Why Kindness, Not Fixing, Creates Healing

I work with many clients who feel like they are not enough and who spend a great deal of energy worrying about what other people think of them. I deeply empathize with these experiences and often find that the roots of these feelings trace back to childhood neglect.

For one reason or another, their parents or guardians intentionally or unintentionally did not truly see them or celebrate their inherent goodness. What was missing was not love in every case, but attunement, curiosity, and consistent emotional presence.

As children, they learned that they had to achieve in order to be noticed. They learned to minimize or deny their own distress and needs. They became highly attuned to the moods and reactions of others, developing a vigilance that helped them stay safe. Over time, this led to an over reliance on external validation.

These behaviors make sense. To be seen is to survive. As humans, and especially as children, we are dependent on others to meet both our physical and emotional needs. There is a kind of wisdom and ingenuity in how the inner child adapted in order to get through difficult and often traumatic experiences.

Now, as adults, we have more agency and more resources. We have the capacity to create safety for ourselves and to become the parent we wish we had.

The first step in creating internal safety is learning how to validate our emotional experiences. This means responding to ourselves in a supportive and caring way, not by fixing or solving, but by being a loving witness to our pain.

Instead of saying, “This isn’t a big deal, you don’t have to feel anxious about this,” we might say, “I can understand why you feel anxious. This is hard and challenging, and I am here with you no matter what. I believe in you, and whatever happens, you are still worthy of love and care.”

It is okay if the anxious feeling does not go away. We are not kind to ourselves because we need to be fixed. We are kind to ourselves because we are in pain.

When we build safety and trust internally through emotional attunement and compassion, our need to seek safety externally begins to soften. Over time, this reduces the pull toward people pleasing and perfectionism and allows us to relate to ourselves and others from a more grounded and authentic place.