Release 2026
The Traps We Call Healing
The Traps We Call Healing is a series of reflective essays exploring the subtle traps hidden within ideas we often associate with growth and awareness such as gratitude, healing, positivity, consciousness, and personal development. Not as accusations or critiques, but as a gentle invitation to look more closely at how easily coping can turn into avoidance, and how the ongoing management of improvement can quietly replace presence, depth, and real integration.
The essays are published freely as they are written. Each text reveals one trap at a time, allowing the book to unfold slowly rather than arriving fully formed. There is no rush to read them all. One essay is enough.
Here on the website, the chapters are released as standalone articles, available to read for free in both Swedish and English. Over time, they will come together as a complete book, to be published later in 2026. You are welcome to follow along as each layer is uncovered, one trap at a time. If you prefer, you can also receive the essays by email as they are released.
The Doing Trap, the Struggle Trap, the Wanting Trap, the Control Trap, the Competition Trap, the Self-Improvement Trap, the Thinking Trap, the Positivity Trap, the Gratefulness Trap, the Money Trap, the Love Trap, the Healing Trap, the Manifestation Trap, the Victim Trap, the Spiritual Trap, the Separation Trap, and the Trap Trap.
The Traps of Healing - Essays
No. 4 The Control Trap
The Control Trap - Essay No. 4 Audio Version The belief that we are in control is one of the greatest illusions a human being can fall for. The more...
No. 4 The Control Trap
No. 4 The Control Trap
|Anna Wretling
No. 5 The Competition Trap
The Competition Trap - Essay No. 5 Audio Version I have spent a long time thinking about competition as a concept, and I am still not entirely sure whether the...
No. 5 The Competition Trap
No. 5 The Competition Trap
|Anna Wretling
No. 1 The Doing Trap
The Doing Trap - Essay No. 1 Audio version The doing trap is one of the most normalized traps we live in, precisely because it is so often mistaken for...
No. 1 The Doing Trap
No. 1 The Doing Trap
|Anna Wretling
No. 3 The Wanting Trap
The Wanting Trap - Essay No. 3 Audio Version The wanting trap is more difficult to recognize than many other traps, precisely because desire itself is so often perceived as...
No. 3 The Wanting Trap
No. 3 The Wanting Trap
|Anna Wretling
No. 2 The Struggle Trap
The Struggle Trap - Essay No. 2 Audio Version The struggle mentality runs deep in many of us, so deep that we rarely stop to question it. For many, it...
No. 2 The Struggle Trap
No. 2 The Struggle Trap
|Anna Wretling
No. 8 The Positivity Trap
The Positivity Trap - Essay No. 8 Audio Version Being positive has, in our time, become something that is not only appreciated, but often expected, and there is an unspoken...
No. 8 The Positivity Trap
No. 8 The Positivity Trap
|Anna Wretling
No. 12 The Healing Trap
The Healing Trap - Essay No. 12 Audio Version One of the first paradoxes I needed to see before anything could truly change was that the moment I began speaking...
No. 12 The Healing Trap
No. 12 The Healing Trap
|Anna Wretling
No. 9 The Gratefulness Trap
The Gratefulness Trap - Essay No. 9 Audio Version Gratitude has, in many ways, become one of the most self-evident concepts of our time. It appears in conversations about mental...
No. 9 The Gratefulness Trap
No. 9 The Gratefulness Trap
|Anna Wretling
Audio Verison - Listen to the Essays
ESSAY 1 - THE DOING TRAP
Essay 2 - The struggle trap
Essay 3 - The wanting trap
Essay 4 - THE control trap
Essay 5 - The competition trap
Essay 8 - The positivity trap
Essay 9 - The Gratefulness Trap
Essay 12 - The Healing Trap
The Traps of Healing Essays (Swedish)
No. 4 Kontrollfällan (swe)
Kontrollfällan - Essä No. 4 Ljudfil på svenska kommer inom kort. Ljudfil på Engelska Tron på att vi har kontroll är en av de största bluffarna en människa kan gå...
No. 4 Kontrollfällan (swe)
No. 4 Kontrollfällan (swe)
|Anna Wretling
Released one at a time
Essays
The Traps We Call Healing unfolds in five acts, each moving through a different layer of how we relate to ourselves, our emotions, and the idea of healing.
The first act stays close to survival and regulation and looks at the patterns the body and nervous system rely on in order to endure. Here, the traps are practical and visible, shaped by doing, struggling, wanting, and controlling as ways of coping with life.
The second act turns toward self-worth and identity. It explores how value is often built through comparison, improvement, and mental effort. These traps are more internal and are frequently encouraged by society, which makes them harder to recognize because they resemble ambition, intelligence, or personal growth.
In the third act, attention shifts to emotions, meaning, and belonging. The essays here explore how positivity, gratitude, love, and money are used to manage discomfort and create a sense of safety, sometimes at the expense of emotional honesty and depth.
The fourth act moves into subtler territory, where healing and spirituality begin to merge with identity. These traps are more difficult to see because they speak the language of awareness and transcendence, allowing the ego to remain intact in more refined ways.
The final act returns to the root. Rather than offering answers, it gently questions the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with us at all, and even the assumption that there is a trap we need to escape.
Taken together, the essays do not offer solutions or steps to follow. They offer a way of seeing. Not to fix what is broken, but to notice what may never have been broken in the first place.