The Performance of Healing
Why We’re All Burned Out on #SelfCare
Healing isn’t supposed to be a performance. But in America? Everything is.
Welcome to late-stage capitalism, where even your trauma gets commodified. We turned therapy into a TikTok trend, breathwork into a boutique retreat, and ancestral healing into a branding aesthetic.
Scroll through your feed and you’ll see it: perfectly lit journal pages, $20 green juices, influencers whispering affirmations over lo-fi beats, all wrapped in the illusion of peace. This isn’t healing. This is wellness capitalism dressed up as spirituality. And it’s eating us alive.
A Culture Addicted to Appearances
America doesn’t want you to heal. It wants you to cope just enough to stay productive. To smile through your burnout. To keep your trauma digestible. Because if you actually stopped playing the game? You might remember you were never broken — the system is.
And social media? It's just the megaphone.
Now, it’s not enough to be healing. You have to look healed. You have to monetize your mindfulness. Optimize your morning routine. Stack your shadow work into an Instagram carousel and call it progress.
We’ve aestheticized awakening. And it’s making people spiritually sick.
When #SelfCare Becomes a Trap
It started with good intentions. Sharing rituals. Building community. But America doesn’t do intentions. It does monetization.
Now healing has a f*cking dress code.
If you're not wearing white linen, drinking mushroom adaptogen lattes, journaling at sunrise, and buying $300 crystals on Etsy — are you even spiritual?
We replaced dogma with dopamine hits. We don't ask, "Is this helping?" We ask, "Is this on-brand?" And the result?
More anxiety. More shame. More disconnection from the actual soul work.
Self-care was never meant to be sold back to you. It was a radical act of survival. Now it’s a carousel ad between two Reels of someone fake crying in slow motion.
What Real Healing Looks Like
Let’s get real:
Real healing is crying so hard your stomach cramps
Real healing is deleting your calendar because your body is screaming "rest"
Real healing is unlearning the survival patterns you inherited from a country that sells pain as personality
Real healing is rage. Grief. Disgust. Boundaries. Slamming doors. Making peace with your inner chaos.
It’s ugly. It’s unmarketable. And it’s holy.
If it’s not shaking your nervous system and rebuilding your identity — it’s not transformation. It’s brand alignment.
Choose Truth Over Trend
So if you’re tired of pretending your journal entries are sacred scrolls, or your trauma is a marketing funnel, hear this:
You don’t have to perform your healing.
You don’t have to participate in the bullshit.
You just have to live. To feel. To be honest.
America profits from you staying unwell and smiling through it.
So rage. Cry. Go offline. Burn the scripts. Stop making your rebirth cute for the camera.
Because real healing? It doesn’t sell. It disrupts. It dissolves. And it finally sets you free.
Welcome to the Woke Era. We're not here to be liked. We're here to remember who the f*ck we are.
ALEXANDRIA TAVA
#AlexandriaTava
10+ year Certified Holistic Producer and Accredited Personal Growth Coach leading radical transformation to inspire the next generational through conscious media.
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