What If Your Healing Is Stuck Because You’re Still Trying to Fix Yourself?
- Brainz Magazine
- May 2
- 6 min read
Michelle Doublet, LCSW, CCTP-II, E-RYT, YACEP, is a trauma expert, somatic integrative psychotherapist, and somatic embodiment coach who integrates body-based healing, subtle energy medicine, nervous system attunement and restoration to help others reclaim personal power, clarity, connection, inner wisdom and their embodied truth.
What if the reason you feel stuck isn’t because you’re broken, but because you keep treating yourself like you are? In a world obsessed with self-improvement, it’s easy to confuse healing with fixing. But true healing often begins when we stop trying to change who we are and start embracing ourselves as already whole.
Are your trauma responses being mistaken for your personality?
You’ve done the work.
You’ve read the books, sat through therapy, and journaled until your hand cramped.
You know your patterns, maybe even where they come from.
And yet, something still feels off.
You can’t shake the anxiety. Or the self-doubt. Or the quiet sense that you’re not quite
home in your own body.
Maybe it’s harder than it should be to trust others.
Maybe intimacy feels confusing, or even unsafe.
Maybe connecting the thing you long for feels just out of reach.
What if you’re not stuck because you’re broken, but because you’re still trying to fix something that was never broken to begin with?
What if the parts of you you’ve been trying to fix were never the problem, but wise protectors doing their best when you didn’t yet have the capacity to choose?
When protection masquerades as strength
Many of us walk through life as the most functional version of our trauma response, not our truest self.
We confuse protection with personality. We call our fawning “being easygoing.” We call our freeze “just being private.” We call our fight “being a go-getter.”
We call our flight “when leaving first feels like power,” having an exit plan before intimacy ever gets too close, saying “I don’t need this” before we risk not being chosen.
But what if these traits are not personality quirks, but survival strategies?
Survival states are not who you are
When the nervous system has been shaped by trauma, whether obvious or subtle, it adapts to keep us safe. These responses are not flaws; they are intelligent, even brilliant. They are how your system said, “Let's get through this.”
And they worked. They helped you. They even, maybe, kept you alive.
But at a certain point in our healing journey, what once protected us can begin to feel like it’s holding us back, keeping us from connection, peace, and authenticity.
And of course, it feels unsafe to put those survival patterns down. Of course, it feels risky to soften into intimacy or vulnerability.
These patterns were built at a time when connection may have been or felt dangerous, inconsistent, or overwhelming.
Instead of safety, we feel stuck. Instead of clarity, we feel confusion.
Instead of peace, we live in a low hum of anxiety, always bracing for something, without knowing what.
And instead of connection, we may feel isolated even in the presence of others.
These survival states (fight, flight, freeze, fawn, more nuanced variations like appeasement, placating, and functional freeze) shape how we see the world, how we protect our hearts, how we relate, and how we see ourselves.
Insight isn’t enough: The body has to know safety
Healing often begins with insight, uncovering attachment wounds, family dynamics, and core beliefs.
But insight alone doesn’t rewire the nervous system.
You can understand your triggers and still get pulled into old patterns. You can name your needs, and still struggle to express them.
You can crave closeness and still push it away.
Because healing isn’t just cognitive, it’s somatic, energetic, relational, and spiritual.
The nervous system must experience safety in real time; in the body, with others, and within the self.
Why somatic and energetic healing approaches matter
Somatic and energetic practices help bring the body into the healing conversation. They offer a path to gently unravel stored stress, survival energy, and protective parts not by force, but by understanding, developing a new relationship, and honoring the wisdom underneath. To move, release, and integrate without needing to relive or overanalyze the past.
In somatic work, we learn to listen to the signals beneath the words.
In energy medicine, we attune to the deeper layers of experience, into the subtle imprints trauma leaves on the energetic field, often the ones that don't have language.
These practices help restore trust, not just in your body, but in your ability to be with others in safe, boundaried, nourishing ways.
It teaches you how to safely check in so you don't check out.
They don’t fix you.
They help you remember who you were before you had to armor up to survive.
You are not a problem to solve
The deepest shift happens when we stop approaching ourselves as projects to fix, and instead become curious about who we are when we no longer need to perform, please, or protect.
Because curiosity creates space, and space allows connection.
Healing isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to someone true.
So if something in you has been whispering, there has to be another way there is.
And it begins not in the fixing.
But in the softening, the listening, and the remembering.
This work comes with a cost
It asks you to be raw with yourself, to be truthful, and that can feel terrifying, especially if you’ve known trauma.
The fear of rejection.
Of being misunderstood. Of someone not liking you.
Why would you want to be everyone’s cup of tea?
The real answer? Because it feels safe.
Because approval once meant survival. Because being liked felt like love.
But the truth is, when you begin to lean into who you really are, not everyone will like it.
You may trigger people.
You may disappoint the roles you used to play. But even that is medicine for you and for them.
Not everyone is meant for you and you’re not meant for everyone.
Wouldn't you rather be surrounded by the ones who truly see you, not the version of you that keeps the peace or performs for belonging?
This is your invitation to break the pattern. To get in alignment with your values, your intentions, your truth and follow them.
This path isn’t for those who want to stay hidden.
It’s for those who are ready for a life of fullness, wholeness, and emotional freedom.
The awakening, the reclaiming, the remembering
Healing begins with awakening, that moment when you realize your patterns aren’t personality flaws, but survival.
When you see clearly for the first time: This isn’t who I am. This is who I became to feel
safe.
Then comes the reclaiming of your voice, your truth, your body, your energy, your boundaries.
You begin to loosen the grip of old strategies, not with force, but with compassion. You start choosing connection with yourself, with others, with your inner wisdom.
And finally, remembering the sacred return to the Self beneath it all. Not someone new.
But someone is true. Whole. Worthy. Wise.
You were never broken.
The parts of you you’ve been trying to fix are only trying to keep you safe. Healing isn’t about fixing; it’s about developing new relationships with these parts. It's about witnessing your truth, honoring your story, and returning to the wholeness that has always lived inside of you.
Ready to stop fixing and start remembering who you are?
If this spoke to something deep inside you, that quiet knowing that there’s another way, you’re not alone.
This is the work I guide: somatic, energetic, soul-rooted healing that helps you feel safe in your body, connected to your truth, and free to be fully yourself.
Apply now to join The Sacred Path, my signature program, to reconnect with your nervous system, your soul, and the Self beneath survival.
You don’t have to do it all at once.
You just have to begin with curiosity.
Read more from Michelle Doublet
Michelle Doublet, Somatic Integrative Psychotherapist & Embodiment Guide
Michelle Doublet, LCSW, E-RYT, CCTP-II, YACEP, is a trauma expert, somatic integrative psychotherapist, and somatic embodiment coach devoted to helping people reconnect with their inner wisdom, personal power, and embodied truth. She is the founder of Thriving Light Wellness and the creator of SomaSoul Embodiment, The Sacred Path™, a signature approach that bridges science and soul, fusing subtle energy medicine, somatic integration, and nervous system attunement and restoration to support deep, lasting transformation. Through her groups, workshops, retreats, coaching, and psychotherapy, she holds sacred space for deep emotional healing and soul remembering, not by fixing, but by reclaiming what’s always been yours.
