The Fixer
Some people are fixers.
They’re the ones people call when something goes wrong. They listen, offer advice, make the phone call, solve the problem, smooth things over. They notice what needs to be done, often before anyone asks.
And they worry.
They worry about their children, their partners, their parents, their friends. They think about the conversation long after it has ended. They imagine what might happen next. They rehearse possible solutions.
Sometimes the people they want to fix even tell them to stop.
I’m okay.
You don’t need to worry about me.
I’ll figure it out.
You don’t have to fix this.
But the fixer has a hard time doing that. You might recognize some of these characteristics in yourself.
In my work, people ask me why.
Why do I always feel like I have to fix everything for everybody? Why can’t I stop worrying? Why can’t I just let people handle their own lives?
There are infinite possible answers. But I begin with a simple one:
Because you love them.
Because you care about them.
Because seeing someone you care about struggle is painful, and wanting to make that struggle easier is an expression of compassion. It speaks to something deeply human in you: when someone you care about hurts, you want to help.
That’s a natural response to seeing someone you care about suffer.
The difficulty comes when caring begins to feel like responsibility.
If you’re hurting, I need to make you feel better.
If there’s a problem, I need to solve it.
If something might go wrong, I need to anticipate it.
If I can help, I should.
Over time, fixing can become more than something you do. It can become part of who you understand yourself to be.
I’m a fixer.
And honestly, sometimes focusing on fixing other people’s problems can give you somewhere to put your attention. Other than toward your own problems.
There’s always something to think about. Something to organize. Someone to worry about. A problem to solve. It can become remarkably easy to fill the mind with other people’s lives.
Until cancer enters your own.
Cancer has a way of making itself difficult to ignore.
Your body reminds you.
The medication on the counter reminds you.
The appointment on the calendar reminds you.
The port in your chest reminds you.
Even on the days when you would rather think about almost anything else, cancer finds ways of tapping you on the shoulder.
And suddenly, disappearing into someone else’s problems becomes much harder.
Oh, you may still worry about everyone else. You may still want to solve their problems. The instinct to take care of people doesn’t disappear because you have cancer.
But now your own life is demanding your attention too. More loudly than before.
And for someone who has spent a lifetime fixing things, cancer presents a particularly painful problem.
You can’t fix it.
You may be able to do a great deal. You can choose your doctors, learn about treatment, ask questions, make decisions, advocate for yourself, take medications, show up for appointments.
But you cannot personally make the cancer go away.
You cannot guarantee that treatment will work.
You cannot guarantee what the next scan will show.
You cannot eliminate uncertainty.
You cannot promise yourself—or the people who love you—that everything will be okay.
The fixer has finally encountered something that can’t be fixed simply by trying harder.
And meanwhile, everyone else’s lives continue. Someone you love is struggling. Someone makes a decision you disagree with. Someone is unhappy. Someone has a problem you know how to solve.
Every familiar instinct might tell you to step in.
But you may no longer have the energy.
Maybe cancer has made your own needs too loud to keep placing them at the bottom of the list.
Or perhaps, for the first time, you begin to wonder whether every problem you can help solve is actually yours to solve.
A patient once told me she was learning to step back and let life be.
Not stop caring about or abandon the people she loved.
Let life be.
There’s something very different about that.
Letting life be means allowing someone you care about to have a problem without immediately making it your problem to solve.
It means allowing someone to be disappointed, frightened, frustrated, or sad without believing you are responsible for changing how they feel.
It means recognizing that the people you love may make choices you wouldn’t make.
And you can still love them.
For the fixer, that can be extraordinarily difficult. Because fixing has often been one of the ways you express love.
So perhaps the task isn’t to stop being a fixer. Perhaps it’s learning that love has other ways of showing up.
Sometimes love listens or sits beside.
And sometimes love simply remains present while something difficult is happening, trusting that another can find their own way.
That’s not the same as not caring.
It may be another form of caring entirely.
Cancer can ask you to practice that same kind of compassion with yourself.
There will be things you can change and things you can’t. Some problems require action; others ask only to be lived through.
Fear may not need to be fixed every time it appears.
Sadness doesn’t always need to be talked out of the room.
Uncertainty might not have an answer today.
This is what this moment is.
And perhaps we can let it be what it is.
That’s difficult enough when you’re watching someone you love suffer.
It can be even harder when the person whose problem you can’t fix is the one looking back at you in the mirror.
Reflections on the inner psychological experience of living alongside cancer.
Jae L. Ross, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist who works with individuals and families whose lives have been reshaped by cancer, helping them navigate the emotional challenges of diagnosis, treatment, and beyond.
Powerful reflection