218 | The Healing Journey Instagram Doesn’t Show: The Messy Resilience of Physical Trauma

Show Notes:

What if the messy, silent, private moments of your healing journey were the ones that mattered most?

In this episode, Michael gets honest about the side of healing no one posts on Instagram—the raw, unfiltered reality of navigating trauma recovery. Through mindfulness, compassion, and small but powerful practices, you’ll learn how resilience is truly built: not in perfection, but in the messy middle.

Takeaways:

• Discover why real healing isn’t linear—and why that’s a sign of resilience, not failure
• Learn a quick mindfulness practice to support your emotional recovery through trauma
• Reclaim your digital wellness with a new tool that helps you scroll less and live with more joy

Press play to embrace the messy, human side of healing—and discover how resilience and mindfulness are forged in the mud of trauma.

Discover how to scroll less and live more by taking my Free Smartphone Wellness Audit by clicking phone.

Did you know that stickers are wonderful visual cues to help you create healthy habits? You can get one of my free Pause Breathe Reflect sticker by clicking sticker.

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If you feel you need more mental health support, please contact NAMI. 
With Whole Again: A Fresh Approach to Healing, Growth & Resilience after Physical Trauma through Kintsugi Mindfulness listeners explore resilience through personal stories of trauma, scars, and injury while learning to overcome PTSD, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and perfectionism with self-compassion, self-love, and self-worth. Through insightful discussions on stress management, mindfulness practices, and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools like breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress relief. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embraces healing as a process of transformation, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and being overwhelmed to gratitude and personal growth. By exploring the mind-body connection, micro-dosing strategies for emotional well-being, and holistic approaches to self-care, this podcast empowers listeners to cultivate emotional resilience and live with greater balance and intention.

Transcript:

 In this episode, you’ll discover the parts of healing that don’t make it to Instagram. Hey there, it’s Michael. Welcome to Whole again, A show about helping survivors a physical injury and trauma. Reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of Kintsugi on Fridays. I love sharing a microdose of wisdom with you to help you become whole again and step into the person you’re becoming today as we keep recognizing mental health awareness month.

And how our mental health impacts our physical, digital, and social wellbeing. You’ll discover the parts of healing that don’t make it to Instagram and a digital health tip that will reduce comparison, which we know is the thief of all joy. But first I wanna take a moment to thank you for being here, and thank you for being a fellow survivor.

So if you’re ready, I’ll invite you to take a deep breath in and a releasing breath out, and let’s talk about the person you’re becoming. I am sure you’ve heard the phrase that recovery isn’t linear. It’s one of those cliche memes that is put up on Instagram and other social media platforms, and we sort of blow right past it.

Like we get it, but we don’t necessarily live it because we hear it a lot and we don’t always talk about what real healing looks like. Because it’s freaking messy, right? Sometimes healing doesn’t look like a wonderful journaling exercise or a cozy blanket and a candle or a cup of matcha. Don’t get me wrong, I love all those things, but often that’s what we post on Instagram to communicate to people how good we have this healing process down.

But that’s not the all of it. It’s not the whole enchilada, if you will. Sometimes healing looks like snapping at your partner ’cause you have so much pain that you’re holding inside of you and you don’t know what to do with it. I’ve only told my wife to F off once and it was in a moment of intense pain that I couldn’t handle.

What I appreciate most about that moment because it was so not me to say something like that. Instead of my wife getting pissed at me, she just laughed her ass off, and that’s part of healing. The other part of healing is canceling plans again. Having a moment when you’re worried what your friends will say about you because you’re canceling again, and then the next moment you really don’t give a crap what they have to say about you canceling that yo-yo back and forth.

That’s all part of healing and sometimes healing is crying in the shower and feeling like you’re back at square one again. Healing is messy. It’s not pretty, and we don’t share all that on Instagram. We do that in private and we question everything we can question our worth, our strength, our progress.

