Member-only story
I’m a Therapist Who Didn’t Take Her Own Advice
I think I know what will help a person I love, but sometimes it’s more about me than them.
Fixing
It is so hard to stand on the sidelines while suffering pummels someone we care about. It’s harder to figure out what to do about it.
We learn early that when something is broken, it can and should be fixed, and it should not impact self-esteem. It happens to everyone.
But fixing broken people is a different story. Injuries like the paralysis rooted in anxiety, the devastation of depression, and the disorders with deep roots in personality, are painful to experience and observe.
We don’t want to just stand by like onlookers to an accident. At the same time, we don’t want to bulldoze into their lives in the certainty that we know exactly how to restore their well-being.
The problem is that many of us have been conditioned to believe that if we fall, we should pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and “get back to business.”
This is the theme of very young children’s books, of adult literature and film, of advertising for anything from preachers, back massagers, potions, psychiatric drugs, and weight loss injections.
