You Cannot Want It More Than They Do

She walked into my office and said, “This HAS to work,” and I felt my stomach drop.

Not because I didn’t think I could help her. But because what I actually heard underneath those words was: “...and if it doesn’t, you suck as a therapist.”

I know that’s not what she said. I know that’s not even what she meant. But that’s what my nervous system heard. Her desperation wasn’t just about her pain—it felt like a test of my competence. Like if I couldn’t fix her fast enough, I’d be exposed as inadequate. Exposed as someone who didn’t actually know what she was doing.

I liked her immediately. She was smart, articulate, deeply committed to her healing. She didn’t want to feel wrecked in her daily life anymore—which is completely fair. Who would want that?

But every session started the same way. “This better get better.” And every session, I felt that same activation in my body—that pressure, that quiet panic, that fear that maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t enough. Maybe I needed to work harder, know more, give her something that would finally prove I knew what I was doing.

Here’s what I didn’t realize at the time: I wanted her to get better even more than she did. Not for her—for me. Because her healing had become about whether I was good enough, competent enough, worthy of calling myself a therapist.

And that’s exactly where I went wrong.

Let’s talk about what actually happens in your nervous system when a client walks in desperate for results.

Their urgency—this HAS to work, this BETTER get better—isn’t just about words. It’s a frequency. It’s electromagnetic information their heart is broadcasting and your heart is receiving. And if you’re not aware of what’s happening, their desperation activates your own fear response.

Suddenly their anxiety becomes your emergency. You feel responsible for their relief. You start working harder than they are—researching between sessions, losing sleep thinking about their case, offering more tools, more techniques, more interventions.

And here’s the paradox: the harder you work to fix them, the less effective the work becomes.

Because now you’re both dysregulated. Their nervous system is screaming “I need relief NOW,” and yours is responding with “I have to fix this or I’m failing.” You’ve created a dynamic where neither of you trusts the body’s intelligence. You’re both trying to force healing instead of creating the conditions where it can unfold.