The Medicine of "Bad" Choices

Dear Dr. Grief,

Some days I don’t want to find the medicine.

Some days I don’t want to zoom out, reframe, alchemize, or ask myself what this is here to teach me.

Some days I just want to say: “this hurts, and I hate it here.”

And if I’m honest, there have been moments lately where I’ve felt almost… resentful of the question itself: “What’s the medicine in this?”

Because sometimes the medicine feels like a demand. A pressure to make something meaningful before I’ve even had the chance to feel how much it costs.

And still…it’s a question I return to. Not because everything is medicine. But because sometimes, asking it gently is the only way I know how to stay in relationship with my own life.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we call “bad” choices. The things we’re taught to fix, eliminate, transcend.

• Numbing out.

• Checking out.

• Scrolling.

• Drinking.

• Avoiding.

• Dissociating.

All the ways we leave ourselves. All the ways we survive ourselves.

We’re taught to see these as problems. But what if, at least at one point in time, they weren’t problems at all? What if they were protective intelligence?

There is a kind of intelligence in the body that doesn’t care about self-improvement. It cares about survival.

And when something is too much—too fast, too overwhelming, too painful—the body will choose distance over destruction.

It will fragment rather than fracture. It will numb rather than collapse. It will leave… so that something can remain.

Dissociation isn’t a failure of presence. It’s the body saying: “I cannot be here and stay intact.”

So it creates space. Not as a flaw. As a bridge. And sometimes… that space is what allows anything to come back into focus at all.

I wrote recently that spaciousness creates precision. When something is too overwhelming, too immediate, too consuming—there is no clarity. There is only survival.

Distance, in those moments, isn’t always disconnection. Sometimes it’s what allows the system to differentiate.

• To see.

• To orient.

• To come back in a way that is more resourced, more precise.

Not everything we call “checking out” is a loss. Sometimes it’s a recalibration of perspective. A shift in consciousness.

I don’t worship these strategies. But I refuse to shame the versions of me who needed them. Because there were times when staying fully present would not have been healing.

It would have been annihilating.

And this is where I think we’ve gotten something wrong in a lot of “healing” spaces. We’ve made presence the goal. We’ve made it seem like the work is to always stay here, always stay open, always stay connected. We’ve made nervous system regulation the standard.

But the nervous system doesn’t work like that. The nervous system isn’t trying to be perfect. It’s trying to keep you alive.

Regulation is a state. Resilience is a range. And, integration is the ability to include more of reality without fragmenting.

So instead of asking: “Why do I do this? Why can’t I just stop?” (an attempt at regulation)

What if the question became: “When did this make sense? What did this protect me from? How did this help me survive something I didn’t have the capacity to process at the time?” (an attempt at metabolization/integration)

Because most of what we call dysfunction…is actually adaptation. But here’s the paradox. The thing that saved you once…can become the thing that keeps you stuck later.

The bridge becomes the place you live. The strategy becomes the identity. The protection becomes the pattern.

• Dissociation can be medicine. And… staying dissociated forever is not the goal.

• Numbing can be protective. And… a life you can’t feel isn’t the life you actually want.

• Avoidance can create space. And… too much space becomes disconnection.

Some coping mechanisms are not the destination. They are the ferry. A port in the storm.

And part of healing—real healing, not performative regulation—is learning how to recognize that. Not with shame. Not with force.

But with a kind of quiet honesty that says: “I see why I needed this. And I’m ready, slowly, to need it less.”

If I’m honest… part of what I’m coming to terms with right now is that my situation is harder than I think it is....Read the rest of this post here.

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This post is just one piece of a bigger teaching Love Letters to Dr. Grief, my core publication — free for everyone, always. It’s where I name abuse, trace patterns, and write the truths that most people are too afraid to touch.

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