When Fixing Keeps You From Creating
Trevor had spent several therapy sessions trying to understand his parents.
The stories were different each week, but the questions were remarkably similar. Why were they so emotionally distant? Why did they seem incapable of showing interest in his life? Why, after decades of disappointment, did he still find himself hoping that this time they might respond differently?
He wasn’t asking these questions out of anger. If anything, they came from a place of longing. Like many people, Trevor wasn’t looking for perfect parents. He simply wanted to feel known, valued, and genuinely cared for.
As I listened that day, I realized we had reached a point where understanding his parents was no longer moving the therapy forward. We knew who they were. We knew what they had consistently shown him throughout his life. The question that remained wasn’t really about them anymore.
So I asked him something different.
“What do you hope to gain from understanding all of this?”
He paused before answering.
He explained that he was trying to decide what to do about his relationship with them. After years of estrangement, he had reached out, hoping that perhaps things would finally be different. Instead, he experienced what he had always experienced. They responded politely but rarely initiated contact. They acknowledged him, but never seemed curious about his life. Finally, he said something that seemed so simple, yet carried decades of disappointment.
“I just want them to be normal parents.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Most people are not asking for extraordinary parents. They are asking for ordinary moments—someone who checks in, someone who asks how they’re doing, someone who notices they exist.
I gently reflected something back to him.
“It sounds like you’re still hoping they’ll become the parents they’ve never shown themselves to be.”
He nodded.
Carl Rogers (1961) described the tension between our ideals and reality. We naturally develop ideas about how relationships should be, yet emotional suffering often grows when we continue measuring reality against an image that has never truly existed. Trevor’s longing wasn’t irrational. It was deeply human. The difficulty was that he continued placing his hope in two people who had consistently shown him their limitations.
At that point, I thought we were talking about acceptance.
I was wrong.
Then Trevor quietly said something that changed the direction of the entire session.
“It’s all the family I have.”
In that moment, I realized something neither of us had fully recognized.
Trevor hadn’t come to therapy with the problem.
He had come with his explanation of the problem.
He believed his struggle was understanding his parents. But another question had been quietly waiting underneath that one all along.
As we continued talking, he admitted something he had never said quite so clearly before. Outside of his wife, he didn’t have many close relationships. He worked in an executive role that required him to interact with people every day. Leading meetings, collaborating with colleagues, and communicating with confidence were all part of his job, and he did them well. But despite his social proficiencies at work, he had not built personal relationships.
When I asked him why, his answer came almost immediately.
“I’ve been scared of rejection.”
That made complete sense.
If the first people we depend on repeatedly leave us feeling unseen, it is understandable that we begin expecting the same from everyone else. Attachment researchers have long described how early relationships influence our expectations of closeness, trust, and emotional safety throughout adulthood (Bowlby, 1988).
But then another realization slowly emerged.
Trevor had spent years answering one question while another question quietly waited underneath it.
He had devoted enormous emotional energy trying to repair one relationship. Meanwhile, he had never learned how to create the kinds of relationships he deeply wanted today.
So I asked him another question.
“What if what you’re really needing isn’t necessarily them?”
He became quiet.
Then he said something that, to me, became the real beginning of therapy.
“I don’t know how.”
Not how to understand his parents.
Not how to fix them.
He didn’t know how to build meaningful relationships.
That was the hidden agenda beneath every previous session.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy encourages us to distinguish between trying to eliminate pain and building a meaningful life alongside it (Hayes et al., 1999). Those are often very different pursuits. Sometimes we become so occupied repairing what hurt us that we never begin creating what could heal us.
This has become one of my own guiding philosophies, both personally and professionally.
Create rather than fix.
Fixing asks, How do I make this broken thing finally work?
Creating asks, What can I begin building today?
There are certainly relationships worth repairing. Some conversations restore trust. Some wounds genuinely heal together. But there are also moments when we spend years standing in front of the same closed door, hoping that one more knock will finally make someone answer.
All the while, countless other doors remain unopened.
Near the end of our conversation, I asked Trevor “So, when do you think you might begin creating instead of continuing to fix.”
He smiled nervously before giving one of the most honest answers that actually made me so sad.
“You asking me right now just made me want to run and hide.”
There was no attempt to sound insightful. No polished conclusion. Just honesty.
Ironically, that gave me hope.
Fear often tells us exactly where growth is waiting.
By the end of the session, we were no longer talking about changing his parents. We were talking about learning a skill he had never been taught—how to slowly build friendships, tolerate vulnerability, maintain relationships over time, and accept that meaningful connection is not something we find all at once. It is something we create, one conversation, one invitation, one act of courage at a time.
I suspect many of us do some version of this.
We keep trying to repair the career that disappointed us instead of creating one that fits us better.
We keep waiting for an apology that may never come instead of building peace without it.
We keep hoping someone else will finally become who we have always needed instead of asking what kind of life we can begin creating today.
Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is not,
“How do I fix what was broken?”
Perhaps the better question is,
“What have I not yet begun to create?”
References
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and commitment therapy: An experiential approach to behavior change. Guilford Press.
Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
