You Are Not a Self-Improvement Project: Ditching the Fix-It Mentality in Therapy
She came into therapy a few weeks after the breakup. Not with tears, but with a to-do list.
“I want to level up,” she said. “I want to become the best version of myself so I never settle again. I’m cutting my hair, joining a gym, doing cold plunges, waking up at 5 a.m., reading relationship books, and healing my inner child. Oh—and I want to stop crying at night.”
Then she paused, and said the quiet part out loud:
“I just want to prove to him that I was everything he ever wanted. That he was wrong to leave me.”
That sentence sat heavy in the room. Not because it was dramatic—but because it was honest.
When Healing Becomes a Hustle
It’s a familiar pattern. After a breakup—especially one that leaves you feeling rejected or not enough—it’s easy to turn healing into a competition. To try and become so beautiful, so emotionally evolved, so successful, that your ex regrets everything.
You want them to scroll through your life and feel the ache of losing you.
You want to win.
You want to rewrite the ending.
But at some point, trying to become their fantasy stops being about you—and starts being about them all over again.
And that’s not healing. That’s reenacting the heartbreak from a different angle.
You Are Not a Project
There’s a deeper story beneath the “glow-up” narrative—one where you quietly believe that if you were just a little more lovable, they would’ve stayed. And so you treat yourself like a home renovation: tear down, upgrade, paint over the messy parts.
But you are not a fixer-upper.
You’re not broken.
You were already worthy in the version of you that got left behind.
Therapy isn’t about making yourself more appealing to the one who couldn’t choose you. It’s about choosing yourself—even when it feels lonely. Even when no one is watching.
Breaking Up with the Fix-It Mentality
If you’ve been trying to win the breakup by becoming the “ideal” version of yourself, it’s okay to notice that—and then soften.
Because that urgency? That pressure to evolve into everything they wanted? That’s grief, wearing ambition like armor.
You don’t need to become someone else to be lovable. You don’t need to perform progress to be okay.
Real healing might look less like glow-ups and more like groundings:
Saying no when you used to overextend
Sitting with your sadness instead of escaping it
No longer trying to be impressive—just honest
The Real Glow-Up
Eventually, that same client came into session and said, “I didn’t go to the gym this week. I stayed in bed. But I also didn’t call him. And I didn’t call myself a failure. That’s new.”
That’s the kind of glow-up I care about—the quiet, unglamorous kind.
The one where you stop trying to prove your worth to someone who couldn’t see it.
The one where you’re no longer trying to be everything they wanted—just more of who you are.
That version doesn’t need to be validated by anyone.
She’s enough already.
With care,
Abbey Vince, AMFT