Why Hasn’t Therapy Fixed Me? Nothing Is Wrong With You

The people I meet are not primarily suffering from their difficulty. They are suffering from their failure to have finished with it.

By Abi Beri  |  Integrative Therapist & Nervous System Specialist  ·  Dublin, Naas, Newbridge, Kildare & Online

TL;DR. THERE IS A PROMISE UNDERNEATH ALMOST EVERYTHING SOLD IN THIS FIELD, rarely stated outright because stating it would expose it: that this is all going to resolve. It sells extremely well, and I think it has done more damage than almost any other idea in modern wellbeing — because WHEN IT DOES NOT ARRIVE, YOU DO NOT CONCLUDE THE PROMISE WAS WRONG. YOU CONCLUDE THAT YOU ARE. That second layer is frequently larger than the first, it is entirely manufactured, and it was sold by an industry I am standing inside. THREE THINGS INSTEAD. (1) NOTHING IS WRONG WITH YOU. The vigilance, the self-criticism, the shutting down, the difficulty trusting — every one an adaptation made under real conditions that worked at the time. Not defects; INTELLIGENT RESPONSES TO CIRCUMSTANCES THAT NO LONGER APPLY, still running at cost. Which calls for an update, not a repair. (2) SOME OF THIS WILL NOT FULLY GO — and a great deal improves, specifically: less frequent, less intense, lifts faster, recognition sooner, sleep better, relationships easier, self-regard genuinely shifts. What tends not to happen is deletion. AND THE RESIDUE IS ALMOST NEVER WHAT EXHAUSTS PEOPLE. The argument with it is. (3) THERE IS A WAY OF LIVING WELL THAT REQUIRES NEITHER TO CHANGE — and Aristotle is the key: his word for what a human being is aiming at describes AN ACTIVITY, not a feeling. You are not flourishing because you feel well. You are flourishing because of what you are doing — WHICH REMAINS AVAILABLE ON A DAY WHEN YOU FEEL TERRIBLE.

The promise nobody can keep

Quick answer: That there is a version of you at the end of this — healed, regulated, integrated, whichever word is in fashion — for whom the difficulty is simply no longer present, and that the work you are doing is the road to that person.

When it does not arrive, people do not conclude the promise was wrong. THEY CONCLUDE THAT THEY ARE.

So what walks into the room is rarely just the original difficulty. It is the difficulty, plus years of private evidence that they have failed at something everybody else apparently manages.

One: nothing is wrong with you

Quick answer: Almost everything you have been treating as a defect is an adaptation — something you developed, under real conditions, that worked.

• The vigilance. You did not become watchful because something is faulty in your wiring. You became watchful because watchfulness was load-bearing — it told you what kind of evening it was going to be. A skill developed under pressure, and it saved you a great deal.
• The self-criticism. That voice got there first so that nobody else could wound you with it, and it kept you working, and in a house where being good enough was the condition of something, it was an entirely rational strategy.
• The shutting down. When a system concludes the demand exceeds what it can meet and that neither fighting nor running will help, it conserves. That is the oldest protective mechanism you have, running exactly as designed.
• The difficulty trusting. Formed by evidence. Reasonable at the time.

So there is a genuine sense in which nothing about you is broken. What you have is a set of intelligent responses to circumstances that no longer apply, still running, at cost.

And I say that not to be encouraging but because the alternative framing is INACCURATE, and inaccuracy has consequences. IF YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A REPAIR — and you will keep looking, and you will keep finding people willing to sell you one. If you understand that you are running old adaptations, you are looking at something else entirely: an update, which happens slowly, through repeated experience, and which nobody can perform on you.

⚠️ And a necessary balance. Some things genuinely ARE conditions and genuinely DO respond to treatment, and I am not one of those people who thinks diagnosis is oppression. IF YOU HAVE A DEPRESSION, TREAT THE DEPRESSION. What I am objecting to is the reflex of treating every human response to difficulty as a pathology, and the shame that follows from it.

Two: some of this will not fully go

Quick answer: A great deal improves, and I want to be specific rather than vague about it — because vagueness here is how people get sold things.

