Waking Up vs Growing Up: Why Both Matter in Healing
In both psychological and spiritual circles, people often talk about transformation, awakening, and personal growth. But there’s a crucial distinction that’s sometimes overlooked: the difference between waking up and growing up.
Understanding these two movements—and how they complement each other—is key to deep, sustainable healing.
Let’s explore what they mean and why both are essential.
What Does It Mean to “Wake Up”?
“Waking up” refers to spiritual awakening—a shift in identity from being a separate self to recognizing yourself as awareness itself. In this moment of awakening, the usual sense of “me and my life” gives way to a more spacious, unified, and timeless presence.
It might come as:
A glimpse of peace beyond the mind
A realization that thoughts and emotions are not the whole of who you are
A deep knowing that all things are interconnected—or even not separate at all
Awakening can happen gradually or suddenly. It can be gentle or profound. But however it appears, it tends to dissolve the illusion of separateness. Life is no longer something happening to “me”—it’s something unfolding as this very presence.
And yet…
Many people who’ve had powerful spiritual awakenings still struggle in relationships, emotions, and daily life.
Why?
Because waking up is not the same as growing up.
What Does It Mean to “Grow Up”?
“Growing up” refers to psychological and emotional maturity—healing trauma, integrating emotions, setting boundaries, developing healthy relationships, and living with integrity and accountability.
It involves:
Facing the wounds of childhood and attachment
Learning to regulate your nervous system
Naming your needs and feelings
Developing empathy for yourself and others
Becoming responsible for your choices
While awakening can dissolve egoic identity, it doesn’t automatically resolve how that ego learned to cope. Even after waking up, you might still fawn in relationships, dissociate under stress, or avoid intimacy.
This is why personal development—therapy, somatic work, inner child healing, shadow work—is still necessary, even (or especially) after awakening.
Why Both Are Important
If you only wake up without growing up, you might:
Use spiritual language to bypass unresolved pain
Feel detached from life or relationships
Struggle with boundaries or emotional intimacy
Mistake non-attachment for disconnection
If you only grow up without waking up, you might:
Keep identifying with your story and pain
Constantly seek to fix or improve the self
Miss the deeper truth of who you really are
Feel stuck in self-improvement with no end
Healing is most powerful when both are included.
When you grow up, your human self becomes more integrated, resilient, and capable of love.
When you wake up, you realize you were never just the human self to begin with.
The Dance Between the Two
In reality, waking up and growing up aren’t separate. They weave through each other like two threads of the same cloth.
Sometimes deep spiritual insight will bring up old emotional pain that needs integration.
Sometimes trauma work will clear space for a spontaneous glimpse of awareness.
Many find that therapy softens the defenses that block awakening. Others discover that awakening illuminates what still needs to heal.
It’s not a competition—it’s a collaboration.
How to Work with Both
You don’t have to choose between therapy and spirituality. You can honour both by:
Practicing self-inquiry or meditation to explore the nature of awareness
Going to therapy to explore patterns, trauma, and emotional needs
Doing shadow work—facing the parts of you you’ve disowned
Cultivating self-compassion alongside insight
Being in authentic relationships, which reflect your wounds and your wholeness
Allowing space—neither rushing healing nor clinging to awakening
There is no fixed path. What matters is sincerity and integration.
Final Thoughts
Healing is not only about waking up from illusion, nor only about growing up into adulthood. It’s both. It’s remembering the vastness of your true nature while also tending to the very real, tender, vulnerable human you are.
To awaken is to know you are more than your story.
To grow is to honour the story you’ve lived—and reshape it from a place of love.
Let both be part of your journey.
