Go Fix Yourself

'Shrinking' and the joy of solving someone else's problems so you can avoid your own

My first therapist helped me unpack my baggage, but she didn’t help me put it away. 

She created space for feelings and fears that I had never before acknowledged. She validated painful parts of my past that were showing up in my present. But she didn’t offer new containers to hold them. No system for organizing them or understanding where they belonged, if they belonged. No filter for deciding what to keep, what to discard, and how to properly dispose of anything that no longer served a purpose. 

We’d examine whatever was at the top of the pile. We’d talk about it. Maybe poke around in the wrinkled, musty mess to see what else was tangled up in it. And then we’d throw it back in the box or toss it aside and go back to digging around. 

Don’t get me wrong, just having permission to own my experience was a meaningful shift. I grew up in a time and a culture that believed therapy was reserved for big T traumas. That word didn’t belong to you unless something really really bad had happened. And sometimes not even then. There was a collective ‘toughen up’ mentality that suggested this was the way life is and you ought to just get over it. A need for outside support or an inability to move on insinuated weakness or wallowing. Trying to understand unintentional hurts was easily misconstrued as blame. 

My time with this therapist wasn’t without value. But I don’t know if it helped.

Eventually I stopped seeing her and I spent the next few years with unresolved issues and activated triggers strewn about, open suitcases spilling all over the place. And me, tracking those wounds like a pack of wild animals I couldn’t wrangle or get rid of. 

It was an anxiety-filled coexistence. All I wanted was for someone to tell me what to do so I could stop feeling this way. 

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Ironically, or maybe unsurprisingly, there was a brief moment in high school where I actually thought I might become a therapist. I know it’s not uncommon for an actor, who is fascinated by human behavior, to route their interest through a more…stable, traditional, responsible career. But I am also what they call a Fixer and the idea of soothing someone’s pain (or helping them avoid it altogether) really appealed to the part of me that derived self worth from fulfilling my perceived responsibility as protector and preventer. I mean, how admirable to dedicate your life to such a service. One I was already happily doing for free for people who weren’t asking for it.

I imagine it must be so gratifying to watch someone break out of a cycle. To have a hand in guiding them through that process. To witness their life unfolding in a new way as they become closer to who they truly are, all because you were present and had the tools to help them heal. 

And it must be so frustrating to watch someone continue to repeat a pattern over and over again, especially when they show up every week insisting that they are ready- desperate even- to change. How do you sit there quietly when you can see, so clearly, where they're getting stuck and what they need to do to get out of it? I don’t know if I could resist inserting myself.

Maybe that’s why I enjoyed watching Shrinking¹ so much. Apple TV’s new show follows Jimmy, a therapist who, fueled by his own unruly grief, is driven to experiment with a more unconventional approach with his patients.  

To say nothing about the pitch perfect casting and well balanced tone, it is extremely satisfying to watch someone do what you wish you could do, and, from the safety of your sofa, delight in cringey amusement as it inevitably backfires on them.

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My fixing mode, much like Jimmy’s, is often activated by a lack of control, or lack of success in asserting control, over my own life. Part penance for my failure to manage my existence and part reaction to being sick of my own bullshit adds up to a total intolerance for anyone else’s.

Plus, the nice thing about focusing on someone else’s problems is it allows you to ignore your own for a little while. There’s even a sneaky belief, whispering in the background, that your loved ones’ problems are your problems and, if you can just fix them, then you can stop worrying about them, which will give you the mental space and the confidence to turn your attention back to yourself. 

And, the thing is, fixing feels like a kindness. It is hard to see someone struggling and not try to help. But the desire to help isn’t the real problem. It’s the projecting- how we think we know what they need, based on what we would need in (what we perceive to be) their situation. It’s the assuming- that we are the only ones who can save them, that they are not capable of saving themselves. 

It’s a misguided good intention. Sometimes a distraction. Oftentimes, an attempt to help others stemming from our own need for help. What my next therapist (who is also my current therapist) would call an expired coping mechanism. Something originally designed to protect you that, if it keeps hanging around after it’s outlived its purpose, will begin to prevent you. 

This, by the way, was an observation she made in our first fifteen minutes together. I don’t remember if it was specific to my fixer-ness or my perfectionism or one of the many other life management strategies I had cultivated, but it was that reframe of my repeated experience that offered a way out. It wasn’t just acknowledgement, it was acceptance, which then created space for choice. A new way forward. If I wanted it. And I did.

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Over the last seven years, this therapist has seen and heard a lot. She has listened and reflected myself back to me. She has offered practical tools and resources. She has held a safe space of support. But, most of all, she has approached me- and my feelings and my fears and my growth- with a genuine curiosity. No assumptions or expertise. Just a compassionate inquiry that always guides me back to myself, questions that honor the wisdom I already have, nudging me toward answers only I can know. 

It is incredibly humbling to confront the infinite and delicate tangle of choices and experiences and feelings and behaviors- learned and inherited, internal and external, relational and personal- that shape us, our beliefs, and our point of view. It is hard to hold that and still somehow believe I could ever know what’s best for anyone else. 

Not that I don’t still find myself trying sometimes. 

I am growing, yes. I am healing and changing and choosing differently. But I am not fixed, nor have I successfully retired from my role as a Fixer. I continue to slide back into bad habits and old patterns. I’ve got a favorite set of narratives ready at hand to rinse and play on repeat.

I am learning. And, while I do not feel comfortable with not getting it right the first time or being better once and for all yet, a lot of smart people insist that mistakes are actually the steps we take to get there. 

Sharon Salzberg says the healing is in the return. Not in the never doing it again, but in the coming back.²

Dr. Huberman says making mistakes and experiencing that failure and frustration are necessary to trigger the neuroplasticity required to change our brain and our behaviors.³ 

I suppose that’s probably why, as therapeutic as it was for him to intervene, Jimmy’s experiment wasn’t exactly a success. Even the best instructions or the right advice doesn’t stick unless you’re ready to hear it.

Like how helping a butterfly break out of its cocoon robs them of the strength-building they will need to survive. We have to make the choice in order tolerate the inevitable discomfort that will be required to transform. We’ll keep running into the fire and it’s our own desire to change that will keep us coming back.

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I am still eager to help in a way that is truly helpful. And I think a good place to begin is with listening. Letting the other person tell you what they need. Waiting to offer advice until it’s asked for.

So….I am launching an Advice Column!

To begin, I’m going to practice with a fictional character or two, because, well, I think it’s kind of funny and it goes along with the whole ‘real life through fiction’ exploration we do over here. But also the stakes are much lower and I think that will make it more fun while I experiment.

Who knows, maybe I’ll develop a specialty for imparting wisdom onto people who don’t exist. Or maybe I’ll be the next

Ask E. Jean

or

Ask Polly

! We'll find out in a few weeks.

In the meantime, in the spirit of asking for advice, can I have yours?

And, if you know of any fictional characters who could really use some help, send them my way: outsourcedoptimism@substack.com

1. [Watch] Shrinking

2. [Listen] On Being: Sharon Salzberg- The Healing Is In the Return

3. [Listen or Read] Huberman Lab: Using Failures, Movement & Balance To Learn Faster