When Help Harms: Rethinking Recovery
K. Birdsong Kressler
There is a quiet oppression that lives inside many helping systems.
It doesn’t usually show up as cruelty or neglect. It shows up as standardization. As protocols without context. As pathways that assume sameness where there is none. As recovery models that were never designed for everyone, yet are offered to everyone as if they were.
This is the quiet harm of “one size fits all” recovery.
At Soul Shine, we exist because that model failed too many of us.
The Myth of the Universal Path
For decades, recovery spaces—whether centered on addiction, mental health, trauma, neurodivergence, or grief—have relied on rigid frameworks. Fixed timelines. Prescribed language. Singular philosophies. Compliance mistaken for healing.
If you struggle within these systems, the conclusion is often the same:
You’re resistant.
You’re noncompliant.
You’re not ready.
You didn’t do the work the “right” way.
Rarely do systems pause to ask a more honest question:
What if the model itself is the problem?
What if the structure was built around a narrow set of bodies, brains, cultures, belief systems, and life circumstances—and then exported as universal truth?
When Help Becomes Harm
Oppression within helping systems is rarely loud. It is procedural. Bureaucratic. Polite.
It shows up when:
Survival behaviors are pathologized instead of contextualized
Neurodivergent coping is labeled as defiance or lack of insight
Cultural, racial, and socioeconomic realities are ignored
Spiritual frameworks are imposed instead of invited
Abstinence, productivity, or emotional regulation are treated as moral measures
Lived experience is discounted in favor of credentials alone
For many people—especially professional helpers, marginalized communities, trauma survivors, and those with complex identities—these systems don’t just miss the mark. They replicate the very power imbalances that caused harm in the first place.
Recovery Is Not Compliance
At Soul Shine, we reject the idea that recovery is about fitting yourself into a predefined mold.
Recovery is not obedience. Recovery is not performance. Recovery is not linear.
Recovery is relationship.
It is a relationship with your nervous system. Your history. Your body. Your values. Your capacity. Your culture. Your season of life.
True healing asks different questions:
What happened to you?
What helped you survive?
What feels safe now?
What support actually fits your life?
These questions cannot be answered by a checklist.
Why Soul Shine Is Different
Soul Shine was created from lived experience—both as a recipient of care and as a clinician working inside systems that too often silence complexity.
We are intentionally challenging:
The idea that there is one “correct” recovery narrative
The belief that people must earn care through suffering
The notion that professionalism requires emotional erasure
The assumption that healing must look productive, palatable, or polite
Instead, we center:
Trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming care
Choice, consent, and collaboration
Multiple pathways to wellness
Community over hierarchy
Curiosity over correction
We do not ask people to shrink themselves to belong here.
Liberation Is a Clinical Issue
Oppression impacts mental health.
When systems demand assimilation rather than accommodation, people internalize failure. Shame grows. Trust erodes. Burnout accelerates. Relapse, withdrawal, and despair are reframed as personal flaws instead of predictable outcomes.
Challenging these structures is not radical for the sake of disruption—it is clinically necessary.
Healing cannot occur in spaces that mirror control, punishment, or conditional worth.
An Invitation, Not a Prescription
Soul Shine does not offer a single path.
We offer space. We offer partnership. We offer permission to explore what recovery means for you.
Whether you are navigating addiction, mental health, neurodivergence, grief, professional burnout, or moral injury—your experience does not need to be simplified to be valid.
There is no gold star for doing this the hardest way.
There is only the question:
What helps you stay alive, connected, and whole?
That answer deserves to be honored.
At Soul Shine, we believe recovery is not about fitting in.
It’s about finally being allowed to fit yourself.
