{"id":1199,"date":"2025-08-26T11:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T11:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2025-08-28T15:16:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T15:16:18","slug":"going-to-therapy-doesnt-heal-the-people-around-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/2025\/08\/26\/going-to-therapy-doesnt-heal-the-people-around-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Going To Therapy Doesn\u2019t Heal The People Around You"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If I were to ask, \u2018What do you know of yourself<\/em>?\u2019 How would you answer? After six years of therapy<\/a> and countless iterations of being, I\u2019ve come to know myself as kind, ambitious, unexpectedly funny, and compassionate. But in the same breath, I\u2019d also admit that I\u2019m afraid of abandonment, that I chase perfection because I believe it makes me more likable, and that I am, at my core, deeply sensitive to the world around me.<\/p>\n

This is what I\u2019ve come to learn about myself in the years I\u2019ve committed to therapy<\/a>. Facing the parts of me I once called pathetic, desperate, and unlovable was painful, but that awareness now feels like an honor. To know what aches within me means I can try to grow, or, when growth isn\u2019t possible, simply accept that I am human.<\/p>\n

Still, in committing to unlearning harmful patterns, cultivating emotional awareness, and taking responsibility for my healing, I\u2019ve realized that the peace I\u2019ve built within myself doesn\u2019t automatically translate into my relationships with others. In fact, if I\u2019m speaking frankly, my healing has often made these relationships harder to navigate, because my progress doesn\u2019t mark the progress of others.<\/p>\n

That mismatch is exhausting. UK-based therapist Olamide Ajala<\/a> described the feeling clearly when we spoke over the phone. \u201cIt can be so tiring to be the one who\u2019s doing the work in therapy and in relationships\u2026 it feels like the responsibility to resolve issues often lies with you,\u201d she shared.<\/p>\n

Her words echo my own experience. In conflict, I often find myself trying to decode the hurt beneath someone else\u2019s words while setting aside my own feelings. And the more responsibility I take on, the less others seem required to do.<\/p>\n

I had a dysfunctional upbringing, one that shaped complex\u2014often toxic\u2014relationships with many family members. In my relationship with my older sister, it\u2019s clear that we both carry the same wound left by our mother\u2019s abandonment. We move through the world feeling unsafe in intimacy\u2014whether with family, friends, or partners. We wrestle with similar anxieties about our worth and how we\u2019re perceived. And perhaps most tragically, we often feel alone, even when surrounded by people who have proven, again and again, that they love us.<\/p>\n

Yet while I grew tired of living as someone defined by a past I didn\u2019t design, my sister struggled to do the same. And in naming my trauma, I realized we lost the unspoken language that once allowed our relationship to work. At times, this loss has shown up in ways that feel painful but not personal. When my sister accuses me of being \u201cselfish,\u201d \u201cdefensive\u201d, or reaches for whatever word suits her in response to my newfound boundaries, I try to remember that what she\u2019s really naming is her own fear of being left behind. Still, it doesn\u2019t make the words sting any less.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy taking so much responsibility for the health of the relationship, the other party never has to do any work,\u201d says Ajala when considering her own family. \u201cThere\u2019s no problem from their perspective because I\u2019m constantly solving it for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

I recognize this in my relationship with my sister. Though I\u2019ve spent years in therapy, working toward healthier ways of relating to people I love, she has rejected the idea altogether, often leaning on me to unpack what she has not yet been able to name or confront.<\/p>\n

The distance between us is, in many ways, a reflection of the same absence we both grew up with: our mother\u2019s abandonment. Naming what ails you is not the same as overcoming it. Where my sister has married and become a mother herself\u2014a bridge that has drawn her back toward our own mother\u2014I remain unmarried, childless, and still learning what it means to live with a mother who has been absent for most of my life.<\/p>\n

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Therapy has limits \u2014 it can only ever work with one person\u2019s perspective, and it cannot resolve the full complexity of a relationship.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Part of what I\u2019ve had to face in therapy is the loneliness of growth. Ajala describes it as \u201ccocooning\u201d \u2014\u00a0 retreating into solitude to recover and disentangle her own feelings from the feelings of others. She also notes how therapy can be as transformative as life milestones like marriage or parenthood, shifting your worldview in ways those closest to you may not understand. \u201cGoing through something so transformative that other people in your life can\u2019t relate to can bring about loneliness,\u201d she comments, and I\u2019ve felt that acutely.<\/p>\n

At times, I\u2019ve cocooned too, choosing stillness and solitude over the noise of others. And I\u2019ve seen how growth creates distance\u2014some relationships adapt, others dissolve. I\u2019ve lost connections that couldn\u2019t stretch to hold the person I was becoming. My relationship with my mother, for instance, has reached an impasse: I am no longer the wounded child who longed for her, but a woman who needs a different kind of connection altogether. Like Ajala, I\u2019ve felt the sting of being seen only as the old version of myself, while the new one remains invisible or dismissed.<\/p>\n

In coming into awareness of myself, I\u2019ve also gained an unshakable awareness of others. During the months I dated the last man I cared for\u2014and even as we stayed in touch after he moved away \u2014 I came to know him well. More importantly, I became aware of how his ways of relating to me shaped how I saw myself.<\/p>\n

The last time we were intimate, he confessed that he\u2019d never truly liked a woman, but had chosen partners out of expectation. In that moment, I saw not only him, but everything he had revealed about his upbringing: the conflict avoidance, the stoicism, the emotional repression. And I realized that years of therapy had brought me to a place where I no longer wanted to be chosen simply to soothe my fear of abandonment. I wanted to be loved because I could be loved. What he was describing, though it hurt to hear and though I grieved the cage of his limitations, wasn\u2019t enough for me anymore. Once, it might have been.<\/p>\n

Ajala reminds me that therapy has limits; it can only ever work with one person\u2019s perspective, and it cannot resolve the full complexity of a relationship. Healing doesn\u2019t erase the silence of a family, or the repression in a man I once cared for. But it has given me the clarity to choose how I respond, and the courage to walk away from what no longer nourishes me.<\/p>\n

If you were to ask me again what I know of myself, I\u2019d say this: I am no longer content to be chosen out of fear. I want to be loved, because I can be loved. And that, for now, is enough.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published to Unbothered UK<\/em><\/p>\n

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I Reconnected With My Absent Mother After 20 Years<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I were to ask, \u2018What do you know of yourself?\u2019 How would you answer? After six years of therapy and countless iterations of being, I\u2019ve come to know myself as kind, ambitious, unexpectedly funny, and compassionate. But in the same breath, I\u2019d also admit that I\u2019m afraid of abandonment, that I chase perfection because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ecotech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1202,"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions\/1202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cncurc.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}