What If There Is Nothing Wrong with You?

Have you ever found yourself wondering, “What’s wrong with me?”

Maybe you’ve asked yourself why you can’t stop overthinking everything. Why your mind just cannot shut off. Why one small comment can stay with you for days. Why you care so much about disappointing other people. Why motherhood feels harder than you imagined it would. Why your relationships end up leaving you feeling unseen or unappreciated. Why you can’t seem to relax, even when everything seems to be fine on the outside.

If these questions feel familiar, I want you to know they are far more common than you might think. They are questions I hear every week from smart, strong, caring women who are holding so much together for themselves and their families. Women who want the looping thoughts and painful patterns to stop, and so they find themselves in my office with the painful question, “What’s wrong with me?”

As understandable as this question may be in our moments of pain, I believe that it also leads us astray in our pursuit of change. It assumes there is something broken before we have taken the time to understand the story behind it. Maybe a much better question would be:

“How does this make sense?”

It doesn’t mean your pain isn’t real. It doesn’t mean anxiety, grief, trauma, feeling overwhelmed, infertility, pregnancy loss, or postpartum struggles aren’t deeply difficult. It simply means there may be another way to understand what you are experiencing—one that begins with curiosity instead of judgment. This different approach may offer new avenues for change that we did not expect.

For the next few minutes, I’d like to invite you to set aside the question, “What’s wrong with me?” and instead, let’s make sense of it together.

The Question That Keeps Us Stuck

When we are hurting, it’s natural to want answers—and to want the hurt to go away. We want to stop feeling anxious, overwhelmed, disconnected, or emotionally exhausted. We want to know how to stop reacting the way we do or how to be able to “just move on.”

So, we ask ourselves:

• “Why can’t I just stop overthinking?”
• “Why can’t I just be more patient?”
• “Why can’t I just be happy?”
• “Why can’t I just get over this?”

Of course we are wondering about that. We identified this as the problem and so our mind keeps going back to the question on how to solve or get rid of this problem. We want something to change, so we focus on the thing we wish we could stop doing, start doing, or feel differently about.

As I have had the opportunity to witness the journeys of so many people, I have noticed that these questions rarely lead to change. More often, they keep us stuck, circling the same thoughts, the same fears, and the same self-criticism. We replay conversations, criticize our reactions, compare ourselves to other people, and wonder why they seem to be coping better than we are. Our mind keeps coming back to more evidence that something about us must be flawed.

Sometimes the “Problem” Is Trying to Solve a Problem

One of the most important things I have learned as a therapist is that many of the issues that bring people into therapy aren’t necessarily the root cause of the problem. Sometimes these problems are actually solutions our minds and bodies learned along the way. They may be costly solutions that no longer work very well and may even be creating problems in our lives today, but they developed for a reason.

Maybe you became very good at reading the room because knowing how everyone else was feeling helped you feel safe, making the situation more predictable. Maybe keeping the peace helped you maintain connection, avoiding conflict or confrontation. Maybe getting things right became important because achievement brought approval or helped you avoid criticism. We don’t consciously choose these patterns. We adapt to what life asks of us, and sometimes those adaptations continue long after the circumstances have changed.

That’s why simply telling yourself, “Stop caring what people think,” or “Just stop worrying,” usually isn’t enough. Your reaction may be trying to solve a problem that once was very real in your life. Once we understand that, we allow ourselves to shift our attention to a much more useful question: What is this feeling trying to protect me from?

What If We Asked a Different Question?

Many of us believe that it is best to be less emotional. Our emotions seem to create so many problems in our lives. You might keep saying to yourself that if you just could keep these feelings under control, your life would be so much easier. We strive to make decisions out of rational thought and to react to situations calmly, as if they don’t affect us. I often hear that being the goal in therapy.

What we might forget along the way is that our emotions don’t simply appear out of nowhere. They grow out of our experiences, our relationships, our current circumstances, and the ways we’ve learned to navigate the world. They are part of our body and mind, part of the system that is keeping us safe, alive, and functioning. They are not trying to punish us or to keep us stuck. They are trying to tell us something, give us additional information. They have a story to tell—one that’s worth taking the time to understand before we try to silence it.

Every Story Has Earlier Chapters

Imagine someone handed you a novel and asked you to explain the main character’s behavior, but they only let you read one page from the middle of the story.

You’d probably have a lot of questions. Why is she crying? Why is she pulling away from the people she loves? Why does she seem so afraid?

Without the earlier chapters or the backstory, none of it would make much sense.

I think we often do the same thing to ourselves. We judge our reactions based on today’s page without taking into account the chapters that came before.

Maybe your anxiety isn’t appearing out of nowhere. Maybe you became very good at keeping everyone happy, avoiding conflict, or worrying about other people’s reactions because doing so once helped you maintain connection and feel safe. Maybe your perfectionism became a way to protect yourself from criticism or to feel valued. Maybe motherhood has stirred up emotions you didn’t expect because becoming a parent has a way of bringing our own stories to the surface.

When we only look at today’s reaction, it’s easy to assume something is wrong with us. When we understand the chapters that came before, we may begin to see something very different: not a flawed person who needs to be fixed, but a human being who learned, adapted, protected, survived, and is now discovering that some of those old ways of staying safe and connected may no longer be needed.

Motherhood Can Bring the Story to the Surface

Motherhood is one of the places where I see this happen again and again.