What genuinely improves	What tends not to happen
Difficult states become less frequent.	The material is not deleted.
They become less intense.	Certain weeks of the year stay harder.
They lift faster.	Some things still land differently for you.
Recognition arrives sooner — hours, not weeks.	An old shape returns under enough pressure.
Sleep improves.	—
Relationships get easier.	—
Self-regard shifts, though slowest of all.	—

And here is what I have watched, over and over: THAT RESIDUE IS ALMOST NEVER WHAT EXHAUSTS PEOPLE.

What exhausts them is the argument with it. The ongoing, decades-long, entirely reasonable position that it should be gone by now — and the daily verdict against themselves for the fact that it is not.

YOU HAVE BEEN MEASURING WITH THE WRONG INSTRUMENT. Presence or absence is the least informative measure available, and it has been telling you that you are failing for years while everything that actually improved went uncounted.

The question that actually helps

Quick answer: Most people are asking: how do I get rid of this? And when that fails: why can I not get rid of this, and what is wrong with me? There is a different question, and it comes out of a whole strand of clinical work built around exactly this problem. IS WHAT I AM DOING WORKING?

Not is it justified. Not is it reasonable. Not does it make sense given what happened — it almost certainly does. Simply: is the strategy I am running producing the life I want?

BECAUSE YOU CAN SPEND TWENTY YEARS ON AN ENTIRELY REASONABLE STRATEGY THAT DOES NOT WORK.

• Avoiding the thing is reasonable. It also shrinks your life a little every year.
• Waiting until you feel ready is reasonable. It also means you have been waiting since 2011.
• Trying to eliminate the feeling before you live is reasonable — and it is the one that costs most, because it puts your entire life behind a condition that may never be met.

The question is not whether you are entitled to feel as you do. You are. The question is what it is costing you to keep organising around it.

Three: flourishing is something you do

Quick answer: The modern assumption is that a good life is one in which you feel good — that wellbeing is a state you arrive at and occupy, and that difficulty is evidence you have not arrived. THAT IS NOT WHAT ANY SERIOUS TRADITION HAS EVER MEANT BY A GOOD LIFE.

Aristotle has a word for what he thinks a human being is aiming at, usually translated as flourishing. And the crucial thing — the thing that changes everything — is that HE DOES NOT DESCRIBE IT AS A FEELING. He describes it as an activity. Something you do, over the course of a whole life, rather than something that happens in you.

You are not flourishing because you feel well. You are flourishing because of what you are doing with your life — AND THAT REMAINS AVAILABLE ON A DAY WHEN YOU FEEL TERRIBLE.

Once you see it, you notice it everywhere. Every contemplative tradition I know of assumes difficulty as a permanent condition of being alive and builds practices for living within it rather than eliminating it. Nobody was promised the removal of suffering; they were given a way of standing in it, and something to do with their hands. The Stoics divided the world into what is up to you and what is not and were ruthless about it. And none of them held up the person who had never been through anything as an example of anything.

Somewhere in the last century we replaced all of that with the pursuit of feeling good, built an industry to sell it, and then made people ashamed for not achieving a thing that was never on offer.

What living well actually looks like

• 1. You do it now, at this level of difficulty. That is the whole shift and everything follows from it. You go to the thing while still anxious. You have the conversation while still frightened. You apply while still convinced you are underqualified. Not because it is brave — BECAUSE THERE IS NO OTHER AVAILABLE ROUTE, AND THE VERSION OF YOU WHO DOES IT WITHOUT THE DIFFICULTY IS NOT COMING.
• 2. You build a life with room in it for the fact of this. A practical exercise. If certain weeks are hard, you know which and do not schedule anything demanding into them. If mornings are bad, the important things are not in the morning. If you need two days to recover from something social, you build in two days. PEOPLE HEAR THAT AS LOWERING THEIR SIGHTS. It is the difference between somebody with a bad knee who plans around stairs and somebody with a bad knee who keeps attempting stairs and is surprised annually.
• 3. Company — and I would put it near the top. We do not settle ourselves; we settle each other, through faces and voices and proximity, continuously and below awareness. Which means a great deal of what gets sold as self-regulation is a solitary substitute for something never meant to be done alone. One conversation with somebody steady does more than an hour of anything you can do by yourself. NOBODY ADVERTISES THIS BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING TO SELL ALONGSIDE IT.
• 4. Being needed. The one people are most surprised by. When you are struggling, everything in the culture points you inward — towards more attention on your own state. And a great deal of the time what actually helps is being useful to somebody else.

