Do you find yourself constantly giving advice, holding space for others, and carrying all the emotional weight in your relationships while slowly losing yourself in the process? This pattern isn't just bad luck – it's revealing something profound about your relationship with love itself.
When you've been conditioned to gain love through caretaking, relationships transform into emotional labor. The truth is painful but liberating: many "fixers" weren't valued simply for existing, but for what they could do for others. This creates a tangled nervous system response where love and service become inseparable.
Coach Deron delves deep into why we're drawn to broken people, often because we had to parent our parents or only felt seen when being useful. The mental fixer's behavior appears noble on the surface but serves as a sophisticated avoidance strategy to escape confronting our own emotional wounds. Research confirms that unresolved trauma often manifests as excessive caretaking – it feels safer to manage others than face our own vulnerability.
Perhaps most dangerous is what Deron calls "the trap of potential" – staying in relationships because we glimpse who someone could become, rather than accepting who they actually are. As Lori Gottlieb notes, "We marry potential, not people," creating a prison of false hope where we wait for someone who may never materialize while abandoning our true selves.
The path forward requires reclaiming your energy and redirecting it inward. Who are you when not managing someone else's life? Studies show those who practice self-validation develop stronger emotional resilience, clearer boundaries, and healthier relationships. You can't fix others, and you're not supposed to. When you heal yourself, you stop attracting brokenness and start attracting wholeness instead. Choose peace. Choose you.