Uncovering Yourself Through Therapy – Embracing Insight Over ‘‘Fixing’’
- Brainz Magazine
- Jan 20, 2020
- 5 min read
Written by Julie Wan, Psychotherapist and Counsellor
Julie Wan is a UK-based Psychotherapist and Counsellor specialising in anxiety, life transitions, and attachment work with teenagers and adults. She integrates humanistic-existential psychotherapy with developmental psychology to help clients gain clarity and freedom.
For many people, the idea of therapy begins with the assumption that something inside them needs to be fixed. They come because anxiety feels unbearable, because they feel stuck in patterns they can’t change, because they are overwhelmed, ashamed, disconnected, or unsure of themselves.
This assumption makes sense, we live in a culture that treats psychological discomfort as a problem to eliminate. But in my work as a therapist, I have found that therapy becomes most transformative when we move away from the mission to “fix” and toward an attitude of curiosity, contact, and understanding.
My own practice has been shaped by existential, relational, and experiential traditions that view emotional distress as meaningful rather than defective. These approaches invite us to explore how we make sense of our lived world, how assumptions, beliefs, relationships, and history shape our experience, and how understanding these patterns can open space for change.
Moving beyond the fix-it mindset
When someone arrives in therapy hoping to get rid of anxiety, or overwhelm, or uncertainty, I don’t try to remove those feelings. Instead, I become curious about them: what might they be protecting? What meaning do they hold? What are they responding to? Where did they begin?
This shift is powerful because focusing on eliminating discomfort can actually limit insight. When our only goal is to stop feeling anxious, for example, we may miss the story the anxiety is telling. We may miss the part of us that is trying to keep us safe, maintain connection, or avoid shame.
Therapy offers a different stance. Instead of asking, “How do I stop this?” we begin to ask, “What is this showing me?”
The moment the agenda stops being self-correcting, space opens for self-understanding. Paradoxically, clients often notice that feelings start to soften when they are no longer being fought.
The relational encounter
Although therapy is often described as a treatment, I experience it first and foremost as a relationship. Much of what wounds us happens in relationships through being unseen, misread, invalidated, controlled, or abandoned, and it is through relationships that repair becomes possible.
In the therapy room, I pay attention not only to what clients say, but to how they are feeling in the moment: tension, hesitation, self-consciousness, longing, defensiveness, humour, overwhelm. These are not symptoms to eliminate, they are communications.
Over time, clients begin to experience something that can feel unfamiliar: the sense of being met rather than managed. When someone feels safe enough to share the parts of themselves that feel messy or unacceptable, those parts begin to come into focus. They become less frightening, less shameful, and more understandable.
This does not mean therapy is always comfortable. Sometimes it is frustrating, awkward, tender, or uncertain. But these moments are often where something important is happening, a pattern is being revealed, a boundary is being felt, a need is being expressed, a younger part is being protected. Change unfolds through contact, not correction.
Working with parts instead of against them
Something I see often in therapy is that people are at war with different aspects of themselves. A part of them wants closeness, another part pulls away. A part craves achievement, another collapses under pressure. A part longs for rest, another insists on productivity.
When we treat these inner tensions as defects to be fixed, we often intensify the struggle. But when we approach them with curiosity. What is this part afraid of? What is it trying to secure? What history does it carry? A different picture emerges.
Many so-called “symptoms” turn out to be adaptations: strategies that helped us survive circumstances we could not control. Criticism might have protected us from humiliation. Anxiety might have kept us vigilant in unpredictable environments. Numbing might have shielded us from overwhelm.
These parts don’t need to be eliminated, they need to be understood. When they feel recognised rather than rejected, they often relax. Inner conflict becomes inner dialogue, and new choices become available.
Attending to experience instead of controlling it
Another dimension of therapy involves learning to attend to what is happening in the present moment. This includes thoughts and emotions, but also sensations, impulses, imagery, and the subtle “felt sense” that exists before words. I often invite clients to slow down and describe what they are noticing, without trying to change anything yet.
This can sound simple, but it is not easy. We are used to overriding our internal experience in order to function. But when experience is given space not analysed from afar, not suppressed for the sake of coping, something tends to move.
People are often surprised by what emerges when they listen inwardly. A feeling that seemed threatening may show its purpose. A bodily tension may soften when named. A belief may reveal its origin. Insight arises not through mental effort, but through contact with what is there.
There is a natural forward movement in the psyche when experience is allowed rather than controlled. It is not forced change, it is organic development.
What transformation actually looks like
Sometimes people worry that if therapy stops focusing on fixing, nothing will change. In my experience, the opposite is true. When the demand to “get better” relaxes, space is created for understanding, and understanding creates the conditions for transformation.
Change in therapy is not usually dramatic or sudden. It tends to unfold quietly, through moments of clarity or gentleness or coherence. It may look like:
being less at war with yourself
questioning old assumptions
feeling your needs instead of dismissing them
recognising patterns in relationships
setting boundaries without apology
feeling emotions without drowning in them
making choices that reflect who you are rather than who you should be
Clients often describe feeling more grounded, more compassionate, more spacious inside. They relate to others with less fear or reactivity. They develop a sense of inner coordination rather than fragmentation. This is not fixing. This is integration.
Conclusion: Understanding over fixing
Therapy offers something that our culture rarely makes room for: the chance to explore our inner world without urgency, judgment, or self-correction. When experience is met rather than managed, it begins to make sense. When it makes sense, it begins to shift.
The paradox is that change often arrives when we stop demanding it.
By moving away from fixing and toward understanding, we learn that our distress is not a sign that we are broken, it is a signal that something in us is asking to be heard.
Closing reflection
If you find yourself thinking about these themes in your own life, you don’t have to make sense of them alone. Therapy provides a calm, relational space where questions can be explored and experiences can be understood in your time.
Read more from Julie Wan
Julie Wan, Psychotherapist and Counsellor
Julie Wan is a Psychotherapist and Counsellor working on the South Coast of the UK and the founder of Rockshore Therapy. Registered with the BACP, she works from a humanistic-existential framework, integrating phenomenology, attachment theory, and developmental psychology. Julie specialises in anxiety, transitions, and relational difficulties with teenagers and adults. Her work is known for its depth, clarity, and ability to reduce self-blame while supporting clients to see their situations more clearly. She has previously worked with organisations including the YMCA and brings a rich background in education and teaching to her therapeutic practice.
