Only a Tree Knows How to be a Tree

We’ve been talking about self-help tropes, their limitations, and some ways to work around them.

But after all of that, you might still be left wondering: How do I know if I should set a boundary or loosen one? Build a bridge or burn one? Stay or go? Speak up or let it go?

The truth is that only you can know what you need.

No book, guru, or even therapist can do that work for you.

And I know this can be incredibly confusing, especially when there is so much contradictory advice out there. One person tells you to protect your peace. Another tells you to lean into discomfort. One tells you to walk away from anyone who doesn’t meet your needs. Another tells you that your relationships are mirrors and that you should look at what you’re bringing to them.

So which is it?

A good therapist can help you tune in to what is truly aligned for you and help you weed out the rest. But this is a process. It often requires returning to the question again and again. It may mean sitting with uncertainty and accepting that not every choice comes with a clear, self-help-approved “hell yes.”

Sometimes you’ll change course.

Then circle back.

Then change course again.

This isn’t necessarily a sign that you’re doing it wrong. Sometimes it’s what it looks like to be a person making decisions with incomplete information and a life that keeps changing around you.

A strong therapist rides with you through this process. We encourage. We sometimes challenge. We offer tools that can help you see yourself and your choices more clearly.

But we can’t tell you what choice to make or when you’re ready to make it.

That has to come from you.

(Though we do have our ways of helping you notice when you’re thoughtfully considering your options and when you’re simply spinning your wheels.)

Different therapeutic approaches offer different ways of getting closer to that knowing.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) uses values to help you ask: What kind of person do I want to be, regardless of what I’m feeling right now?

Cognitive approaches help you examine your assumptions and inherited beliefs and ask whether the stories you’ve been telling yourself are actually true.

Somatic approaches invite you to pay attention to the felt sense in your body—the signals that may tell you to move toward something, move away, or simply pause.

Internal Family Systems, a personal favorite of mine, gives space to the many conflicting voices inside us so that we can understand what each one is trying to protect and, over time, help them become more aligned.

These approaches can be incredibly helpful.

But ultimately, it still has to be you.

I know this frustrates some clients. Sometimes people come to therapy believing that we must know the answer. They assume we’re holding back a secret strategy, a professional opinion, or some piece of knowledge that, if we would only reveal it, would make everything clear.

But that’s not really what we do.

We don’t give you the answer.

We help you return to yourself.

My daughter has a book called Only a Tree Knows How to Be a Tree, and it makes me cry every time I read it.

The book moves through different plants and animals, reminding us that each one knows, in its own way, how to be itself. And in the end, it offers the same message to the child reading it:

Only you know how to be you.

Sometimes you may feel very far away from that you.

You may feel caught between the person you were and the person you’re becoming. You may wonder if you ever really knew yourself at all.

You may doubt the process.

You may doubt your therapist.

You may doubt your ability to look inward and find anything useful there.

But if you stay with it—if you keep turning toward yourself with curiosity, even when you aren’t sure what you’re looking for—something of depth will eventually emerge.

Sometimes it happens slowly, like an ember that grows when you keep breathing life into it.

Sometimes it comes as a sudden flash of insight.

Sometimes you realize, only in retrospect, that you’ve been changing for a long time.

It will appear.

So, in keeping with my position that I don’t actually hate self-help—even though I have spent three articles talking about its limitations—I’ll leave you with one of the best self-help lines there is:

The only way out is in.