I've just started therapy again. I'm also training as a counsellor. In our practice session the other day, my ‘client’ — a fellow student — obviously lacks confidence because of how she was treated as a child. I helped her see the connection. She understands now where it comes from.
And I'm sat there thinking: now what?
Because I can tell you exactly why I respond the way I do. I can trace every panic back to its source, map the pattern, name the wound. I understand the mechanics of it — how neglect creates a foundational belief that you don't matter, how that belief then distorts every interaction where care might appear.
And none of that understanding stops the feelings from sweeping over me anyway.
I was maybe eight or nine when I was told I wasn't allowed to sit on the sofa next to my mum. That was my sister's place. Explicitly stated as a rule — just how things were. I'd learnt to read the room, to know where I belonged. Which was elsewhere.
On my sixteenth birthday, they took my sister on a trip to London.
There were obvious cries for attention — being sent home from primary school drunk, cutting myself, eventually just stopping going to school entirely. Mostly went ignored, or I got told off for doing the bad thing. Correction, not concern. Nobody overlooks that much without meaning to.
So I know this created the foundational belief that I don't matter. I can see the pattern clearly. When someone shows hints of care now, my mouth goes dry. My stomach feels sick. I obsess over every comment, every glance, every message — trying to find certainty, trying to find the truth beyond what's on the surface — trying to find evidence that it's something real, and not just something I'm craving or wanting.
There's this voice — “I'm dumb, I'm stupid, what am I thinking?” — that picks at the scab so it stings and stays fresh. I'm constantly aware of the wound underneath, that sense that I don't matter. I pick at it so it feels raw and reminds me not to hope, though I do anyway. Because apparently I'm fucking dumb and like to torture myself.
I can articulate all of this. I understand that my feelings are distorted by the past. I know the panic isn't proportionate to the present situation. I can trace it back to not being allowed to sit next to my mum, to being taken seriously only for correction.
And this understanding doesn't help me navigate relationships where care appears. I panic. I can't ask for what I need. Can't be vulnerable without feeling dangerously exposed. I'm convinced I know how this ends — with me peripheral, mattering less — so maybe I even sabotage things. At least then I'm in control of when and how it falls apart.
I can see myself doing this. Watch myself do it. And I can't stop.
So what the fuck am I supposed to tell my client? We've identified her pattern. We've traced it back to its source. Where do I take it from here? How do I help her figure out a solution when I haven't found one myself?
Because here's the thing: if your fundamental belief is that you don't matter — formed by the people who should have cared for you but didn't — how can that be solved by anything other than someone genuinely and consistently showing you that you do matter? And honestly, there's also a fear — that what I need is so huge, so obvious and so loud that it can be heard above the alarms. Maybe it's impossible at this point. Maybe no one is capable of caring enough to overpower this ingrained belief.
The intellectual understanding of healthy patterns doesn't translate to emotional ability to implement them. Not when the foundational belief remains unchanged. Not when what you need to heal the wound is the very thing the wound makes you unable to accept.
I watch my counselling client struggle with confidence, trace it back to her childhood, help her understand the connection. And I wonder what I think is going to happen next. Whether insight alone has ever fixed anything, or whether we're all just getting better at articulating why we're still broken.
Maybe that's all therapy can do — help you see the pattern clearly whilst you continue to repeat it. Make you articulate and self-aware about your own dysfunction. Give you the vocabulary to describe exactly why you can't stop doing the thing you know is hurting you.
Understanding everything. Fixing nothing.
And if understanding doesn't fix it — if seeing the pattern clearly, naming the wound, tracing it back to its source doesn't actually help — then what the fuck does?