When people come to therapy, they often arrive with a goal: “I want to feel better.” But what does that actually mean? Some expect therapy to be like a problem-solving session, where a therapist offers solutions and fixes what’s wrong. Others see therapy as a space for deeper emotional healing, where the focus isn’t just on change, but on understanding, processing, and transforming pain.
Both approaches are valuable, but they serve different purposes. Therapy is not just about solving immediate problems—it’s also about uncovering the wounds that keep us stuck and learning to sit with our emotions in a way that fosters lasting growth.
Problem-Solving: Fixing the Surface Issues
Problem-solving approaches in mental health care focus on practical solutions and behavioral strategies. This is often seen in fields like social work, where the goal is to help people access resources, develop coping skills, or change behaviors to improve their circumstances.
For example:
- If a client is experiencing financial insecurity, a social worker may help them apply for assistance programs.
- If someone struggles with anxiety, a therapist using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) might teach techniques to manage anxious thoughts.
These interventions are incredibly important. They address external challenges and immediate distress, helping people navigate life more effectively.
However, problem-solving alone does not always address the deeper emotional pain that drives patterns of behavior. This is where therapy shifts from fixing problems to healing wounds.
Healing: Sitting with the Darkness
Some struggles can’t be “solved” in the traditional sense—they need to be felt, understood, and processed. True healing happens when we stop running from our pain and start learning to sit with it.
For example:
- Someone who grew up in a dysfunctional family might unconsciously recreate unhealthy relationship patterns. Simply recognizing these patterns isn’t enough—they need to explore the emotions behind them to truly heal.
- A person struggling with depression might try to “fix” their sadness by staying busy, distracting themselves, or forcing positive thinking. But real healing requires acknowledging the sadness, sitting with it, and allowing it to move through them.
There’s a common belief that avoiding emotions makes them go away, but in reality, they stay buried and resurface in unexpected ways—through anxiety, anger, numbing, or self-sabotage.
Healing is about facing what we’ve been avoiding. As I like to say:
“You can’t CBT your way out of sadness.”
In other words, logic and problem-solving have their limits when it comes to emotional wounds. You have to go through it to get past it.
Why Sitting with Difficult Emotions is the Key to Healing
A helpful metaphor for this comes from the children’s book Going on a Bear Hunt:
“Oh no, tall grass! We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no! We have to go through it.”
Emotions work the same way. You can’t go around them. You have to sit with them, feel them, and process them before they lose their grip on you.
In therapy, this might look like:
- Naming and validating your emotions instead of pushing them away.
- Exploring the deeper wounds that have shaped your struggles.
- Understanding how past experiences affect your current patterns.
The Power of Emotional Validation in Therapy
One of the most profound aspects of therapy is being truly seen and heard—sometimes for the first time. Many people downplay their pain, feeling like they should “just get over it” or that their struggles “aren’t bad enough” to warrant help.
But being validated by a therapist can be life-changing. When someone listens without judgment and says, “What you went through was really hard, and it makes sense that you feel this way,” it allows healing to begin.
Therapy is a place where you don’t have to fix yourself—you can simply be, feel, and explore. And in doing so, you begin to heal.
Finding the Right Balance at WellSite
At WellSite, we recognize that healing isn’t just about solving problems—it’s about processing emotions, finding meaning, and reclaiming your sense of self. Our therapists create a space where you can:
- Develop tools for managing challenges (problem-solving).
- Explore and heal deep emotional wounds (therapeutic processing).
- Learn to sit with difficult emotions without fear (true transformation).
If you’re ready to move beyond surface-level solutions and into deep, lasting healing, reach out to us today. Our team is here to support you on your journey.