You're Not A Problem To Be Solved

You don’t have to fix everything

We live in an era absolutely saturated with self-help. Scroll any platform or wander around any bookstore and you’ll see it’s everywhere - the call to grow, optimize, level up, glow up, become your ‘best self’.

Today’s society is one that is rife with self help, self improvement and personal growth. Dare I say stuffed to the gills! Just look at how many people here, and on other writing platforms and websites, write about it. And of course I write about it, too!

I mean who doesn’t want to try to improve themselves and grow and help themselves the best they can on this crazy journey called life? Because life is hard, challenging, difficult, unpredictable, a roller coaster….how many other words can we throw out there to describe the overall craziness of life! But that’s what makes it so interesting – even if it’s all those slightly negatively-tinged descriptors – because it’s not all bad, is it. There’s also periods of joy, love, hope, excitement, awe, wonder, contentment – and more.

And maybe it’s not just the good parts that make it all worth it. Maybe it’s the mess - the mix of bad and good and everything in between - that gives life its shape.

But sometimes those good things, those glimmers in life, feel few and far between, or hard to reach or once we do, seem frustratingly fleeting.

So that’s why so many of us gravitate to self improvement and self help – wanting to do that ‘self work’ to help us work through the struggles of emotional discomfort. Which is great, of course. I mean anything we can do to improve our resilience is a good thing, surely?

However. And here’s a big but. This might be a bit shocking, a bit left-field, a bit of a drastic departure – especially from someone who writes about this stuff.

I want to offer a gentle but gritty reframe because lately, I’ve been wondering (as I binge-listen to my newest fave podcast Go Help Yourself, whose strapline is: a comedy self help podcast to make life suck less) - what if we don’t need to fix everything?

That not everything needs a resolution to be worthy of presence. That not everything that’s broken needs to be seen through a new lens as beautiful, or made beautiful.

Not everything needs to be fixed. You’re not something that always needs to be fixed – not every single aspect of you needs an overhaul, a glow up, a tune up, a restructuring.

We need to learn that it’s okay just to be where we are. How we are. We need to learn the beauty of bearing witness to all those things I mentioned above – difficulty, challenges, unpredictability – the general roller-coaster-ness of life – not immediately jumping to the self-help gurus for advice on how to make everything better. Even though, I’m sure, if you walk through one of those ginormous book stores, the self help and personal growth section is probably the largest part.

But there’s a sort of power in sitting with the darkness and the parts that hurt, without trying to make it prettier. Without trying to put lipstick on a pig, as the saying goes. There’s a romanticization of suffering these days, it seems. It seems like everyone is talking about how they’re suffering and then what they are doing about it to stop it, erase it, get rid of it.

This isn’t just a modern dilemma. Even ancient traditions like Buddhism wrestle with this very thing. Buddhism teaches, and now I’m kinda paraphrasing here so if I get this wrong, please don’t @ me: that life itself is suffering (because of our attachment to…well everything). And Buddhism also holds that the ceasing of suffering is possible (which is Enlightenment aka Nirvana). But the point I’m circling around is that we need to learn to hold space for things to just hurt without trying to fix/change/transform them all the time.

But that’s uncomfortable. And we human beings are uncomfortable with discomfort, because, duh, it’s uncomfortable. Who wants to be uncomfortable?! That’s not nice or fun. So we rush to ease that discomfort by trying to fix, bandage, soothe, change, transform, erase, wave the magic wand of XYZ self help advice or hack or tip or trick.

Which, like i’ve said, is fine. It’s good to work on yourself. But you don’t have to do it all the time, for everything.

We need to learn how to just be with the raw honesty of simply being human.

We need to learn that not everything is here to teach us a lesson. Some things aren’t lessons. They’re losses, they’re pain, they are unfair. They just are. And they still belong.

In fact, I believe it’s when we don’t rush to stick the band-aid of self help on whatever is hurting us right now in our lives, that’s when the real healing happens. Naturally. It helps boost our resilience.

I don’t have kids, so maybe this isn’t the best example, but here’s what comes to mind. I imagine that it’s important for kids to learn that it’s okay to fall down sometimes. To get hurt. To sit with discomfort and not always be,wrapped in bubble wrap, shielded from every possible pain. Because that’s life. We will get hurt. If we’re coddled - or if we keep coddling ourselves with self-help band-aids to paper over our so-called cracks, then really, we aren’t helping ourselves, instead we’re harming ourselves. We’re not learning to hold the hard stuff. We’re denying ourselves the chance to be fully human and embrace our cracks, our flaws and our scars with wisdom, not shame. After all, they are the things that make us unique and give us wisdom and experience that we can share with others as we move along in our journeys.

Right? Am I talking nonsense here? I don’t think so.

Because maybe the real self-help is learning that we don't always need to help ourselves out of everything. Maybe the most important thing we can do, in this over-optimized world, is to stop treating our humanness like a problem to be solved.

You’re allowed to just be, even when things don’t make sense. You’re allowed to feel pain without packaging it into a neat little story about growth. You don’t have to rush to the reframe, the checklist, the ten-step plan.

Sometimes the most honest thing we can say is: this hurts. And then pause there. Let it hurt. Let it be. Let you be.

And even if you never “fix” the part of you that is so-called ‘broken’ — you are still whole. Still worthy. Still moving forward, even if it doesn’t look like progress.

So yes, self-help can be beautiful. But self-acceptance? That’s powerful.

Let’s remember that we can hold both.

If this hit a nerve (in a good way or a tender way), I’d love to hear what you’re learning to sit with — without fixing. Leave a comment or share this with someone who might need the reminder that they’re not a project, they’re a person.

You don’t have to glow up every part of yourself to be worthy of love, care, and awe.

If this letter found you at the right time, feel free to share it with someone else who might need a little wonder today.

Thank you for letting me keep you company for a few minutes. I'm so glad you're here.

Until next time—may you carry a small, quiet dose of wonder with you.

With wonder,

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With heartfelt thanks, always.
— Caitlin

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