04: What I Learned After 8 Years of Healing: The Art of Being Witnessed
For the first year of my topical steroid withdrawal (TSW) journey, I was completely isolated in my pain. I couldn't tell anyone what I was really going through—not my closest friends, my family, or even my partner. I was drowning in shame, embarrassment, and fear. So I hid the full truth, sharing only fractions of my experience. I feared being “too much.”
What I didn't understand then was that hiding my truth wasn't protecting anyone—it was keeping me stuck. The breakthrough came when I finally learned what it means to be truly witnessed. Not just physically seen, but fully held in the depth of my struggle without judgment, without someone trying to fix me, without having to make it smaller or easier for others to handle.
In this episode, I share the 4 steps that helped me move from isolation to healing. Being witnessed changed everything for me, and it might be the missing piece in your healing too.
In this episode, I share:
0:00 - Why I couldn't share what I was going through
0:56 - The first year of TSW: isolation and shame
2:31 - How being witnessed creates validation and connection
3:53 - Step 1: Practice feeling
4:35 - Step 2: Remove your judgment
5:48 - Step 3: How to find the right people
7:00 - Step 4: Trust the process (even when it's painful)
8:17 - Why your experience matters and you deserve to be seen
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Content Warning: This episode discusses mental health struggles. I'm a registered nurse sharing my personal story for educational purposes only — this is not medical advice. If you're struggling, call or text 988 (U.S./Canada) or visit https://findahelpline.com/
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[00:00-00:28]
Sometimes the person that I just wanted to be witnessed by, like my partner at the time, wasn't able to give that to me in the way that I need it. Hey, it's Cassie, the naturalistic nurse, and welcome back to Healing the Warrior. One of the most important things I learned during my 8 years of topical steroid withdrawal was this.
[00:28-00:56]
To truly heal, you need to be witnessed. And not just physically seen, but fully witnessed in the depth of what you're actually going through. For the first year of TSW, I struggled so much with this. I couldn't share what I was really going through even with the people closest to me, and it kept me stuck. Today, I'm sharing how I finally learned to let myself be witnessed and the 4 key steps that helped me go from isolation to true healing.
[00:56-01:21]
Back in 20 17, when I first went into topical steroid withdrawal or TSW, I didn't know it at the time, but I was just at the beginning of a huge life changing process with my body and my skin. Throughout that first year, my skin blew up. I was shedding copious amounts of dead skin by the hour, and my arms, neck, and scalp were covered in oozing open wounds.
[01:21-01:46]
These were some of the hardest times of TSW for me because I was in so much physical pain. I was overwhelmed by terror on a daily basis, and I had no idea what was happening. So for that first year, I really struggled sharing with people what I was actually going through, even my closest friends and my partner at the time. They knew I was going through TSW and that I was having a hard time with it.
[01:46-02:05]
So they would ask me how I was doing or how my skin was feeling that day. And I could never fully tell them the truth. I always felt like I could only share a fraction of what I was actually experiencing. And this was for a lot of reasons. I was embarrassed.
[02:05-02:31]
I was ashamed. I had no self-esteem. A lot of the times I was confused myself, so I didn't even know how to communicate what I was feeling. And when I did know how I was feeling, a lot of times it was so heavy that I couldn't even bear to say it out loud, let alone to another person. And I felt really guilty. I felt like I was being a burden to people by sharing what I was actually going through.
[02:31-02:56]
I felt like it was too much for me to share the dark truth. But what I didn't know back then was that sharing my experience and my feelings in a way that was genuine and honest, even if it was scary, was exactly what I needed to do in order to move forward with my healing. It was the only thing that was going to give me the mental and emotional relief that I desperately needed.
[02:56-03:18]
For me and a lot of people, to really begin healing something, one of the most important things we need first is to just be witnessed. to feel seen and heard in the full range of our experience, and without judgment or needing to fix anything at that time. Being witnessed isn't about trying to change anything right then and there.
[03:18-03:53]
The change and the healing will come, but only after you acknowledge the full truth of how are you really. And to have someone witness you in that place, to see you, fulfills our deep need for human connection. After so long of trying to hide the truth of how I was really feeling out of fear of being too much for people, being fully witnessed is what allowed me to finally feel validated, to feel like my experience was legitimate, and that even though I was in pain, I wasn't invisible.
