What If You’re Not Broken — Just Living Inside an Old Story?

Many people come to therapy believing they need help with anxiety, depression, relationship conflict, or self-doubt. Those struggles are real. They affect work, intimacy, sleep, and daily life. But over the years, I’ve noticed that beneath these symptoms there is often something deeper at work: an identity that has slowly hardened over time.

At some point, you may have begun telling yourself things like, “This is just who I am,” or “I always mess things up,” or “I’m not someone who can handle conflict.” Initially, those thoughts may have felt temporary — reactions to stress or difficult situations. But gradually they start to solidify. They stop feeling like interpretations and begin to feel like facts. When that happens, options narrow. You respond not from choice, but from a story that feels fixed.

What if you’re not fundamentally flawed? What if you’ve simply adapted in ways that once protected you — and those adaptations have become the identity you now feel stuck inside?

How Coping Becomes Character

Most coping patterns begin as intelligent responses. Perhaps you learned to stay quiet because conflict didn’t feel safe. Maybe you became highly responsible because chaos required you to grow up quickly. You might have learned to anticipate other people’s needs to avoid rejection or disappointment. These strategies often work. They help you survive, succeed, or maintain connection.

The difficulty comes when those strategies solidify into conclusions about who you are. What began as “This helps me stay safe” turns into “I am weak.” What began as “I learned to overfunction” becomes “I’m just anxious.” Over time, behavior and identity blend together, and it becomes difficult to distinguish what you do from who you are.

Therapy, in this approach, begins with gently separating those two.

Creating Enough Stability to See Clearly

When your nervous system is constantly activated, your thinking narrows. Under stress, the mind defaults toward threat detection. Everything appears more catastrophic, more permanent, more defining than it may truly be. That’s not a personal failure — that’s how biology works.

For this reason, we begin with regulation. We slow things down. We help your body experience steadiness. As your nervous system becomes less reactive, your mind naturally becomes more flexible. And flexibility is essential, because without it, no new identity can take root.

Imagination is not fantasy. It is the capacity to see more than one possible outcome and more than one possible version of yourself. Once there is enough internal stability, that imaginative capacity returns.

Examining the Story With Honesty and Care

With greater steadiness, we can examine the story you are carrying about yourself. This is not about arguing with you or dismissing what you’ve been through. It’s about asking careful questions. Is this belief entirely accurate? Is it global or specific? Is it rooted in present reality, or in past experience? Does it describe a pattern of behavior, or does it define your entire character?

Often, even a small amount of differentiation creates significant relief. Instead of “I ruin everything,” it becomes, “I tend to withdraw under stress.” Instead of “I can’t handle conflict,” it becomes, “Conflict activates me more than I’d like.” These shifts may appear subtle, but they open the door to change.

Insight, however, is only the beginning.

Practicing a New Way of Responding

Change becomes durable when insight is paired with practice. Part of our work involves exploring what a slightly steadier version of you might do in situations that normally trigger collapse, avoidance, or overreaction. Not an unrealistic, idealized version — but perhaps five percent more grounded. What would that look like? How would that person speak? What would they tolerate? What would they choose?

We then test it. Small, concrete behavioral experiments allow you to gather evidence that you are not as limited as your old story suggests. Confidence doesn’t grow from positive affirmations; it grows from accumulated lived experience. You stay present in a difficult conversation. You set a boundary you previously avoided. You notice anxiety arise, but you don’t immediately identify with it.

Over time, something profound happens. The language you use to describe yourself begins to change. Instead of defining yourself by your most reactive moments, you begin to notice complexity. Strength alongside vulnerability. Choice alongside fear. Growth alongside imperfection.

That is identity becoming more flexible.

A Steady and Direct Process

In this work, I aim to be both supportive and clear. I will listen carefully, but I will also gently interrupt patterns that reinforce outdated or overly harsh identity conclusions. If we begin to circle the same self-criticism without movement, I will help redirect us. Clarity is not confrontation. Structure is not rigidity. They are part of what makes change possible.

Therapy is collaborative, yet it has direction. We identify the identity narrative that is causing constriction, we create space around it, and we practice alternative ways of responding in real life. Gradually, the steadier version of you begins to feel less like an experiment and more like your natural self.

Becoming More Solid Within Yourself

The goal of therapy is not to remove discomfort entirely. Life will always include uncertainty, conflict, and moments of fear. The goal is to help you feel more solid inside yourself when those moments arise. Less fused with anxiety. Less defined by old survival adaptations. More capable of responding from intention rather than reflex.

You are not your most anxious thought. You are not your most discouraged day. You are not the version of yourself that formed under difficult circumstances years ago. You are someone who adapted — and adaptation can evolve.

If you sense that you’ve been circling the same internal narrative for years and are ready for something steadier, this work may resonate with you. Therapy becomes a place where that next version of you is practiced carefully, realistically, and repeatedly — until it begins to feel familiar.

Over time, the question is no longer “What’s wrong with me?” but “Who am I becoming?”

And that is a much more hopeful place to begin.