Therapy Isn't About "Fixing" You
It's about unraveling
I sat in my new therapist’s office waiting very impatiently. I had been holding onto a lot. Frankly, I’d been holding onto too much for far too long. I felt like a water balloon that was being filled up with too much water and it was about ready to burst. I decided to dig out my parent’s phonebook and look for a local psychologist.
I was 19 years old. The anxiety I was holding onto was too much. The only remedy I had cope up until this point was going to the gym and exercising. When I wasn’t at the gym or simply wasn’t able to be at the gym, I was out taking walks or running. Exercise had given me a little bit of reprieve, but that alone wasn’t enough. I was still miserable. I was still crying myself to sleep every night and filled with anxiety all day wondering what the hell was wrong with me. We didn’t date that long, I would say to myself, so why the hell is this this hard? Why don’t I see anyone else struggling from a breakup where they dated so briefly? What the hell is wrong with me?
So I had called up a local psychologist and made an appointment.
As I waited impatiently for my appointment with tense shoulders and a foot that didn’t want to stop moving, I looked around at all the greyhound-themed decor in the waiting room. Greyhound paintings, greyhound pictures, and even a greyhound statue. I guess she must really like greyhounds, I thought to myself. I suppose the greyhound decor alone was a little helpful in the moment, because it took my mind off of what I was feeling.
Just then the psychologist opened the door, “Hi Jennifer. Come in.”
I got up from the waiting room chair and walked into her office. I look around and notice that there is more greyhound decor in this room, but not nearly as much. I sat down on her white couch. I thought white couches were hard to clean? I thought to myself, I guess people don’t dirty it or she just cleans it really well.
“So what brings you in?” she asks me.
Alright, here’s my moment — finally, I thought to myself so I let it all out. The anxiety I experienced the entire time while I was dating this guy months ago. Then the breakup. Then a few unexpected friend betrayals that I experienced later on and the responses I got for bringing up my feelings and concerns. Then me feeling like an idiot for being emotionally impacted by any of these things.
“So what’s wrong with me?” I asked her.
She paused and looked at me. “All of that sounds really hard”, she responded. Her response wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I thought it was the job of a psychologist to tell people what’s wrong with them, I thought to myself, but her response helped me relax a little bit. Nobody had given me any empathy or validation throughout any of this. I was so used to being told that I was wrong and that I was crazy for having the emotions I had that this response alone helped me relax a little bit.
This was the start of several months working together. By the end, I found myself in a very different place than the nightmare I was in when I started.
In my 10 years now of seeing clients, the “What’s wrong with me?” question comes up fairly often. Though I might not hear that exact question, I have heard many questions and/or statements where that question is underlying it. For example, someone asking me how they can “fix” their emotion(s) or asking me how I can “fix” them so they’re not going to struggle so much.
I see 3 places where this commonly stems from:
Childhood experiences
Cultural and systemic perceptions around emotions
The western medical model approach
So let’s break each one of these down.
#1- Childhood upbringing
If the client tended to have a parent, both parents, or caregiver (such as another family member or teacher) who didn’t approach emotions as something to accept but rather criticize, then the client is significantly less likely to accept their emotions in adulthood. They will believe that their emotions are “bad” and that they need to be “fixed”.
This can show up in all kinds of ways, but a classic early childhood example of this that comes to my mind is how adults may deal with toddler tantrums. Toddlerhood is a time when a child first starts to gain a sense of independence and that independence can lead to a lot of tantrums. Tantrums are a normal part of child development, particularly in toddlerhood. At the toddler stage (ages 1 to 5), kids start having big emotions around all kinds of things, such as: I’m upset because you peeled the banana wrong, I’m upset because you pressed the elevator button before I could do it myself, you’re wanting me to leave the park before I want to, etc.
Toddlers don’t know how to regulate their emotions yet because they are very young. So when any little thing upsets them it can easily turn into a big tantrum. The key at this stage of development is in modeling for toddlers how to regulate big emotions through co-regulaton.
Co-regulation is “helping a child learn how to regulate their own emotions by showing empathy and modeling calmness”. 1 Co-regulation is huge for emotional development toddlerhood, though it is still important throughout all of childhood. Co-regulation is when the caregiver is able to be present and calm when a child is having big emotions rather than become angry, judge, criticize, or punish the child.
When a parent or caregiver judges, criticizes, or punishes a child for their big emotions, rather than send a message of I’m here for you and I love you know matter what you’re feeling, then a child learns that their is emotion is “bad” and needs to be “fixed”. Some children will even go so far as to tell themselves that “I am bad and need to be fixed” rather than identify than the “problem” is that they either haven’t yet learned how to regulate their emotions and/or they have a caregiver who misattuned. How the child holds this will depend on how their caregivers reacted.
