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Every time I fill out an intake questionnaire for a new therapist, I come across the question: “Have you ever participated in therapy before?”
I have to laugh at myself. I’ve been in and out of therapy for nearly 20 years. I’ve sat on more couches than I can count, and shared my trauma with professionals from all backgrounds in an attempt to heal what I thought was broken inside of me.
I’ve tried cognitive behavioral therapy, somatic therapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), even ketamine-assisted therapy—you name it. I’ve read every self-help book that promised to “fix” my wounds and signed up for countless workshops, hoping the next one would be the final piece of the puzzle.
For most of my life, I believed I was fundamentally “wrong.” I wasn’t just someone who struggled with trauma, anxiety, depression, tremendous grief, or an eating disorder—I was the embodiment of these issues. I thought if I could just fix them, I would finally be okay. I’d finally be happy.
But here’s the truth that took me way longer than I’d like to admit to understand:
I was never broken. And neither are you.
The Pervasive Trap of Self-Help
We live in a world where every week brings a new trend, a new diagnosis, or a new thing that needs fixing. One day, it’s our “cortisol face,” and the next it’s our “anxious attachment.” We’re told our skin isn’t clear enough, our anger is “low vibration,” and there’s another, better healing practice that we have to try. There’s always a new book, a new course, or a new guru ready to tell us how to level up, transcend, and transform.
There’s a multi-billion-dollar industry that thrives on our insecurities—one that needs us to believe we are broken so it can sell us the tools to fix ourselves.
The self-help and personal development world can often feel like a maze with no exit, each turn presenting yet another part of ourselves that apparently needs improvement.
While healing modalities and personal growth certainly have value, there’s also a danger when that work becomes a lifelong project rooted in the belief that we are inherently flawed.
You Are Not the Problem
There’s a deeper, systemic issue at play here. We are living in a society built on white supremacy, capitalism, and misogyny—systems that exploit our insecurities and perpetuate the narrative that we are not enough. These systems need us to constantly strive for perfection, to keep us too busy fixing ourselves to challenge the bigger picture.
When your job is soul-sucking, your nervous system isn’t “dysregulated” because you’re weak or broken—it’s responding normally to an unhealthy situation. When your partner is emotionally unavailable, and you feel anxious and unworthy, that’s not a flaw in your wiring—it’s a natural reaction to a relationship that doesn’t meet your needs. When you’ve gained weight due to being under a tremendous amount of life, work, and relationship stress, that’s not a personal failure—it’s your body’s response to chronic overwhelm and the natural consequences of living in survival mode.
The problem was never you.
The Myth of Control
One of the most seductive promises of self-help culture is the idea that if you just do enough “work,” you’ll finally have control over your emotions, your life, and your future. Once you fix your mindset, your body, your productivity, your sleep schedule, your diet, and every other daily routine, everything else will fall into place.
But life doesn’t work like that. We live in a world that feels like a dumpster fire, and no amount of positive affirmations or green juice will change the fact that sometimes things are just hard. Anxiety, rage, exhaustion, and body changes are appropriate responses to a chaotic world.
It’s okay to want control. It’s okay to want to feel better. But healing isn’t about erasing all the parts of you that are hurting—it’s about learning to sit with them, to offer them compassion, and to recognize that your responses make sense.
Acceptance as an Everyday Practice
In my journey, I’ve begun to shift the belief that I am inherently bad or wrong to understanding that many things are bad and wrong within our society. This shift didn’t magically erase my pain. It didn’t suddenly make my anxiety, depression, or grief disappear. But it did allow me to stop being so relentlessly hard on myself.
It helped me take a step back from the exhausting cycle of trying to fix everything about me to recognize that my struggles were not signs of failure but natural responses to a world that often feels harsh and unkind.
Accepting this truth didn’t mean I gave up on myself, stopped caring about growth or healing, or stopped wanting to make the world a better place. Instead, it gave me permission to approach myself with more gentleness and to find freedom from the pressure to constantly become “healed.”
Acceptance isn’t about throwing in the towel. It’s about making room for all the messy, complicated parts of being human. It’s about recognizing that your worth isn’t tied to how well you can mold yourself to fit society’s impossible standards. Acceptance allows you to hold space for your pain while also finding ways to take action—whether that means setting boundaries, advocating for change, or simply offering yourself the compassion you’ve so often withheld.
Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” try asking, “Who told me that who I am is wrong?” Instead of searching for the next quick fix, explore what feels nourishing and kind. Some days that might mean therapy or a healing practice. Other days, it might mean taking a break and grabbing a cheeseburger with your best friend.
When we shift from fixing to accepting, we reclaim our power. We step off the hamster wheel of self-improvement and start living more fully in the present. We find that healing was never about becoming someone else—it was always about coming home to who we’ve been all along.
Be on Your Own Side
You deserve to look in the mirror and see more than a project. You deserve to take up space, to have complex emotions, to be imperfect. You deserve to be on your own side.
The next time someone asks if you’ve been to therapy before, maybe you’ll laugh, too. Not because you’re still trying to fix yourself but because you finally understand that healing was never about finding the fix. It was always about coming home to yourself and realizing that you were never broken.
So, take a breath. You’re already enough. And that, my friend, is something no societal expectation, no self-help book, and no corrupt system can ever take away.
~
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