A retreat to someplace safe and secure can be a starting point for recovery. However, just as childhood must end at some point, facing the world and building a life are skills that will have to be mastered. Bad experiences can be useful if they help us learn to be cautious. If we get "burned" by toxic people. we can learn how to spot them and avoid them more quickly in the future.
There are those who have a smooth trajectory in life. They may not even appreciate the difficulties they have avoided. Those of us who have had a more difficult path can also find a deeper appreciation for when things work well. If you consider that we are all born helpless, ignorant, and selfish you might expect that few would have a youth where everything went well.
Life seems to be designed to make mistakes, learn from them, and go on to the next mistakes. This process can be made less painful by skillful parents and by learning from the mistakes of others so that we can reduce the mistakes we make ourselves.
