Where’s the Button That Fixes Me?
And why won’t my therapist press it??
Somewhere out there — in the collective imagination of the internet, Hollywood, and that one friend who had exactly three sessions and now thinks they’re enlightened — there exists a belief that therapists are hiding something.
A button.
A secret button.
A magic-fix-you-make-it-all-better emotional reset button.
Apparently, I have one.
And apparently, I’m choosing not to use it.
Which is… frankly rude of me.
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The fantasy goes something like this:
You walk into therapy, explain your life in a vaguely coherent way, maybe cry once or twice for dramatic effect, and then — surely, if you’ve done it well enough — I reach under the therapy couch, retrieve the glittery “FIX THEM” button, and press it.
A puff of lavender-scented smoke. Some affirming harp music.
Poof! You are healed. Your childhood makes sense. Your anxiety evaporates. You now have boundaries and use them graciously.
Reader, I regret to inform you: there is no button.
(If there was, I’d have used it on myself years ago.)
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But clients still suspect it’s there.
They’ll say things like:
“Have I earned it yet?”
“Am I doing it right this time?”
Or, my personal favourite, “You could just tell me what to do and save us both time.”
I get it. I do.
Because therapy — real therapy — is slow, often confusing, occasionally boring, and wildly unfair in how many feelings it expects you to feel.
The button fantasy makes it seem easier. Neater.
And it also feeds into the idea that change is something you get from a therapist, rather than something you build with one.
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If I had a button, I’d be smashing it with my forehead.
But instead, what we have is… conversation.
Relationship.
Space to think out loud and fall apart and put some of the pieces back differently.
Sometimes what feels like me being withholding is actually me trusting you — trusting that your pace, your defences, even your resistance, make sense.
That your story doesn’t need to be fast-tracked or fixed. It needs to be met.
Which, annoyingly, takes time. And repetition. And more than one Tuesday at 3pm.
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You don’t have to earn anything.
You don’t need to be “a good client.”
You don’t have to perform insight, or say the right words, or arrive in emotional business-casual ready to self-actualise.
There’s no reward system. No sticker chart. No moment where I say, “Congrats! You’ve unlocked Premium Therapy.”
All of you is already welcome. Even the unsure bits. The grumpy bits. The part that thinks, “This is pointless, and I want my money back.”
That’s all part of the work — yes, even the bit that wants to sack me.
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So no, I won’t press the button.
Because it doesn’t exist.
But I will sit with you while you look for it.
And when you realise you never needed it, I’ll be right there — deeply unmagical, utterly human, and still not holding out on you.
