just realized that about myself. What do we want after that? And can you claim that for yourself, your power, your love, your gifts, how you shine, how you feel, how you experience the world. What a beautiful place to arrive. Thank you for being here. Thank you for doing your work. Thank you for choosing your light, your love, your gifts, your life. And as always, may you remind yourself and remember that the magic is you. till next time.