The practice — one question

Reflective rather than settling. People find they can answer it immediately once somebody asks it properly.

• 1. Bring the thing to mind. Whatever you have been trying to be finished with. Not the story of it — just the fact of it.
• 2. How long have you been waiting to be past this? A number usually arrives. Notice how you feel about the number.
• 3. And then the one that matters — imagine it rather than answering in principle. IF THIS NEVER FULLY WENT — if it were simply a feature of your life, present at some level, for the rest of it — WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY, STARTING NOW? Something usually arrives fast, and it is usually something you have been postponing.
• 4. Notice the condition you attached to it. When I am less anxious. When I have dealt with this. When I feel ready. That condition is doing something — it is not laziness or cowardice, it protects you from doing the thing badly or from finding it does not help. But notice what it has cost, and how long it has been in place.
• 5. Then say it. ‘I AM GOING TO DO THIS WHILE I STILL FEEL LIKE THIS.’ And: ‘I AM NOT WAITING TO BE FINISHED. I AM GOING TO LIVE ALONGSIDE IT.’ For many people something opens and something else objects quite strongly. Both are welcome.

Frequently asked questions

Why hasn’t therapy fixed me? Often because it has been measured against the wrong standard. A great deal improves — frequency, intensity, recovery time, recognition speed, sleep, relationships, self-regard. What tends not to happen is deletion. Judging by absence alone reports failure while everything that improved goes uncounted.

Is something wrong with me? Almost everything treated as a defect is an adaptation made under real conditions that once worked. They are intelligent responses to circumstances that no longer apply — which calls for an update rather than a repair.

What if it never fully goes away? Then the question changes from how do I remove this to is what I am doing working. And the shift is to live at this level of difficulty rather than at some future level, because the version of you without it is not coming.

Does this mean I shouldn’t get treatment? No. Some things are conditions and do respond to treatment. If you have a depression, treat the depression. The objection is to pathologising every human response to difficulty.

Isn’t this just giving up? It is the opposite. Giving up is waiting — putting the life behind a condition that may never be met. This asks you to go and do the postponed thing now, while still feeling as you do, which is considerably harder than waiting.

How do I know if I’m making progress? Not by whether the difficulty is present. By frequency, intensity, how fast it lifts, how quickly you recognise it, and how much of your ordinary life continues while it happens.

Do you work this way with clients? Yes — this is the position underneath everything I do. In person across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and Kildare, and online globally. Free 20-minute intro at somatictherapyireland.com.

About the author

Abi Beri is an Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. He is trained in somatic methods, family constellations, polyvagal-informed practice and inner child work. He sees clients in person from a practice base across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and the wider Kildare area, and online globally. More at somatictherapyireland.com and blissfulevolution.com.

Further reading

• Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. (Eudaimonia as activity rather than feeling.)
• Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Guilford Press. (Workability.)
• Epictetus. The Enchiridion. (The dichotomy of control.)
• Frankl, V. (1946). Man’s Search for Meaning.
• Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton. (Co-regulation.)
• Wikipedia — Eudaimonia — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia · flourishing as activity, not feeling.
• Association for Contextual Behavioral Science — contextualscience.org · workability and psychological flexibility.
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Epictetus — iep.utm.edu/epictetu · what is and is not up to us.

Irish support

• Samaritans Ireland — samaritans.org/ireland · free, 24/7 · call 116 123.
• Pieta House (Ireland) — pieta.ie · free crisis support · 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444.
• Aware Ireland — aware.ie · depression and anxiety support · 1800 80 48 48.
• HSE — Find a GP (Ireland) — hse.ie/find-a-gp · the door if you do not know where to begin.
• IACP — Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy — iacp.ie · find an accredited therapist in Ireland.