Why does a child blame themselves rather than the adult? At a young age it is a lot easier for a child to blame themselves as the problem, because the child instinctively knows that they need to be dependent on their caregivers for survival. It would be far too scary for a child to take on the idea that their parent or caregiver is not a safe person for them. They know that they are too young to survive on their own and that they need their parents.
#2 - Cultural and systemic perceptions around emotions
Though there has been a lot of effort in recent years to raise emotional intelligence in the United States, we still certainly have a long way to go.
As a culture, we’re not exactly offering people extended breaks in order to properly grieve the loss of a loved one. Most people in the United State receive 5 days of bereavement leave per year. That is, if their employer allows them to actually use the full 5 days. Aside from work restrictions, our culture doesn’t really have a ritual of spending time with loved ones following a loss. We generally have a visitation and a funeral with a meal afterwards and then it’s all over. There isn’t a lot of gathering to really talk about the loved one who passed on. From my experience living in South Korea, I know that in that culture it is normal for the family and friends of a loved one who passed to spend time together for 3 days straight spending time together and talking about the loved one. I always thought that was a great way to bring community together and to support each other during an emotionally difficult, but normal, human experience.
Aside from dealing with grief, the United States doesn’t give us a lot of wiggle room to recover and find a new career path if we were, for example, traumatized at our work place or, simply, burnt out for whatever reason. The systems we live in essentially force us to have more of a “rub some dirt on the wound and keep going” kind of culture, rather than a “what you experienced was very impactful, so let’s slow down and give you some time to heal and take care of yourself and your loved ones” kind of culture. This sort of policy doesn’t exactly encourage people to accept their experiences for what it is. Instead, it encourages people to try to find some “quick fix” so they can hurry up and get back to work. A recent study show that up to a staggering 66% of workers in the US have felt burnt out at their workplaces.2 This goes to show just how much the current systems in the US don’t support our basic humanity has been damaging to the human psyche.
Following the pandemic, Germany saw a significant rise in rates of burn out, but Germany decided to create a burn out policy. In Germany, “employees can get a leave of 72 weeks if they are feeling burnt out” and they receive their full salary during that time.3 During those 72 weeks, employees can rest, recover, and go to therapy while they prepare to go back to their job or look into changing careers. Is it a perfect solution to the problem? Probably not, but at least they made some policy change in the right direction.
#3 - The western medical model approach
The western medical model essentially works like this: Gather information on the patient’s symptoms to assess, provide a diagnosis, and give treatment. The diagnosis is often viewed as something that you will live with forever and that you will never fully be “healed” or “treated” from. These beliefs are the same among many diagnoses from Multiple Sclerosis to Major Depressive Disorder.
The beliefs that are the foundation of the medical model are very different from other healing approaches. Traditional Chinese Medicine, for example, doesn’t tend to view a diagnosis as “static” and something that you are going to have forever. A TCM diagnosis is viewed more as a current pattern that you have and the herbal formulas, acupuncture and diet recommendations are given to help shift that pattern. I know of some TCM practitioners who tend to not tell certain patients a diagnosis even if they ask. They do this because they know that if the person “fixates” on the problem, then it will only enhance their worry, which would only lead to greater disharmony rather than genuine healing.
I have found this to be true in my work as a therapist as well. The irony, of course, in believing that you need to be “fixed” is that it creates an added inner tension. Feeling anxious about something is hard enough as it is, but to be struggling with an inner voice that’s telling you that there’s something wrong with you for feeling anxious to begin with makes it even harder. A person might not want to feel and may try to avoid feeling at all costs even though having acceptance and compassion with what they are feeling is the exact thing that can provide the relief they seek.
When we have a medical system that is based on a model that believes you have a “problem” that needs to be “fixed”, it inevitably creates the perception that a provider’s job is just to “tell you what’s wrong with you” and to “fix you” — as if you were a broken car and are going to a mechanic. Its an oversimplification of the human experience and human biology and physiology to say the least.
Of course, there are and have been movements within the field of psychology that attempt to break out of this ideology, such as humanistic psychology. Humanistic psychology “is based on the belief that people are innately good. This means that we have the potential to grow and develop in positive ways. However, this growth is often hindered by our environment, which can be negative or unsupportive.” 4
So, how do I heal from this?
So how does one unravel from this idea that you need to be “fixed”? How does one quiet the inner critic that is making life so much harder? Truthfully, there are many answers.
In regards to the cultural and systemic influences, I think awareness of the current dynamics at play is key.
In regards to healing from patterns from childhood, the simplest method is to go to a therapist to receive empathy and validation for your emotional experience. Like I experienced in my first therapy session, simply having someone acknowledge how hard everything was for me and validating those emotions it helped take things down several notches. When I hear people saying about how they just need a therapist just to have someone listen to them because nobody around them is, this is usually what they’re seeking. For some people, that alone can do wonders.
