The Healing Trap: When Fixing Becomes the Problem

Why the cure might be worse than the symptoms themselves

Three practitioners in three different countries told me the same thing: something was wrong with my stomach. My own body, it turned out, was speaking a language I'd barely noticed until they translated it for me.

Sure, I'd been more bloated lately. My appetite wasn't quite what it used to be. But it was background noise until they aimed a spotlight at it.

Then something interesting happened. The moment these "issues" were brought to my awareness, I immediately shifted into fix-it mode. Appointments were booked, treatments researched, solutions strategized. I went from feeling no resistance to something I was completely unaware of, to creating immense stress trying to eradicate the problem.

But here's what I learned: the fixing was worse than the original problem itself.

The Trap

Within days, my calendar was packed. Massage therapists, breathwork sessions. I started accumulating anti-inflammatory spices, sipping apple cider vinegar before meals, trying anything to coax my gut back into balance.

Quickly, I’d turned a minor discomfort into a full-time project.

The irony was stark: I was creating more stress trying to eliminate the original stress. Each new treatment became another item on my to-do list, another way I might be failing if I didn't see quick results. The peaceful practices I'd chosen were now infused with urgency.

This wasn't healing. This was panic disguised as self-care. A subtler form of violence where I treated my body like a malfunctioning machine that needed aggressive troubleshooting.

The Western mind had kicked in with its beautiful, relentless efficiency: identify the problem, develop a plan, execute the solution. Something is broken, therefore it must be fixed.

Maybe that's the problem with healing itself—the word carries an unspoken weight, implying brokenness, something that needs urgent repair. We've turned it into another capitalistic project, applying the same drive for optimization that governs our work lives to our inner world.

And that's exactly what had happened to me. The more I focused on my stomach as something wrong with me, the more tension I created around it. The stress of wanting to cure myself became another layer on top of the problem itself.

I was feeding the very thing I was trying to starve.

The Pattern

This felt familiar because I’d lived this story before. During my lowest point in London—anxiety lodged in my chest, my body overwhelmed by mold and workplace toxicity—I tried everything: exercise, dietary changes, meditation, acupuncture, osteopathy.

None of the treatments saved me. But only when I stepped away from the stressors and slowed down enough did something remarkable happen. Once I stopped trying so hard to solve them, the “issues" didn't disappear one by one—they dissolved all at the same time.

The body, it turns out, is remarkably good at healing itself when we stop micromanaging the process.

The Shift

This recognition led me to question everything I thought I knew about healing. Maybe we’ve got it backwards—maybe it’s not about hard work, pushing through difficulty, removing traumas, or fighting old patterns.

What if healing is actually about opening?

What if we’re already whole, and it’s just the energetic blockages we’ve built up over time that keep us from realizing that?

I began to see that healing isn’t just about what we do—it’s about how we relate to what’s already happening inside. Our bodies, after all, don't just digest food. They digest experiences, conversations, emotions. Every encounter leaves an imprint, and if it isn't processed, it doesn't disappear. It lingers in the body.

Take sadness. Or anger. Or fear. These emotions are natural, but most of us were taught to push them down. But the body remembers. What isn’t expressed stays with us as tight hips or clenched jaws.

Over time, that backlog builds. Layer by layer, unprocessed emotion turns into tension, fatigue, even illness. We keep adding to the pile—and then wonder why we feel so stuck.

Which is why true healing, I’ve come to believe, isn’t about clearing everything out at once. It’s about making space for the body to digest what’s been waiting, to feel—layer by layer—what was never fully felt.

Each time we meet our feelings honestly, without judgment, we give the body a chance to catch up. To breathe again.

Healing, then, isn't about fixing what's broken. It's about removing what blocks our natural state—and not adding more blockages to begin with.

This reframe changes everything. It invites us to listen more closely to what our bodies truly need to process and release. For some, it’s meditation. For others, a walk in nature, making music, or having a good cry. For me, dancing has become a powerful outlet.

Each of us has our unique way of processing. Our task is to find what helps us release and trust that our bodies already know the way home.

The Path

My friend Erin—“The Professor,” as we called him in Thailand—once shared a metaphor that stuck with me: the body is like a plant. When a plant is struggling, we don’t try to fix it—we improve its conditions. More sunlight. Better soil. Less water. Patience. Love.

Our bodies aren’t so different. They need nourishment, rest, and movement. They need to feel safe and supported rather than under attack.

So this became my new approach: tending rather than fixing. And as I embraced this shift, I started to attract healing modalities that resonated deeply with this gentler way.

In Bali—what I like to call “Spiritual Disneyland”—there are so many modalities, so many healers, that it can be hard to know what’s real. Over time, I’ve learned to navigate by synchronicity, so when the same name comes up two or three times from different people, that’s my cue to explore. That’s how I found Andrew, a healing practitioner with decades of experience and deep roots in ancient Taoist practices. Just yesterday, I arrived at his villa for a session of Chi Nei Tsang, an ancient form of belly massage that helps detoxify organs and unblock stuck energy, with no idea what to expect.

Even before he explained his philosophy, something about his presence and approach felt right deep within. For him, it wasn’t about repairing something broken, but about creating the conditions for my body to return to balance. The practice focused on deeply relaxing my nervous system through purposeful breathing and gentle touch—inviting it to slow down, soften, and feel safe—so that long-held energy could begin to release.

And in that gentle space, something shifted, something I don’t yet understand. It was as if my whole system had exhaled for the first time in years. The subtle tension I’d carried began to soften and unwind, a palpable sense of release and a welcome beginning.

Rather than treating my body as a malfunctioning machine, this approach honored it as a living, evolving intelligence. The goal wasn’t to fix anything, but to gently support its natural capacity to return to harmony.

Learning to Tend

When I create the right conditions—when I stop hitting the panic button every time something feels off and instead ask what my body might need—natural healing begins to flourish. This isn't about conquering some enemy within, but about remembering how to care for myself like something precious and alive.

When we treat our bodies with urgency or pressure, we often recreate the very tension we’re trying to escape. Our desperation for progress can become another form of agitation. But when we meet our struggles with acceptance, the body responds to gentleness in ways it never will to force.

This doesn't mean we should never seek help. Sometimes we need support, guidance, medical intervention. But we can approach these choices from self-compassion rather than self-improvement—from love rather than from the belief that we're fundamentally broken.

Maybe the deepest medicine isn't a quick fix, but the quiet act of tending to our inner soil—providing ourselves with the right conditions and trusting the same bodily intelligence that processes our food to process our pain.

And maybe the deepest healing doesn’t happen when we try to fix ourselves, but when we stop believing we’re broken in the first place.

The healing is not in the fixing. It’s in learning to step out of the way.

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