When Joe asks the woman what happens when she tries to simply be present, she says: “I want it to be right and I don’t know how to get there. I feel like I’m failing at it over and over again.” Joe identifies this as the root: “That’s actually the driver of all the fixing — the feeling that everything I touch fails.”
This reveals a self-reinforcing loop: the belief “everything I touch fails” creates an urgency to fix things, but the fixing is surface-level and never satisfies, which confirms the belief that everything fails, which drives more fixing. It’s a doom loop — her own words.
“That’s actually the driver of all the fixing — the feeling that everything I touch fails.”
The feeling of failure even infiltrates the attempt to stop fixing. When Joe invites her to be present, her mind immediately evaluates: “I’m not fixing it fast enough” — turning presence itself into another thing to fail at. The pattern is so pervasive it operates even within the attempt to dissolve it.
The only exit is not doing presence better but dropping the frame of success and failure entirely — which is why Joe keeps redirecting from “how do I do this?” back to simply being together.
Related Concepts
- Compulsive fixing avoids being present
- Shame creates the behaviors it punishes
- Shame addiction keeps you stuck
- Asking ‘how do I stop’ keeps you in the doing loop
- The fixing mindset perpetuates the very stuckness it tries to solve
- We recreate painful circumstances to finally welcome the avoided emotion
- The pressure-resist cycle is a game to avoid feeling sadness