People come to counseling for all kinds of reasons. Some are navigating significant trauma, grief, or emotional distress. Others are struggling with relationships, questioning their identities, or trying to make sense of experiences that have left them feeling confused or disconnected from themselves.
For many, finding answers is an important part of the process. Understanding our histories, identifying patterns, and finding language for our experiences can provide relief, direction, and a sense of belonging that may have been missing for a long time.
But I've become increasingly interested in something else that happens along the way: the pressure to keep hunting for understanding and figuring ourselves out.
We can become so invested in understanding why we think, feel, and behave the way we do that self-awareness gradually turns into another responsibility. Every uncomfortable emotion needs an explanation. Every contradiction becomes something to reconcile. Every shift in our preferences or priorities sends us searching for a new understanding of who we are and what we need to change.
And when we've spent considerable time working on ourselves, discovering that we still have questions can feel surprisingly discouraging.
There's an assumption underneath much of this: that if we keep reflecting, processing, and developing enough insight, we'll eventually arrive at a more complete version of ourselves. If we’re still uncertain, we haven’t prioritized enough ‘self-growth’.
I don’t know about you, but this is when I hit the healing is bullshit burnout.
The Problem with Trying to Arrive at Ourselves
One of the reasons I entered this profession was my endless curiosity about people. I've always wanted to understand why we think, feel, behave, and relate the way we do. Oftentimes to better understand myself as well. Joke is on me.
Because in an unexpected plot twist, the more I've learned about people, the more aware I've become of how much I don't (and we can’t) know.
Human experiences are remarkably diverse. Two people can share similar histories, values, or circumstances and experience them in entirely different ways. Even within ourselves, the meaning we assign to an experience can change over time.
The explanations we develop aren't necessarily wrong. They're just rarely complete.
This becomes especially interesting when we consider identity.
For someone who has spent years feeling misunderstood, excluded, or uncertain about where they belong, discovering a label or community that reflects their experience can be incredibly meaningful. It can provide language, connection, and recognition.
Consider how quickly we develop assumptions about someone when we learn they're a parent, a spouse, a professional, a stay-at-home caregiver, or part of a particular type of relationship. We may assume something about their priorities, responsibilities, values, or the way they prefer to live.
Sometimes we begin applying those same expectations to ourselves.
We discover an identity that feels meaningful, then start questioning whether we're representing it correctly. Whether our preferences are consistent with it. Whether changing our minds means we've somehow misunderstood who we are. What does it mean if I don’t fit neatly into this category or community?
Something that originally helped us feel included can begin to limit how much individuality we allow ourselves within it.
Developmentally, we're continually influenced by our relationships, circumstances, experiences, and changing priorities. Even when we share an identity with thousands of other people, we're still one of one.
A category can help describe an aspect of our experience without needing to become a complete explanation of who we are.
It’s pretty critical that we allow ourselves to evolve without treating every change as a new identity crisis.
When Healing Becomes a Never-Ending Project
The pressure to constantly understand ourselves is especially noticeable in the way we talk about healing and personal growth. There's tremendous value in becoming more emotionally aware, recognizing unhelpful patterns, and developing healthier ways of responding to difficult experiences.
But there's also a point where the pursuit of growth can become exhausting. And annoying. And…pointless?
We begin evaluating ourselves all the time. Did I respond in a healthy way? Have I fully processed that experience? Why am I still feeling this? Does this mean I haven't healed? Am I doing enough work on myself?
Eventually, even having a difficult emotion can feel like evidence that something needs fixing.
Psychological research offers an important distinction here. Self-reflection can support insight and problem-solving, while repetitive, negatively focused thinking - often described as rumination - can maintain or intensify psychological distress.
We can become exceptionally good at explaining our patterns while continuing to experience them in much the same way.
I also wonder whether we've started treating personal growth as something we should be able to demonstrate. We learn the language of boundaries, attachment, trauma, emotional regulation, and self-awareness. We become familiar with what healthier functioning is supposed to look like.
And we don't have to make every experience into another opportunity to prove we're doing the work.
Learning Through Experience, Not Explanation
One of the aspects of counseling I find most meaningful is the therapeutic relationship itself.
I've studied different approaches, techniques, and theories about how people change. I value that training, and I continue to find different elements of those approaches useful.
But no single technique works the same way for every person.
There is also something happening between the therapist and client that cannot be reduced to the information exchanged or the skills someone takes home.
Research on the therapeutic alliance has consistently found that the quality of the relationship between therapist and client is associated with treatment outcomes across different therapeutic approaches.
