Hey, it’s Candice here.
There’s a superpower that comes with being a therapist — one I’ve come to value more deeply with every year I practice.
It’s not the clever interventions or the perfect words. It’s the ability to sit with someone else’s pain without trying to make it disappear.
I see this moment happen over and over again — both in sessions and in everyday life. Someone shares something heavy, something painful, something they wish weren’t true. And almost instantly, the people who care about them (including, sometimes, the person themselves) rush in with the urge to fix it.
We say things like: “It’ll be okay.” “Look on the bright side.” “You’re strong — you’ve got this.”
On the surface, these responses come from love. But when we examine them more closely, they quietly send a message:
These feelings are too much. They’re not acceptable. We need to get rid of them as quickly as possible.
And when we do that — when we rush to erase or reframe someone’s pain — we unintentionally tell them that their experience is intolerable. That they are intolerable if they feel this way.
What Changes When We Choose Presence Instead
As a therapist with over twenty years in mental health and the last ten years focused specifically on anxiety and trauma, I’ve learned that the most healing thing I can offer someone isn’t a solution. It’s my willingness to stay right there with them in the discomfort.
When I sit with a client’s pain — when I simply say, “This is really hard… and it makes complete sense that you feel this way” — something profound happens.
The person begins to feel seen. Not fixed. Not corrected. Not rushed past.
They feel that their feelings are allowed to exist. That they don’t have to earn the right to feel them by being “positive” or “strong” first.
This is the quiet power of validation.
It’s not passive. It’s deeply active. It says: “I’m here with you in this.” “Your pain makes sense.” “You don’t have to carry it alone.”
And when someone feels truly met in their pain, something beautiful often begins to shift on its own. The feelings don’t disappear — but they stop feeling quite so overwhelming. There’s more space to breathe. More room to think clearly. More trust in their own capacity to move through it.
The Same Principle Applies to How We Talk to Ourselves
This isn’t just something we do for others. It’s something we can learn to offer ourselves.
When an anxious or painful thought arises, our knee-jerk reaction is often to argue with it, dismiss it, or slap a positive affirmation on top of it. But what if, instead, we practiced sitting with it the way a compassionate therapist would?
What if we said to ourselves: “This feels really heavy right now… and that makes sense.” “I’m struggling… and I’m still here.” “This is painful… and I don’t have to fix it immediately.”
That small shift from fighting the feeling to being with it can be life-changing. It interrupts the cycle of self-criticism and creates the kind of inner steadiness that forced positivity never could.
The Hopeful Truth
You don’t have to be a therapist to develop this superpower.
You only have to be willing to stay present with pain — yours or someone else’s — without rushing to make it go away.
When we learn to do this, we give ourselves and the people we love something far more valuable than quick fixes: we give them the experience of being truly seen, accepted, and supported exactly as they are.
That kind of presence is rare. And it is incredibly powerful.
If you’re tired of feeling like your pain needs to be fixed or hidden, and you’re looking for a space where your feelings can simply exist while you learn how to move through them with more steadiness, you’re welcome here.
This is the kind of work I love doing.
References
Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT Skills Training Manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Rogers, C. R. (1957). The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21(2), 95–103.
Van Dijk, S. (2012). DBT Made Simple. New Harbinger Publications.
