People Pay For Validation When They Need Transformation...One's Support Groups and Friends Are Just Trauma Bonds With Coping Mechanism?
- Dan Max
- Oct 16, 2025
- 6 min read
Have you ever left a conversation with a friend or support group feeling seen, understood, and validated. The time spent seemed worth it, the time/money with your support groups seem to help you feel like you're not alone.
However, days, maybe weeks later, noticed nothing in your life actually changed?
You continue to share your stories and show up. Everyone nods and pats you on the back. Some coaches chime in, "We see you or we understand you so well." You felt relief for that moment.
And then you woke up the next day in the same patterns, the same struggles, the same story you've been telling for months or years.
What if we got curious about what's actually happening in these spaces?
The Patterns Worth Examining
We invest a lot in our relationships. Time, energy, emotional bandwidth, and yes, sometimes actual money for guidance and coaching.
We show up to support group calls, therapy check-ins, and constantly reach out to people in the same situations who "get it." We pay with our presence, our vulnerability, our resources.
But what are we actually receiving in return?
There's a difference between spaces that witness your pain and spaces that help you transform it. And most of us have never been taught to recognize the distinction.
Two Different Types of Connection
Connection That Validates:
This is where you share your story and people affirm your experience. They agree with your perspective. They confirm that yes, what happened to you was wrong, unfair, or painful. They offer you coping strategies, ways to manage the discomfort, soothe the trigger, and survive the pattern one more time.
It feels good------sometimes, really good. You feel less alone. You feel understood. You feel an external connection that you might have been lacking.
But here's the question worth sitting with: Do you leave feeling better about your situation, or different in your situation?
Validation serves a purpose. It helps us know we're not crazy. It confirms our reality when we've been gaslit or dismissed. It creates safety when we've felt invisible. But validation alone doesn't create transformation, sometimes it can actually reinforce it.
Connection That Transforms:
This is where someone holds up a mirror to show you what you can't see about yourself. Not to shame you, but to free you.
It's uncomfortable. Sometimes it feels like confrontation. It asks you to look at the parts of your story you've been avoiding, not just what was done to you, but what you've been doing with it since.
It doesn't give you coping mechanisms. It asks you to stop coping and start integrating.
This is where it can get uncomfortable.
It doesn't confirm your narrative. It invites you to examine whether your narrative is actually serving you in your suffering, or keeping you stuck. It doesn't feel safe at the moment. But learning to see it creates actual freedom over time.
The Uncomfortable Questions
What if the reason you keep having the same conversations with the same people about the same struggles is because those relationships are designed to keep you comfortable, not free?
What if your "support system" has become an echo chamber where everyone agrees on why you're stuck, but no one challenges you to actually move?
What if the group that feels the safest is the one enabling you to avoid the very work that would set you free?
I'm not saying your friendships are bad, but I'd ask you to really question your support groups to see what kind of value they actually bring. I'm asking: Are they serving your evolution and integration of pain, or keeping you stuck in it?
Consider This:
After your conversations, do you feel understood or do you feel different? There's a gap between those two that most people never examine.
When someone in your circle actually starts to transform, not just talk about it, but embody it, does the energy shift? Do people get uncomfortable with their change? Was the support so easily given at the start, begin to pull back when the person seems to change or outgrow the friendships or group?
How many times have you told the same story or just updates of it? And what would it mean if you never had to tell it again, not because you're hiding it, but because you've finally moved through it?
Be honest: Are you processing your pain in these spaces, or are you performing it? Is there a part of you that needs the audience?
What if the people who agree with you the most are the ones keeping you stuck the longest?
If your support system disappeared tomorrow, would your life change? Or would just your comfort level change?
When was the last time someone in your circle said something that made you uncomfortable enough to look at yourself differently?
When Coping Becomes the Cage
Here's what most people don't realize: trauma bonding isn't just about the original wound. It's about building an identity around that wound and finding people who reinforce it.
