Healing the Urge to Fix: How Control Hides Our Fear of Powerlessness

By Dr. Arati Bhatt – SereinMind

The Compulsion to Fix Comes from a Tender Place

Some people love deeply by fixing. They listen, analyse, advise, solve, rescue, and carry — often without being asked. On the surface, this looks like maturity, responsibility, care, and strength. But inside, there is often an unspoken truth:

The urge to fix is not always about helping others —sometimes it’s a way to avoid feeling helpless ourselves.

For many, control becomes a coping mechanism. If they can solve the problem, calm the situation, or “make everything okay,” they don’t have to feel the discomfort of uncertainty, conflict, emotional chaos, or loss.

Fixing feels safer than feeling.

Where Does the Urge to Fix Come From?

It rarely begins in adulthood. This impulse is usually rooted in childhood emotional experiences where love, safety, or acceptance depended on how well you managed the environment or people around you.

You may relate if you grew up with:

• Emotionally unstable or unpredictable caregivers

• Conflict-heavy or chaotic homes

• Parents who confided in you as if you were the adult

• A need to “be the responsible one”

• Unmet emotional needs that taught you to earn love through usefulness

In such environments, children learn:

• “If I don’t take charge, things will fall apart.”

• “If I fix it, maybe we won’t get hurt.”

• “If everyone is okay, then I can relax.”

The child grows up to become the adult who is always alert, always responsible, always capable — but rarely able to rest.

Control Masquerades as Competence

People who fix everything are often admired:

“You’re so strong. “You handle everything so well. “You’re always there for others.”

But this praise can reinforce a false identity — one that leaves little space for vulnerability, asking for support, or admitting “I don’t know what to do.”

Control becomes a shield. It keeps you functional, needed, and safe — but also emotionally guarded and exhausted.

Beneath the fixing lies a deep fear: the fear of powerlessness.

Why Powerlessness Is So Hard to Sit With

Feeling powerless can be terrifying for those who learned early that no one is coming to protect or soothe them. It can trigger:

• Old memories of being ignored or unseen

• Anxiety around uncertainty

• A deep sense of being unsafe

• Shame for not having the answers

So instead of sitting with that emotion, the nervous system rushes to do, manage, control, solve, or rescue.

Fixing becomes a trauma response — not compassion, but self-protection.

The Cost of Always Fixing

When your identity is built around being the one who sorts life out, it slowly erodes your emotional health:

• You lose the ability to receive support

• You attract relationships where you give more than you get

• You confuse love with responsibility

• You feel guilty resting or doing nothing

• You feel anxious when you can’t help or control an outcome

Eventually, your compassion turns into silent resentment, burnout, or emotional loneliness.

Healing: Shifting from Fixing to Supporting

Healing this pattern isn’t about becoming passive — it’s about becoming emotionally free. You learn that love doesn’t require control, and safety doesn’t require managing everything.

Here are gentle steps to begin:

1. Notice the Urge Before Acting

Pause and ask: “Am I helping because they need support or because I can’t tolerate their discomfort?”

2. Sit with the Feeling, Not the Problem

Instead of fixing the situation, try acknowledging emotions — both theirs and yours. Sometimes being present is more healing than offering solutions.

3. Let Others Own Their Stories

You can walk beside someone without carrying them. Support does not mean saving.

4. Redefine Strength

Strength is not having all the answers. Strength is allowing vulnerability, uncertainty, and truth to exist without rushing to change them.

5. Reclaim Your Right to Receive

Let someone else hold space for you. Healing also requires learning how to be supported, not only how to support.

A New Narrative of Love Without Control

When you stop fixing, something profound happens:

You realise that love doesn’t need to rescue — it needs to witness. Connection doesn’t require control — it requires presence. Safety isn’t found in certainty — it’s found in trust.

You begin to understand that not everything broken needs you to heal it. Some things are meant to unfold, some lessons belong to others, and some moments require silence, not solutions. And in releasing control, you finally meet the version of yourself that was never meant to carry so much.

Written by Dr. Arati Bhatt – SereinMindInsightful reflections on emotional healing, trauma-informed growth, and learning to love without self-abandonment.