Consider what someone might experience when they express a difficult emotion and discover that the relationship can tolerate it. Or when they disagree with their therapist and find that disagreement doesn't require withdrawal or defensiveness. Or when they begin noticing how they respond to closeness, uncertainty, frustration, or vulnerability in the presence of another person.
A therapist's awareness of their own reactions, attention to relational dynamics, and willingness to work thoughtfully with tension can also be important parts of that process.
There may be insight involved, but the experience itself also matters.
Sometimes we overlook that distinction outside of therapy, too.
We can spend considerable time trying to predict what an experience will mean about us, how we'll respond, or whether it aligns with our understanding of ourselves.
But there are things we simply won't know until we participate.
We discover preferences by trying things. We learn about relationships through being in them. We encounter emotions we couldn't have anticipated and find that we're capable of experiencing them without necessarily needing to explain them.
Sometimes we're so occupied with interpreting life that we give ourselves very little opportunity to experience it. Time to do it for the plot, if you will.
Acceptance, Flexibility, and Not Knowing
One reason I appreciate Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is its emphasis on psychological flexibility.
Rather than requiring us to eliminate difficult thoughts or emotions, ACT encourages us to develop the capacity to experience them while continuing to engage in activities and relationships that matter to us.
This includes making room for uncertainty and recognizing that our thoughts about ourselves aren't necessarily fixed truths we need to continually defend or resolve.
A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis of ACT research found that improvements in psychological flexibility were associated with reductions in psychological distress.
We can acknowledge that something feels uncomfortable without immediately turning it into another problem to solve. We can value an identity while allowing ourselves to experience it differently from someone else. We can change our minds, encounter contradictions, and recognize that some questions about ourselves may remain unanswered.
And we can still participate in our lives.
There's also interesting research on awe - experiences that capture our attention and shift our perspective beyond our immediate concerns.
Researchers have found that experiences of awe can temporarily reduce self-focused attention and increase feelings of connection to something larger than ourselves.
I find that particularly compelling in a culture that places so much emphasis on looking inward.
There are certainly times when looking inward is necessary and helpful. But there are also experiences worth having that don't require us to examine what they mean about us.
A conversation that surprises us. A relationship that challenges our assumptions. An unfamiliar experience that we enjoy more than expected. Something beautiful that holds our attention long enough for us to stop thinking about ourselves for a while.
None of these experiences needs to produce a breakthrough.
They can simply be part of experiencing.
The Audacity of Living
I'm not suggesting that we stop reflecting, abandon therapy, or disregard the importance of understanding how our experiences have shaped us.
There are very real reasons people seek answers, and sometimes that understanding is an essential part of healing. But I do think we can create an enormous amount of pressure by treating self-understanding as a destination we're supposed to reach.
We change. Our circumstances change. We encounter people and experiences that challenge what we thought we knew. And even with all the psychological knowledge available to us, there will always be things about ourselves and other people that we don't fully understand.
We can make room for acceptance without abandoning curiosity, and we can participate in experiences without needing to determine whether they're contributing to our personal development.
I'm not sure we need to spend quite so much time trying to become better versions of ourselves. Sometimes I'd rather we give ourselves permission to be the people we already are, experience the lives we're living, and allow the rest to unfold without demanding an explanation. A little fuck around and find out is good for us sometimes.
A Little Less Analyzing, a Little More Doing
Here's something to try this week: Choose one experience simply because you want to have it. Something unfamiliar, something enjoyable, or something you've been curious about.
Try not to turn it into an opportunity for personal growth. You don't need to determine what it says about your identity, whether it's productive, or what you learned about yourself afterward.
Just participate. Pay attention. See what it's like.
And if you don't walk away with some profound new understanding of yourself? That's kind of the point.
And if you really want a thoughtful question to consider, ask yourself: Is there something you genuinely need to understand or decide, or have you started treating uncertainty itself as a problem?
References:
Flückiger, C., Del Re, A. C., Wampold, B. E., & Horvath, A. O. (2018). The alliance in adult psychotherapy: A meta-analytic synthesis. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 316–340. https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2018-23951-001.html
Macri, J. A., & Rogge, R. D. (2024). Examining domains of psychological flexibility and inflexibility as treatment mechanisms in acceptance and commitment therapy: A comprehensive systematic and meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 110, Article 102432. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735824000539?via%3Dihub
Mor, N., & Winquist, J. (2002). Self-focused attention and negative affect: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 638–662. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-2909.128.4.638
Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(6), 883–899. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000018
