Without fully realising it, I had assumed the role of a fixer -someone who has to have answers for the brokenness another person brought into the room.
And the space I created reflected this too.
In a culture where healers of any kind are often placed on a pedestal, the roles seemed already decided. I was supposed to know something the other person didn’t.
I could see it in clients' eyes. Once, a client asked me, “Can you just tell me what to do?” I paused for so long I could hear the clock in my room
And honestly, a part of me believed I should be able to.
It took me years to realise this was not the kind of space I wanted to offer another human being.
Not only was it a heavy burden to carry, it was also deeply uncomfortable to be placed in a position of assumed certainty. Saying “I don’t know” to clients initially felt like failure, as though I was not doing what I was being paid to do.
Far too often, what I had been taught also clashed with something within me.
I hesitated to see people only through the lens of diagnosis, or reduce their suffering into something that simply needed the correct dosage of technique.
And when that presumed “right approach” did not lead to noticeable change, disappointment quietly entered the room.
With the client.
With myself.
But what struck me most was when clients began carrying that disappointment too. Some came into sessions ashamed that they were “still struggling,” as though they were failing at therapy itself.
In hindsight, that was the turning point for me.
I slowly began letting go of the belief that therapy meant having all the answers.
And while that was freeing, it was also unsettling. I had to relearn how to sit with uncertainty instead of rushing to resolve it. To be present without trying to control where another person should arrive.
I had to learn the difference between being a container for someone’s experience and trying to contain the person themselves.
And strangely, in letting go of the role of fixer, I was able to show up as the real-me.
I stopped listening only for symptoms, dysfunction, or techniques to apply, and began listening more closely to the person sitting in front of me. Their contradictions, fears, longings, relationships, meanings, and ways of being in the world.
I started noticing people more clearly once I stopped trying to immediately define their suffering or what could be fixed in them.
Perhaps that is what therapy has become for me now:
not a space where one person fixes another,
but where two human beings meet honestly enough for something meaningful to emerge between them.
And sometimes, that itself can be transformative.