You Don’t Need to Be Healed to Be Confident
For a long time, many women have believed confidence is something you earn after you “fix yourself.” After therapy. After healing. After you stop reacting. After you finally feel calm, secure, certain. We tell ourselves we’ll speak up once we’re better. We’ll take the risk once we’re less triggered. We’ll trust ourselves once we’re fully healed.
But fortunately for us, confidence doesn’t wait for completion… it shows up in the middle of the work.
The Lie We’ve Been Sold
Somewhere along the way, healing became the prerequisite for confidence. If you heal your trauma then you’ll trust yourself more. If you regulate perfectly then you’ll speak up more. If we stop feeling triggered then we will feel more secure. The message sounds responsible, even healthy! Heal first. Then live. Unfortunately, this keeps women stuck in perpetual self-improvement. Never actually getting to enjoy the fruits of their labor when it comes to healing. If confidence requires total healing then healing becomes the new way to postpone living. Ive seen women move from one healing technique to another, to another, to another and while that’s all great; to be researching when were not actually using these tools and implementing them into our lives… it becomes and a magic show distracting us from getting the real work done. Healing becomes another way to delay being seen.
What Confidence Actually Is
Confidence is not the absence of wounds. Because lets be real, we all have wounds that cut so deep and the scar that wound turned into isn’t invisible. Its there as a reminder every day that you went through that thing and got through it. It is not emotional perfection or unshakeable calm. Confidence is the decision to stand with yourself anyways. Confidence can look like a ton of things not just like in the movies when someone walks into a room and everyone is aware of their presence and gawks and gets out of their way, unphasing the confident main character. Confidence can look like saying “Im not ready to do that” without needing to apologize. Making choices without over explaining (my personal biggest hurdle). It’s knowing yourself and unapologetically aligning with that. It’s self trust in motion, not perfection and not a finished product.
Why Waiting to Be “Healed” Backfires
If there is anything I have learned on my personal healing journey it’s that healing is not linear. It’s up and down, all around, two steps forward then six steps back then 30 steps forward and two steps back. It’s moving and evolving and taking over and taking a back seat. There truly is no finish line with healing, there is just getting to a place where we feel safe and aligned in our best self. There is no final version of you that arrives and stays. There will forever be new seasons, new things that get to you, and new layers to process. If confidence required full healing no one would ever feel confident, growth would be delayed indefinitely and we would stay quiet far longer than necessary. Confidence is often what creates healing, not the other way around. When you trust yourself to act before you feel perfect, your nervous system learns that you are capable. Safety is built through experience, not avoidance.
Regulated Does Not Mean Healed
You can be emotionally aware and still struggle. You can understand your toxic patterns and still fall into them sometimes. You can be growing at an unprecedented rate and still feel messy. Regulation is a skill. Healing is a process. Healing doesn’t have a finish line. There is no final version of you that arrives and stays… confidence doesn't wait for completion. It doesn’t require certainty or calm. Confidence is a choice you practice in real time. Healing and confidence are related but they must not be mistaken as the same thing. That’s because confidence isn’t about being healed — it’s about trusting yourself enough to move forward anyway.
What It Looks Like to Be Confident Mid-Healing
Confidence in the middle of healing is quieter than what most people expect. It’s not charisma or certainty. It’s not being the loudest person in the room or having the perfect response. Its subtle, its embodied and its often invisible to everyone except you.
In social settings, confidence mid-healing looks like staying present instead of performing. It’s listening without rushing to prove you belong. It’s letting pauses exist in conversation without filling them out of discomfort. It’s not forcing yourself to be “on” when you’re exhausted. Not oversharing to feel connected. Not shrinking yourself to keep the peace. It is choosing eye contact even when you feel exposed. Letting your face be neutral instead of managing everyone else’s comfort. Allowing yourself to take up space without apologizing for it.
In public, confidence mid-healing looks like moving at your own pace. Walking into a room without scanning for approval. Standing in line without reaching for your phone to avoid being seen. I personally love that one because it REALLY challenges me, I have a slight phone addiction also so its like walking into the doctors office waiting room in a bikini to stand there and not pull my security blanket phone out. It’s wearing what feels like you — not what makes you disappear. It’s sitting alone without narrating your presence. It’s letting yourself be observed without needing to control the story.
Sometimes confidence looks like speaking. Other times it looks like choosing silence and trusting that you don’t owe anyone access to you. It’s leaving the conversation when your body says it's time. It’s staying when the urge is to escape. It’s trusting yourself to know the difference between these two things. Confidence mid-healing isn’t about getting it right… it’s about staying with yourself— in rooms, in conversations and in your own body. Even when it feels uncomfortable. That’s not loud confidence. That’s regulated, practiced self-trust.
The Shift That Changes Everything
You don’t become confident after you heal. You heal faster when you stop treating yourself like a problem. Confidence is not a destination you arrive at once you’re fixed. It’s self permission to move forward unfinished.
You don’t need to be healed to be confident. You need to stop waiting for a version of yourself that doesn’t exist yet. You are allowed to move forward unfinished. You are allowed to create the next chapter for yourself. You are allowed for that chapter to be authentically and unapologetically you. You are allowed to take up space while you’re still becoming.
xoxo AP