Curb the Urge to Fix People: Healing Ourselves First

The Urge to Fix People is a Common Theme in Counseling Therapy

In counseling therapy sessions, a recurring theme often surfaces: the urge to fix people, especially loved ones. Whether in individual or couple counseling, this inclination to alter someone’s behavior or circumstance is a natural response to emotional pain. However, it can hinder personal growth and strain relationships.

People tend to avoid more pain and committing to the uncomfortable work of self-reflection and healing. They also avoid feeling vulnerable, insecure, and exploring their own feelings, thoughts, and decisions. So, they tend to blame others and describe others’ behaviors as the cause of their distress.

Some people put in effort to fix others as a gesture of protection. These well-meaning individuals want to rescue their loved ones from perceived difficulty. However, this pattern can easily be perceived at worst as controlling and at best as smothering love.

Often the statement by professional coach J. Mike Fields is accurate:

“The desire to fix another is an active avoidance of the neglected self.”

The urge to fix others reflects a neglected self when we avoid self-exploration and avoid assessing where we have responsibility, control, and the power to make a positive difference.

Consequently, trying to fix people can be a dangerous effort which can easily lead to feeling helpless while creating a dysfunctional relationship pattern.

What The Urge to Fix People Sounds Like

In individual counselling sessions the urge to fix others can sound like:

• “I can’t be happy until she changes. Every day she breaks my heart.”
• I just don’t understand why they can’t change.”
• “If only they would listen to me, everything would be better.”
• “My partner (boss, mother, father, brother, sister, friend, etc.) is the problem.”
• “He never listens. It’s frustrating.”
• “I can’t believe they did that to me.”
• “She needs to forgive me and move on.”
• “She’s the one who needs to apologize and make things right.”
• “I’m so tired of dealing with her drama.”
• “I don’t know how to get him to . . .”

In couple counselling sessions the urge to fix others can sound like:

• “If only you would. . . (fill in the blank).
• “Why can’t you just…”
• “You need to change…”
• “Let me tell you what you’re doing wrong…”
• “Why don’t you listen to me?”
• “Stop being like that…”
• “You shouldn’t feel that way…”
• “You got that all wrong.”
• “Why don’t you just do as I say?”
• “You’re making a big mistake.”

Eight Remedies to Curb the Urge to Fix People

 Once we commit ourselves to the work of personal or relationship healing, we realize how hard it is to change even ourselves. No one can save or fix someone who is unwilling to make personal changes. As I tell my audiences at conferences, “I make me, and you make you.”

1. Self-Reflect

You are probably trying to get some basic need met through fixing another person. Do some personal reflection to identify what that need is. Then seek to have that human need met through some other person, place, or situation.

You might consider Inner Child Work, which uses the metaphor of reparenting. For example, if you have been prodding someone to give you acknowledgment, how might you acknowledge your own worthiness? You could say to your Inner Child, “Yes, you deserve to be seen and heard. Let’s join Toastmasters.”

2. Change The Pattern by Changing Your Behavior

We humans want to realize our personal individuality while being connected to others. It is like a relationship dance of closeness and distance, back and forth. An individual can change the relationship by changing their part in the pattern. If you change your step, the other needs to adjust their step.

When it comes to intimate relationships, two people choose to join their lives, not when one person tries to make the other an ideal partner. If you are dating and are telling yourself a story that you can fix this person, stop. They simply may not be the right partner for you.

Too often I have seen people pair with someone who has the same addiction pattern as a distant or abusive parent. The unconscious belief is “If I can fix this person, they will give me the love my parent didn’t.” Love doesn’t work that way. More often, our personalities remain the same. Successful couples learn to love their partners, including their flaws. 

3. Know Your Values and Make Boundary Statements

It could be that the person you want to fix is violating your values. A clear boundary statement will help establish a different pattern. For example, if you have been attempting to change someone’s anger management issue, make a boundary statement instead, such as, “I value respectful language. If you swear at me or call me a name again, I will leave.” You change your behaviour, not the other person’s actions.

4. Choose a Mature, Self-Responsible Response Instead of Reacting

When we do the work of healing ourselves, we improve our ability to respond rather than react. For example, if each time I pursue my husband demanding, “Darn it all! Give me an answer,” he walks out the door, I can choose differently. I could sit, take a couple of breaths, and calmly ask, “When might we be able to discuss our options?”

As couple therapist Terry Real wrote in Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship,

“The knee-jerk response of fixing is not the same as a mature, considered wish to work on the relationship.” 

5. Improve Communication

Instead of trying to change someone, seek to understand them. Remember, it takes two to have a conversation with a mutual exchange of information, verbal and non-verbal cues, and a willingness to open up. When one person remains closed off, it becomes like trying to decipher a complex puzzle with missing pieces.

Learning exquisite listening skills can open up others to true connection.

6. Celebrate the Changes You Desire

What you focus on expands. Since we all want to be seen, heard, and acknowledged, there is an element of influence by rewarding behaviors we favor. Still, authentic change requires an internal desire to do so. If you become emotionally safe, you will more likely hear why the other person is reluctant to change.

Possibly you will either feel compassion and accept them as they are, or they will be motivated to want to please you by adjusting.

7. Build a Strong Support System

We need more than one person to meet our needs. No one person can contort themselves into meeting all your needs. Plus, when we rely on one person to meet our needs, that’s when we make ourselves vulnerable to wanting to change them. Discover the power of reaching out to different people for different needs.

8. There’s a Time to Let Go

If the other person is not open to transparent communication, you may be left with misunderstandings, assumptions, guesswork, and projecting their own perspective. Too often, the lack of people willing to improve a relationship ends up with a lack of trust, care, and intimacy.

If you have identified how you have contributed to your relationship problems and have made improved changes while your partner or other party has not taken on responsibility, that may be a relationship to exit.

Please note, if what you are trying to fix is a partner’s pattern of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, I encourage you to take action to ensure your mental and physical well-being.

Conclusion

Understanding the urge to fix people is a vital step towards self-discovery and nurturing healthier relationships. By recognizing the causes of this tendency and implementing strategies for personal change, you can move towards greater self-awareness and improved relationships.  Remember, true healing begins from within.

Please check out these related posts:

• What to Know about Boundaries in Relationships
• Human Needs: Beyond Survival to a Fulfilling Life
• Inner Child Perspective of Mindful Self-Care