[03:53-04:14]
So very slowly and with a ton of practice, I learned how to get the witnessing I needed in order to finally move forward in my healing journey instead of being stuck in the same lonely place. And here's how I did it in 4 key steps. This might sound funny, but step one, I needed to practice feeling.
[04:14-04:35]
I needed to learn how to name the full range of emotions that I was feeling. Not just, I'm struggling or it's hard, but the real raw truth beneath that. The rage, the terror, the despair. Because healing can only happen as deep as you're willing to go. And for me, I needed to go all the way down.
[04:35-04:57]
But naming those emotions was only the first step. Because after that, I needed to learn how to do something even harder, which was step 2, removing my judgment around them. At the start of my TSW journey, I had so many emotions that were hard for me to admit or to even realize that I was feeling because they were intense. They were scary to feel.
[04:57-05:19]
And they were things that I was conditioned to think were bad or that I shouldn't be feeling that way, like feeling depressed or sad or angry or jealous. When really, an emotion isn't good or bad. It just happens. You feel it. It's our judgment of the emotion that makes us feel like we shouldn't feel this or that we should feel that.
[05:19-05:48]
Once you stop judging yourself for feeling a particular way, then you stop suppressing those emotions. You allow them to exist. And you see them for what they really are, which is neutral. Not judging them as good or bad. And when you do this, you finally give yourself permission to feel the emotion, to have the feeling, which is the only way to let it move through you and to learn the lesson of whatever that emotion was there to teach you.
[05:48-06:13]
So I practiced feeling, getting to know these emotions, naming them, And I work really hard on removing my judgment around them to finally give myself permission to feel them, allowing them to be. So next, step 3, I found the right people. I needed someone to feel me, to see me, to see that I was struggling, to recognize that I was just going through a really difficult thing. I didn't need them to do anything about it.
[06:13-06:31]
I didn't need them to fix it. I didn't even need them to make me feel better about it. Because that wasn't the point of all this. Of course I wanted to feel better. I wanted the pain to go away. But sharing my story with people wasn't me saying, I'm in pain, please fix this. I just needed them to say, I see you.
[06:31-07:00]
And this is why finding the right people to witness you is so important. Because being a good witness in itself is a skill. It's being able to hold space for someone while being neutral yourself, without judging their experience, without projecting your own issues or opinions onto them, and without feeling like you need to fix it or control anything. So I learned which people in my life, in my existing support system, actually had the capacity to do this.
[07:00-07:31]
I learned which of my friends was able to witness me in the fully honest place that I needed to be seen. I sought out community that could hold me in this space, and I started working with healers and coaches that had the capacity to do this work with me. And sometimes the people in my life that had the space and the ability to do that for me changed. Which brings me to step 4, I trusted the process. Sometimes the person that I just wanted to be witnessed by, like my partner at the time, wasn't able to give that to me in the way that I needed.
[07:32-07:56]
And that was okay. Even though it felt like another painful thing at the time, another really difficult thing to accept, I stayed on the path. I learned that being witnessed, just like the rest of the healing journey, doesn't always look like you expect it to sometimes. Sometimes the person you want most to see you isn't able to hold that space, or maybe they're not ready. And when that happens, you don't give up. You just find other people who can.
[07:57-08:17]
The practice is continuing to show up authentically, continuing to share what's genuine and true, and trusting that the right people will see you. That's what trusting the process means. It's not about getting it perfect or even finding the right people on the first try. It's about committing to being seen, even when it's uncomfortable.
[08:17-08:34]
Because every time you practice being witnessed, even imperfectly, you move further along in your healing. You're teaching yourself that your experience matters, that you're not too much, and that you deserve to be fully seen. Thanks so much for watching.
[08:35-08:50]
If this resonated with you, make sure you subscribe. I share new episodes every Tuesday with stories and tools for your healing. And if you're ready for more right now, I have a free video training on affirmations that actually work. The link is in the description. I'll see you next time.
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