You notice it again.
The spiral. The anxiety. The way you snapped at someone you care about, or the way your brain just went numb during something important. The shame kicks in. The thought follows:
“I need to fix this.”
So you reach for the tools. The list. The book. The better routine. The upgraded version of yourself who doesn’t feel like this. The version who’s calm, responsive, resilient. You try to fix it.
But what if fixing is the very thing keeping you stuck?
The Control Behind “Growth”
We rarely name it this way, but the self-improvement drive is often just control dressed up as healing.
Control over your emotions. Control over your thoughts. Control over your impulses. Control over…everything.
And underneath that? A deep belief that you, as you are, are too much.
That if you could just be more functional, more regulated, more spiritually or emotionally advanced—you’d finally be okay.
But here’s the truth: most of what we call growth is actually a strategy. A way to avoid the discomfort of being in relationship with ourselves as we are.
We perceive ourselves to be broken. So we try to become better.
Fixing Is Not the Same as Healing
Fixing is reactive.
It’s a response to shame, to panic, to the uncomfortable truth that we are not in control of how we feel or how we act.
But healing requires something fixing cannot offer: presence.
It asks you to sit with the discomfort. To tolerate the not-knowing. To stay, instead of chasing a version of better.
And for many of us—especially those shaped by trauma, performance-based worth, or perfectionism—staying feels harder than effort.
Because effort feels like progress.
But sometimes effort is just fear in motion.
The Nervous System Sees Fixing as Threat
Even if your mind is saying, “This is for my own good,” your body may be hearing something different:
“I’m not okay like this.”
“This has to go away.”
“I shouldn’t feel this.”
And when your nervous system hears rejection—even subtle, self-directed rejection—it tightens. Braces. Contracts.
The drive to fix becomes the very thing that keeps you dysregulated.
Regulation Begins with Witnessing
The antidote isn’t passivity. It’s witnessing.
Instead of asking, “How do I fix this?”
You start asking:
What is happening in me right now?
What part of me feels unsafe?
Can I stay with this, just for now, without trying to change it?
You stop trying to be the version of yourself who doesn’t feel discomfort, and you start practicing being the version who can stay.
Because true regulation isn’t about elimination.
It’s about capacity.
You don’t need to be better to be safe. You need to be seen.
Interrupting the Fixing Loop
Here’s what it might look like in practice:
You notice the spiral start—and you pause.
You catch the voice that says “get rid of this” and ask instead “can I be here?”
You take one breath. Not to calm down, but to come home.
You let yourself feel the discomfort without fixing it.
You watch the moment pass—not perfectly, but without abandoning yourself.
This is what healing looks like. Not as a strategy, but as a relationship with yourself.
You Are Not a Project
You are not a broken system to be overhauled, retrofitted or reset.
You are a human—complex, brilliant, layered—whose nervous system learned to work very hard to stay alive in a world that demanded too much or offered too little.
And now? You’re learning something new.
That healing doesn’t happen in the fixing. It happens in the staying. The witnessing.
The moment you stop rejecting your own experience and start sitting beside it.
That is where something shifts.
That is where something softens.
That is where healing begins.