But here’s the thing, that mess, that part of the healing, that storm that you’re in, the silence that’s all around you, that can be deafening at times. It doesn’t mean you’re doing this whole healing thing wrong. It means you’re in it. You’re in the mud as tick, knock Han said. No mud, no lotus. I have news for you.

You’re in the mud and that’s okay. ’cause you don’t have to do this all alone. There’s someone I would recommend that you follow. During Healing Journey, it’s Dr. Thema Bryant. She’s a leading voice in trauma recovery, and she said this, and I lo, I just love this. Healing is not always pretty or linear. How true is that?

Sometimes it looks like rage and silence and needing space, and that’s okay. Yeah, it’s okay. So if your healing looks like a mess, it’s short. It’s numb, it’s tired. There are moments when you check out. I wanna share with you if that’s you. It doesn’t mean that you’re failing. It simply means that you’re human.

And for whatever reason, as weird as our central nervous systems can be, it’s trying to protect you, is trying to help you heal. So I wanna share a simple 32nd practice that you can do wherever you happen to be that can provide some nurturing to your central nervous system. So let’s try it together. Now you can simply take a full breath in and a releasing breath out and allow your shoulders to drop and notice what’s here for you.

What’s present in the body without any fixing. Without any judging, and now you can repeat this aloud or into your heart. Even this part of me is worthy of love. Even this version of me is healing messy. Doesn’t mean that I’m not worthy. And simply allow these thoughts to be, let them land in your heart and perhaps within every cell of your body.

And always remember that this healing thing, it’s messy and not everything should be shared on Instagram. And speaking of Instagram. I now wanna share this week’s digital health tip with you. I think the data is pretty clear how Instagram and other social media platforms impact our overall health, and in particular our mental health.

This is true for teenage girls, but I think it’s true for all of us when I do my smartphone wellness checks for people. One question I. Their smartphone use and the feeling of comparison, the feeling of not being good enough, and 70% of the people who’ve taken it have said that being on social media is robbing them of their joy.

Well, I have a tip for you that’s coming out in the next week. It’s a new feature on the Pause, breathe, reflect app. Called Microdose eq. EQ is short for emotional intelligence and it allows you to block distracting apps. Apps that steal your joy, apps that steal your time. And our beta group users have shown that they can reduce their screen time by 55% each day, so they’re reclaiming their power.

They’re now using their smartphones and their smartphones aren’t using them, and they have more time for things that bring them more joy. I can’t wait to share it with you and others, and I’ll share a little secret here since you’re a listener of whole again. Right now the pricing of the Pause, breathe, reflect app is pay what you can.

But once this new feature is enabled, the price goes up. So this is the perfect time to become a member of our like-hearted community of people who also receive additional support and coaching that helps them step into who they’re becoming. Right now, this feature is only available on Apple or iOS.

Android doesn’t have it yet, but that doesn’t mean pause, breathe, reflect isn’t amazing on Android. It is. And I’ll still provide all the support and coaching to help you become who you wish to become so you can feel whole again. So, yes, a little bit of a commercial right now, but this is going to help you reclaim your power to stop comparison.

So you can have more joy, so you can be the one using your smartphone and your smartphone won’t be using you. So you can scroll less and live more. And I hope you wish to do that. If you have any questions, just let me know. And again, thanks for being here

In this episode, you discovered. How messy real healing can be, and the fact that if you’re feeling it, it means you’re in the mud, you’re human. But as you go through the mud, there’s a chance to become that beautiful lotus flower, and you discovered a digital health tip within our app that can help you find more time and more joy in your life.

As always, thanks for being here. Thank you for being a fellow survivor,

and if you wish to further enhance your digital health, I’ll invite you to take my smartphone wellness check and you can access it through the link in the show notes, or you can visit my website, which is Michael O’Brien shift.com and it’s absolutely free. And it’ll help you scroll less and live more.

And of course, I hope you’ll join us here on whole again every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and discover how to heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience. Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You’ve got this. And we’ve got you.