my arc rn: letting go of the idea I need fixing, but also learning to recognize that sometimes under the voice that says "I need fixing" is a voice saying "I'm in pain and alone, come find me & love me". and responding to that voice feels so different than trying to fix myself
I came to realize that he was doing the best he could to manage his own ego’s projections. I could now see how I’d forced my need to be saved onto a guy who didn’t want to save me. Rather than realize this, I’d made him wrong for not meeting my ego’s needs. This revelation offered me tremendous relief.
Gabrielle Bernstein • Spirit Junkie: A Radical Road to Self-Love and Miracles
I’d been so angry with them for grabbing my pain from me in the wake of the News. But maybe my friends were loving me the best way they knew how, just like I was trying to love Amma. We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, our job as parents is to protect our children from pain, and our job as friends is to fix each other’s pain. Maybe that’s
... See moreGlennon Doyle • Love Warrior (Oprah's Book Club): A Memoir
Repair is the final third of the cycle of harmony, disharmony, and repair. I call the stage of repair knowing love. Here you are utterly aware of your partner’s failings and shortfalls—the temper that’s too big, the affection that’s too small, the sloppiness, or stinginess, or impulse to control—and yet you choose to love them anyway.
Bruce Springsteen • Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship (Goop Press)
Adaptive Child fixers are fueled by an anxious, driven need to take anyone’s tension away from them as quickly as possible. Their motto is “I’m upset until you’re not.”