Obviously, that doesn’t work for everyone. In these cases it’s usually because there is a past relational experience where they received some kind of emotional abuse. However, I will say that that is not always an accurate predictor. I’ve seen many people who have endured enormous amounts of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. I’ve witness these people meet themselves with a fair amount of kindness and compassion through therapy at a faster rate than others who appear to have endured less. Why? That’s always a question that I and I’m sure many other psychotherapists contemplate. Why do people hold their experiences the way they do? I’m not sure if there will ever be one certain answer on that. This is where I find myself looking to and referencing more spiritual, esoteric systems like Human Design. These things can be useful in potentially answering the “why”, but I think in regards to healing from the pattern, there are many psychotherapy modalities that attempt to do that.
In regards to the various modalities, I’m only going to speak to the modalities that I use because those are the ones that resonate with me the most and the I know best. There are so many psychotherapy modalities out there for therapists to learn and clients to try. It’s definitely not all cognitive behavioral therapy! (Contrary to what Google might lead you to believe).
Coherence Therapy is a depth-oriented modality that helps people uncover their unconscious beliefs that are causing one’s symptoms. In Coherence Therapy, having “low self worth”, which can manifest as someone believing that they need to be “fixed”, is viewed as a position that someone takes in order to help cope with a deeper reality that is even more painful. *If you are interested in uncovering and exploring all of these potential realities, that will be offered for paid subscribers at the end of of this article.*
Internal Family Systems (IFS), which can also be known as “parts work”. IFS essentially believes people have multiple “sub personalities”. You can essentially think of it like having inner family members and various ages of yourself within your own mind that are interacting with the current you. I am not formally trained in IFS, but I have learned various techniques from it to integrate into my Brainspotting sessions as needed, which has been incredibly helpful.
Brainspotting, which is is a powerful, focused treatment method that works by identifying, processing and releasing core neurophysiological sources of emotional/body pain, trauma, dissociation and a variety of other challenging symptoms.5 Brainspotting is a brain-and-body based technique that can access the midbrain to help the brain and body reach a place of homeostasis and heal from trauma. If you have heard of or have had experience with EMDR, then this is similar in that the founder discovered it upon making a mistake in an EMDR session. Despite Brainspotting generally being viewed at as a technique to use on specific somatic/body sensations or emotions, I’ve personally found it to be incredibly helpful in toning down an inner critic and releasing the trauma that led to this inner narrative in the first place. I’ve had numerous sessions with clients where we unpacked it via Coherence Therapy or another modality that I was trying at the time only to do Brainspotting and discover that the “root” was actually coming from a place entirely different from what we both initially thought.
A few other modalities that I think are worth mentioning include:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is a mindfulness-based psychotherapy that helps to increase psychological flexibility by guiding clients to accept people to accept difficult thoughts, feelings, sensations and internal experiences. 6
Narrative Therapy. Narrative Therapy is a form a psychotherapy that helps people to externalize their stories and rewrite them. 7
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). DBT is a form a psychotherapy that “focuses on developing 4 skills: mindfulness, acceptance and distress tolerance, emotional regulation and interpersonal effectiveness”.8 One of the hallmark aspects of DBT comes from the dialectical component, which involves holding two different points of view at once.
Gestalt Therapy. Gestalt Therapy is a humanistic psychotherapy that helps people develop greater self awareness and acceptance of their emotions. Most people tend to associate gestalt therapy with the notorious “chair exercise”, which I have done both in my training and in my practice with remarkable results.
Healing is hard, but it doesn’t have to be impossible.
Healing is hard, but struggling isn’t forever.
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. A beautiful light. A radiant light. A healing light that knows exactly what you need.
Therapy isn’t about fixing you, because you’re not inherently broken. Healing isn’t about fixing you, because there’s nothing inherently wrong with you. Though you might not feel like it, you’re already inherently whole. You’re already enough.
Somewhere deep within you, you already have all of what you need. Somewhere deep within you, you already have all the answers that you’ve been seeking. You just need to unravel it. As it all falls away, bit by bit and layer by layer, it all becomes clearer.
You realize what you need and don’t need. You realize what really matters and what doesn’t. You realize what is meant for you and what isn’t.
You become more comfortable in just being you. Without the fear, without the worry, and without the inner critic, you can just freely be you.
For more information on my psychotherapy practice for California residents, you can click here.
If you are seeking psychotherapy and are having trouble finding a therapist, I recommend TherapyDen and GoodTherapy. If you are looking for a therapist who is trained or certified in any of the modalities I’ve listed in this article, please visit the links I added when I mentioned them or check the footnotes. I’ve attempted to link to all of the official websites and most appear to have directories.
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The remainder of this article is for those of you who are paid subscribers. It goes more in depth on how to heal from low self-worth from the Coherence Therapy perspective.