This Is What It Feels Like To Be A Fixer When You Need To Fix Yourself

This is what it feels to be a fixer when you really need to fix yourself.

You’re a fixer. You fix everyone else’s problems but your own. You can’t help the people you want to help the most, your family, so you feel the need to help others at all costs. It doesn’t matter that you’re drained or burned out, you’ll STILL do it. It feels great at first, that instant gratification you feel from helping someone else, but it can get exhausting.

You do this for years on end. Fixing, mending, always wondering, “Did I do enough?”, and feeling like you didn’t. Even when people you have helped tell you that you have, you always feel like you could do more because it’s what you do—you’re a fixer. You love fixing, but friends see how stressed you are and often they tell you take some time for yourself. You often don’t, even if you feel in your gut that it’s necessary.

You don’t do it because that would require you to put your wants and needs before someone else’s, and that is something you don’t like doing. You often think that if you work on yourself, you will start to see all the parts of you that are neglected. The things you felt the need to fix for others but didn’t fix for yourself. You don’t like admitting that we need to stop fixing others to fix ourselves.That’s not something you do either. You need to be vulnerable to close friends and family in order for you, the fixer, to fix yourself and see that you deserve to be cared for and loved the same way you do for others.

When you stop fixing everyone all the time and start working on yourself, you might feel unconformable and out of place at first, because for the first time in a long time, you’re not hiding behind helping someone. But in reality, you’re helping the person that needs it most—yourself.

You’ll always feel the need to help others, as that is what a fixer does, but once you start doing the work, feeling and dealing with what you need to in order to finally fix your broken pieces, you’ll feel better.

You need to start saying no when you really can’t help someone, even when you really want to say yes to people because that’s your go-to. You also really need to practice self-care, whatever that looks like for you. Take time to heal yourself—it will be worth it. You will see that once you start doing these things, this is what it will take to finally really fix yourself with help from those around you. This is what it feels like to be a fixer when you really need to fix yourself.