No Fixing, No Forcing, No Bullshit

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I don't want to fix the person.

I don't want to fix their process.

And I don't necessarily want to fix their pain.

That last one may be the uncomfortable part.

People usually come to therapy or coaching because something hurts. We should probably assume their showing up means something. They may know exactly what that something is. They may have absolutely no idea. Either way, pain doesn't automatically tell me what the problem is.

Sometimes shit just hurts.

A child dies. A marriage ends. Someone you love becomes someone you no longer recognize. Your body betrays you. Your faith stops making sense. The future you were quietly assuming would happen suddenly doesn't.

Of course it hurts.

I'm far more interested in understanding the pain, helping someone own what is actually theirs, and exploring their relationship with it.

Because pain is one thing.

Being tortured by your relationship with your pain can be another.

I shouldn't still feel this way.

If I have a good day, I'm leaving them behind.

If I stop hurting, maybe it means I didn't love them enough.

Everyone else seems to be moving on.

Something must be wrong with me.

Now I'm curious.

Not because I've found the thought we need to correct.

I've found a paradox.

And I love a paradox.

I've used kaleidoscopes as a metaphor in my work for years.

When I ask people about the pieces of glass inside one, they often assume the glass was once whole and then broken.

It wasn't.

Kaleidoscopes are made with individual pieces.

The pieces aren't evidence that something broke. They're the materials of the thing itself.

That distinction matters to me.

We tend to look at people in pain and begin searching for the break.

What if there isn't one?

What if these are simply the pieces currently inside the kaleidoscope?

Grief. Love. Attachment. Trauma. Family. Anger. Faith. Doubt. Memory. Identity. Fear. Loyalty. The body. The person who died. The person you were. The person you are today.

Not every piece appears every time you look.

Turn the kaleidoscope and different pieces meet each other. Change the angle and something else catches the light.

So that's often what I do.

I turn the kaleidoscope.

A what-if.

A metaphor.

Where else does this pattern exist?

Have you ever found yourself somewhere like this before?

What happened then?

What does your body do when you say that?

What happens if we look at this from over there instead?

Not because the next configuration is better.

That's important.

The last one wasn't bad.

It wasn't wrong.

It wasn't less beautiful because another configuration became possible.

And you are completely free to look through the kaleidoscope and say, “Nope. I liked it better before.”

Fair enough.

Permission isn't particularly permissive if I've already decided what I'm giving you permission to do.

“Give yourself permission to move forward.”

“Give yourself permission to be happy.”

“Give yourself permission to let go.”

Those sentences already contain a destination.

What if permission simply means you are allowed to consider another configuration without being required to adopt it?

I can turn the kaleidoscope and hand it back.

How about now?

Maybe you see something you couldn't see before.

Maybe you hate it.

Maybe you love it.

Maybe you shrug and turn it again.

Maybe you want the old configuration back.

None of those answers is evidence that you're doing grief correctly or incorrectly.

And here's the annoying thing about kaleidoscopes:

They won't hold still anyway.

Find the most beautiful configuration you've ever seen and try to save it.

Eventually, you have to put the kaleidoscope down.

When you pick it back up, the pieces have moved.

That's not failure.

You didn't regress.

You didn't lose the insight.

You didn't “go backward.”

You put the kaleidoscope down.

Life happened.

The light changed.

You changed.

Something else is visible now.

And the previous configuration was still real. It was still yours. It was still beautiful—or painful, confusing, ugly, peaceful, unbearable, hilarious, sacred, or whatever the hell it was in that moment.

There is no final configuration.

Not because we're perpetually unfinished projects requiring endless improvement.

Because there was never supposed to be one.

Therapists are people too.

We like relief.

We like insight.

We like those beautiful sessions where something shifts and everyone can feel it.

We can also become uncomfortable sitting with suffering we cannot resolve.

And sometimes, if we're not careful, our desire to help someone feel better quietly becomes their assignment to get better.

We can call it healing.

Growth.

Integration.

Meaning-making.

Moving forward.

And sometimes those things are exactly what a person wants.

Great.

Turn.

But our preference cannot quietly become their obligation.

That's the bullshit part I want to avoid.

My job isn't to find the configuration I think you should keep.

It's to stay curious about what you're seeing.

To notice when two pieces don't seem to fit.

To wonder what isn't visible from this angle.

To offer another turn when there might be something worth seeing.

And to remember that your current configuration doesn't have to be broken for another one to be possible.

No fixing. No forcing. No bullshit.

Probably still shouldn't put it on a business card.

But I might.