Healing Begins by Listening, Not Fixing
Healing happens when you stop trying to fix yourself and start listening to yourself. — Yung Pueblo
—What lingers after this line?
One-minute reflection
What feeling does this quote bring up for you?
From Self-Repair to Self-Relationship
Yung Pueblo’s line reframes healing as a shift in relationship rather than a project of repair. “Fixing yourself” implies you are broken, turning inner life into a problem to solve and often keeping you in a perpetual state of self-critique. In contrast, “listening to yourself” suggests you are a living system with signals—emotions, sensations, desires, fatigue—that carry information. As this perspective settles in, healing becomes less about reaching an ideal version of you and more about returning to contact with what is already true. The goal moves from perfection to presence, where understanding replaces condemnation and curiosity replaces urgency.
Why Fixing Can Keep You Stuck
The impulse to fix often comes from fear: if you can correct the “wrong” parts fast enough, you’ll finally feel safe, lovable, or in control. Yet that mindset can quietly intensify shame, because every relapse, mood swing, or unmet goal becomes evidence of failure rather than a normal part of being human. From there, the inner dialogue can turn harsh—an internal manager barking orders while the underlying pain goes unheard. The paradox is that the more aggressively you try to fix, the more you may disconnect from the very feelings that need attention, and disconnection tends to prolong suffering rather than resolve it.
Listening as a Skill of Awareness
Listening to yourself is not passive; it is an active practice of noticing without immediately intervening. It resembles the mindful stance described in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work on mindfulness-based stress reduction (1990), where attention is trained to observe thoughts and feelings without reflexively judging them. Once you start listening this way, emotions stop being enemies and become messengers. Anxiety might point to an unmet need for safety, anger to a boundary violation, sadness to a loss that deserves grief. Instead of trying to eliminate these states, you learn to interpret them—like reading weather patterns rather than blaming the sky.
The Body’s Voice in Healing
Self-listening also includes the body, because distress is often stored and expressed physically—tight shoulders, a heavy chest, a clenched jaw, restless sleep. Contemporary trauma-informed approaches emphasize this connection; for example, Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score (2014) popularized how somatic cues can reveal what the mind has minimized. With that in mind, healing can begin with small questions: Where do I feel this? What happens if I breathe into it? What does my fatigue ask for—rest, support, fewer obligations? As bodily signals become trustworthy data rather than inconveniences, your choices tend to grow gentler and more effective.
From Inner Critic to Inner Compassion
Listening changes the tone of the inner world. Instead of approaching yourself like a malfunctioning machine, you approach yourself like someone worthy of care. This aligns with research on self-compassion, including Kristin Neff’s work (2003), which links a kinder internal stance to resilience and emotional wellbeing. As compassion increases, insight often follows more naturally: you can admit what hurts without collapsing into blame. In everyday life, this might look like recognizing that irritability is grief in disguise, or that procrastination is fear of judgment. The point isn’t to excuse everything, but to understand enough to respond wisely.
Practical Ways to Start Listening
Listening becomes real through simple, repeatable moments. Journaling can externalize inner noise; a brief daily check-in—“What am I feeling, and what do I need?”—can reveal patterns over time. Even pausing before “self-improvement” routines to ask, “Am I doing this from care or from shame?” can change the outcome. Over time, this practice turns healing into an ongoing conversation rather than a finish line. You may still grow, seek therapy, set goals, or change habits, but the motivation shifts: improvement becomes an expression of self-respect. In that way, Yung Pueblo’s message lands as both permission and direction—stop fighting yourself long enough to finally hear yourself.