Do you need to confront those that hurt you to heal?

Click Here to Listen to this Podcast!

By Jenny Peterson

There’s a popular belief in the healing world that goes like this: you need to confront the people who hurt you if you ever want to fully heal. It sounds convincing. Say your piece, get acknowledged, feel free. But it’s not that simple - and chasing that kind of confrontation can backfire in ways most people don’t expect.

Today I’m pulling back the curtain on why this advice isn’t always what it seems - and what you actually need to move forward in your healing.

By the end, you’ll walk away knowing:

• Why confronting someone who hurt you often isn’t in your best interest

• How to reframe trauma so you stop waiting for someone else to change

• What to do instead of confrontation so you reclaim your power

Why Confrontation Often Fails (and Hurts More)

When people first learn that mind-body healing often connects back to their past, they name times they didn’t feel safe, heard, or supported. With all the “trauma talk,” many assume the next step is obvious: confront the person who caused it.

Your pain is real. It matters. And yes, it connects to chronic symptoms. But confronting it head-on - especially by going to the person you believe caused the pain - often keeps you more stuck.

Why it backfires: most people expect a reaction the other person isn’t capable of giving. If you’ve done years of inner work, you’re seeing through a new lens. They may not.

Typical responses you may get:

1. Defensiveness: “That’s not what happened.”

2. Minimizing/denial: “You’re overreacting.”

3. Shutdown: emotional check-out.

When that happens, your nervous system takes another hit. Instead of closure, you feel dismissed - another wound layered on top of the original one.

Story: Jane confronts her critical mother: “Comparisons made me feel I was never enough.” Mom replies: “I don’t remember that - and if I did, it was to motivate you. Look how well you turned out.”

Jane’s truth is dismissed. Her mom’s programming interprets criticism as love. Jane walks away with no closure and more pain.

Key reframe: Confrontation can be like knocking on a locked door. The power move isn’t banging harder - it’s realizing, I don’t need to get in there. I can build my own house.

Stop Outsourcing Closure

When your healing depends on someone else’s reaction, you’ve handed them the keys to your freedom. Waiting for an apology is like saying, “I’ll stop bleeding once you bring me a band-aid.” That’s outsourcing power.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to heal. Closure doesn’t come from their validation. It comes from you deciding the story is complete.

Story: Mark grew up with an emotionally unavailable father. He thinks, If I confront him, maybe he’ll finally understand. But what if Mark doesn’t need his dad’s acknowledgement? Real healing comes from deciding his voice matters - and practicing it with friends, at work, and with himself.

He creates boundaries and stops internalizing dismissal. That’s healing - not because Dad changed, but because Mark stopped outsourcing his worth.

Broken mirror metaphor: Waiting for someone else to reflect your worth is like staring into a cracked mirror. It can’t give you a true reflection. Recognize the mirror is broken and stop needing it to tell you who you are.

Trauma: It’s Not Just the Event—It’s the Meaning

Trauma isn’t the event itself. It’s the meaning your subconscious attached to the event at the time - plus how your body still perceives and responds to it.

As children we lacked tools and context, so we made it mean something about us:

• “I’m not good enough.”

• “I don’t matter.”

• “I can’t trust anyone.”

The person who hurt you was acting from their programming. That doesn’t excuse behavior, but it puts power back in your hands. Their actions reveal their limitations, not your worth.

Story: A teacher tells Sarah, “You’ll never amount to much.” For decades, those words echo. The trauma wasn’t the sentence - it was the meaning Sarah gave it: “It must be true - I’m a failure.”

Reframe: The teacher projected their limitations. Sarah rewrites the meaning - and the power shifts. No confrontation required.

Other people’s programming is like secondhand smoke. It drifts over to you, but it isn’t yours. Healing is recognizing, “This isn’t mine to carry.”

What To Do Instead of Confrontation (3 Rebellious Alternatives)

1) Reparent Yourself

Write a letter to your younger self and say what they never heard:

• “You were always enough.”

• “You didn’t deserve that.”

• “I see you now.”

This is subconscious programming. You’re giving your nervous system the validation it waited for externally.

2) Create Safety Rituals

Healing doesn’t require a dramatic showdown. It requires small, consistent signals of safety - like teaching a scared dog the world is safe again.

Think: calming evening routine, gentle movement, mindful morning check-ins, pausing before you say yes, leaving environments that spike threat. Repetition builds trust.

3) Practice Boundaries (Silently First)

Boundaries don’t always need a speech. Start internally:

• Don’t answer the phone for toxic dynamics

• Leave a gathering early

• Decline conversations that feel unsafe

As your nervous system strengthens, communicate more directly. Embody first, announce later.

The Rebellion: Your Healing Depends on You

Confrontation can look powerful, but it’s often dependence in disguise: “My healing depends on how you respond.” The rebellious shift is declaring: “My healing depends on me.”

Bring it together:

• Confrontation often makes things worse (defend/deny/minimize).

• Trauma isn’t the event; it’s the meaning you attached - and you can reframe it.

• Healing accelerates when you stop outsourcing closure and create it within yourself.

• Reparenting, safety rituals, and silent boundaries return power to you - no cooperation required.

You don’t need them to change for you to heal. You can step into that freedom now. When you do, everything about your healing shifts - and your chronic symptoms finally get the safety signal they’ve been begging for.

Rebellious reminder: Your healing is not dependent on someone else’s reaction. The moment you stop waiting for them is the moment you start setting yourself free - and giving your body the permission it needs to heal.

---

Jenny Peterson is a Chronic Illness Expert, the Founder of MBR (Mind Body Rewire), and the host of The Rebellious Healer Podcast. She helps those struggling with multiple chronic symptoms reclaim their health and freedom—without diets, detoxes, or pills.

For 10 years, Jenny worked as a holistic practitioner, relying on supplements, diet, and detox protocols to support healing. But when she faced her own chronic health struggles, those methods failed her.

When Jenny was on her healing journey, she struggled to find a protocol that provided the structure needed to rewire the subconscious. So she created her own process to heal—and that process became the foundation of the Heal & Thrive Framework, a structured, step-by-step method that helps clients identify the subconscious patterns behind their symptoms and rewire them for lasting relief.

Using this exact process, Jenny fully resolved Lyme disease, digestive issues, panic attacks, skin conditions, cystitis, and more. Her own transformation ignited a mission: to help others break free from chronic symptoms and take back control of their health.

At Mind Body Rewire, we have an unwavering belief that healing chronic health issues doesn’t have to be complicated when the focus is on the root cause: the subconscious. We believe every person is fully capable of creating the health and life they desire when they unlock the subconscious programs influencing it.

Ready to say good-bye to symptoms and hello to freedom?  START HERE