Imagine a mom who loses her patience and snaps at her child. Within seconds, the moment becomes much bigger than what just happened.

• “I’m failing.”
• “I’m not a good enough mom.”
• “I’m messing up my child.”
• “Why can’t I just stop doing this?”

She is not only dealing with a difficult parenting moment. Now she is managing an internal battle, too. She feels horrible about what happened, her anxiety and self-criticism spiral, and she may feel exhausted, paralyzed, or unable to give herself the break she desperately needs because some part of her believes she doesn’t deserve one.

Motherhood changes almost everything. It asks us to tune into another human being’s needs day after day while navigating enormous changes in our bodies, brains, identities, relationships, responsibilities, and expectations of ourselves.

And there is no shortage of opinions about how mothers should do it.

Breastfeed or bottle-feed. Stay home or go back to work. Be responsive, but don’t be too permissive. Take care of yourself, but somehow also meet everyone else’s needs.

It can begin to feel impossible to get it right.

Underneath all that noise, many mothers are carrying a much more painful question:

“Am I good enough?”

No parenting book or perfectly planned routine can answer that question for us.

Sometimes the work is learning to hear our own voice again—to trust our judgment, recognize our needs, and allow ourselves to receive support without treating that support as evidence that we have failed. This is often at the heart of therapy for moms.

The familiar saying that “it takes a village” isn’t just a nice idea. Human beings were never meant to do all of this alone. Needing support isn’t the opposite of being a capable mother. It is part of being human.

Healing Begins When We Stop Fighting with Ourselves

So much of what I see in therapy is an internal war. We are fighting the parts of ourselves that we don’t like. We don’t want to have that part of us that feels anxious, sad, hurt, or snaps at our loved ones. We think those feelings are too much, too extreme, or too uncomfortable. They may be debilitating, make our daily lives impossible, or even hurt the people we love. Of course we want them to go away.

If we focus only on making our unwanted patterns and feelings disappear, we may spend years fighting the very parts of ourselves that have been working so hard to protect us. That doesn’t mean we resign ourselves to patterns that are hurting us. Acceptance doesn’t mean, “This is just who I am and nothing can change.”

Understanding helps us stop fighting the wrong fight. Once we truly understand what an unwanted pattern is trying to accomplish, we can begin looking for another way to meet the need underneath it.

• Maybe I don’t need to make everyone happy in order to belong.
• Maybe someone’s disappointment doesn’t mean I have done something wrong.
• Maybe I can make a mistake as a mother and still be a loving, capable parent.
• Maybe I can listen to my anxiety without allowing it to make every decision for me.

The goal isn’t to convince ourselves that the past didn’t matter. It’s to help our minds and bodies recognize that we may have more resources, support, and choices available to us today.

It means we become willing to understand what is happening before we judge it. We notice, become curious, and begin to understand. From there, we have more choices about how we want to respond today.

Sometimes that means taking a breath before reacting, or recognizing that someone else’s feelings are theirs to manage, or asking for help, or saying how we really feel. And sometimes it means realizing that we don’t have to solve everything today.

Healing begins when we stop fighting with ourselves.

What Happens When Shame Begins to Soften?

Underneath the anxiety, perfectionism, worry about disappointing others, or self-doubt, I often find something even more painful: a belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with who we are—shame.

Shame keeps us isolated in a dark and lonely place. It tells us that if other people really, truly knew us—our thoughts, feelings, mistakes, needs, and fears—they might confirm what we already suspect about ourselves.

When we experience acceptance instead of judgment, something begins to shift. Acceptance allows us to see our own humanity.

Understanding doesn’t erase pain, but it can soften the shame surrounding it. And when that shame begins to loosen its grip, I have watched people discover parts of themselves they didn’t realize had been there all along: strength, confidence, love, nurturance, the ability to speak honestly, or the ability to pause and ask, “What do I need right now?”

They begin to remember that the other adults in their lives are capable of taking care of themselves—and that it isn’t their responsibility to keep everyone happy.

They don’t become different people. They begin to access more of who they already are underneath the fear, expectations, and years of learning who they thought they needed to be.

Let’s Make Sense of It Together

The next time you notice yourself thinking, “What’s wrong with me?” see if you can create a little space before answering that question.

Without trying to fix anything, you might ask yourself:

• What am I feeling right now?
• What happened just before I felt this way?
• What might my mind and body be trying to tell me?
• What past experiences have felt similar?
• Can I be curious about why I feel this way?

There are no right or wrong answers, and you don’t have to understand the whole story in one moment.

The goal is simply to begin looking at yourself a little more gently.

If you have spent years wondering what’s wrong with you, consider the possibility that the things you have been fighting may have a story you haven’t fully heard yet.

How does this make sense? That question doesn’t erase pain or mean that nothing needs to change. It gives us a different starting point. Instead of treating ourselves as a problem to solve, we can become curious about the experiences, relationships, needs, and adaptations that brought us here.

We may still want things to change. We may need to work through painful experiences, learn new ways of responding, ask for support, or make different choices. But change no longer has to begin with the belief that something is wrong with us. It can begin with curiosity. As the judgment begins to soften, we discover there was more of ourselves underneath it all than we realized.

If this resonates with you and you’d like a gentle place to make sense of your own story, I’d be honored to help. Reach out for a free consultation and let’s begin, with curiosity instead of judgment.