The coping mechanisms you've been taught, the breathing exercises, the boundary scripts, the self-care routines, the systems that worked for others --->they're not wrong, but does it work for you?
Be aware, they're helping you manage your dysfunction instead of transforming it, they're just keeping you comfortable in your cage potentially and projecting love, with well intentions. However, they can't make anyone else change or integrate their own shadows, patterns, or suffering.
Your journey is your journey and expecting our experience to be what's best for others is projecting. We can't do that as mentors and as friends.
Real transformation doesn't come from learning to cope better. It comes from integrating what you've been avoiding.
Ohhhh, and that work? It's not done in a circle of people who agree with you. It's done in the presence of people who love you enough to show you your blind spots.
The Difference Between Holding Space and Holding You Back
There are people who hold space for your pain. They listen. They validate. They sit with you in it.
And then there are people who help you alchemize that pain into power.
They don't just witness your wound, they help you find the medicine inside it.
They help you alchemize the pain into what it was meant to be. A learning lesson, a speed bump on the track for growth, or a reason to change direction completely because the old ways of doing things would never work! Sometimes you have to be broken open completely to grow.
Thes sad part is, most support systems stop at holding space. They mistake witnessing for transformation. They confuse emotional safety with actual growth.
What if the most loving thing someone could do isn't to make you feel better about where you are, but to challenge you to become who you're capable of being, huh??
What Transformation Actually Requires
Real transformation isn't comfortable, collective, or congratulatory.
It's not found in a group where everyone has the same enemy and the same excuse.
It's found when you're willing to stop performing your pain and start integrating it.
It's found when you're ready to see what you've been avoiding about yourself, not what was done to you, but what you've been doing with it.
Remember we choose to stick around and tolerate suffering. It's a choice if we don't confront or change it.
It's found when you stop paying for validation and start investing in your evolution.
That was the hardest lesson for me and the folks we work with. Hey, we've all done the knowledge part of changing at some point ---> Read a book, sign up for a seminar, join a group, write out our goals. Yet does the transformation happen or stick?
The Invitation
Your relationships aren't wrong. Your support system isn't bad. Your friendships aren't fake.
Are they helping you transform, or just helping you cope? One has to look deeply at such and recognize what they are.
Are they giving you the courage to face what you've been avoiding, or the comfort to keep avoiding it?
Are they helping you integrate your shadows, or just teaching you to manage them better?
Only you can answer that. And the answer might be different than you think.
The Real Question
What would happen if you stopped seeking people who confirm your story and started seeking people who help you outgrow it?
What would change if you stopped paying for comfort and started investing in transformation?
What would your life look like if you stopped coping and started alchemizing?
The wound isn't your identity. It's the doorway and if the wound is open, the doors are too!
However, most people would rather have a community that validates their pain than do the work of transforming it into power.
Which one are you choosing?
Reminder: The wound isn't your identity. It's the doorway.
But most people would rather have a community that validates their pain than do the work of transforming it into power.
Which one are you choosing?
Ready to stop coping and start alchemizing?
At Scorpion Alchemia, we don't sell validation like most self help groups or mentoring.
We offer transformation.
Our shadow integration methodology goes beyond surface-level healing to help you identify and transform the unconscious patterns keeping you stuck.
This isn't therapy. This isn't traditional coaching.
This is an alchemical transformation that changes everything from the inside out.
Do you want to maximize your potential, have meaningful and deep relationships, and truly see yourself as the person you want to be? Let's chat. Use the link in this description or go to our website to book a discovery call.
Learn more: www.scorpionalchemia.com
Follow us for more insights: Instagram: @scorpionalchemia Facebook: Scorpion Alchemia
Great stuff here. Like you said, option 1 has its place. Unfortunately, many people stop at option 1 and never hit option 2 where the real, long term solutions exist to get your freedom allowing you to realize more of your full potential in life.
Amazing piece! ♥️
Great read