How Trying to Fix Yourself Keeps You Stuck

For years, I believed that the purpose of my self-help journey was to fix myself.

The more I read, studied, and talked with others, the more I began to realize something unexpected: I wasn’t broken. What I was really doing was remembering who I had always been.

Re-membering myself.

When I was younger, I had healthy instincts. I was observant. I watched the adults around me work through their own struggles, and I learned very quickly that love often came with conditions. I wanted to earn affection. I wanted to belong. Without realizing it, I began shaping myself to fit into their expectations.

I have always been a free spirit. I loved nature. I hated shoes and preferred to be barefoot. I rode my horse in shorts, feeling the power of his body beneath me, the wind on my skin, fully alive.

But to my more conservative mother, who was wrestling with her own relationship to sexuality, I was labeled as “loose.” I was even told that the only reason boys liked me was that I was putting out.

The truth? I wasn’t reckless. I was a girl growing up in the seventies, comfortable in my body and naïve about boys.

That lie stayed with me for decades.

It wasn’t until my late thirties or early forties, when I developed deep friendships with other free-spirited women, that I finally released it. For years, I believed that being a free spirit was something to fix. I toned myself down. I tried to become more acceptable. I chose friendships that would make me look better in the eyes of others.

But improve for whom?

The more I worked on “fixing” myself, the more trapped I felt in low self-worth. No matter how hard I tried, I could never live up to invisible standards that were never truly mine.

Then something shifted.

When I finally accepted the parts of me that made others uncomfortable, the chaos in my stomach began to fade. I embraced that side of myself, and it felt like coming home. It didn’t happen overnight. It took years — what I now call failing forward.

With each layer of acceptance came a deeper understanding of who I was. To me, being a free spirit meant digging my toes into warm sand, loving muddy feet, feeling strength rise through my core, rocking the boat when something felt unjust, and standing in my truth even when it didn’t conform.

As I let go of one belief at a time, something strange happened: the discomfort grew — but so did my self-worth.

I realized I had been making myself small to keep others comfortable. I had been taught that if someone was louder than me, they were right.

But there is no yelling required to be whole.

I don’t need to defend who I am. I don’t need to respond to discomfort that isn’t mine. When I stopped people-pleasing and started setting quiet boundaries, the drama slowly lost its power.

Now I live my life more barefoot, more introverted, more myself. I no longer explain. I simply walk forward — out of the mud and onto easier ground — telling my story so others might remember who they are, too.

Sometimes the only thing we need to get unstuck is to stop trying to fix what was never broken.

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