The Myth of “Fixing Yourself”

By windoverwaterAnti-Diet, Compassion, DBT, Perfectionism, values, virtual therapy

CIRCA: A Framework for Therapy That Treats You Like a Human, Not a Self-Improvement Project

The Problem We Keep Pretending Is Not a Problem

Diet culture loves to pretend it is your helpful friend. Productivity culture plays the same game. Both whisper the same elegant lie. If you work harder, restrict more, optimize longer, and silence your own needs, you will reach some shimmering finish line of worthiness.

These systems congratulate you for self erasure. They praise your exhaustion. They point at your burnout and call it “dedication.” They reward your hunger and call it “discipline.”

This deserves a serious challenge. Or a Comedy Central Roast.

Diet culture operates like a bored academic with a personal grudge. It collects no valid data. It ignores every longitudinal study on weight suppression. It cherry picks nonsense and publishes it as life advice. Then it hands you the conclusion that your body is the problem.

Productivity culture is not better. It assigns moral value to output. It ignores the biology of fatigue. It treats nervous systems like machines. Then it calls you lazy when you inevitably break down.

Self esteem culture contributes its own masterpiece. It insists you perform with confidence – all the time. If you do not feel powerful, the advice is to stand taller. Smile more. Repeat affirmations. Pretend you are bulletproof.

These systems are not neutral. They shape your relationship with your body, your emotions, your value, and your place in the world. They also distort the way you judge yourself.

Mindfulness without judgment is almost impossible inside this noise.

Therapy must offer something else. Not more performance. Not more pressure. Not another list of reasons you should “try harder.”

I designed CIRCA because clients needed a framework that respects reality.
Not perfection. Not compliance. Reality.

CIRCA stands for Compassion, Integrity, Resilience, Candor, and Acceptance. It is a structure for healing without shame. It challenges the cultural narratives that harm people. It creates space for agency, curiosity, and connection.

Let’s look at the components and the opposites you may know all too well.

Compassion

Compassion is often mistaken for weakness. Our culture loves to treat self compassion like a soft skill. Something optional. A bonus feature for people with time to burn.

This thinking is nonsense. There is more peer reviewed support for self compassion than there is for self esteem interventions. Kristin Neff and Chris Germer built an entire field on this – Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC). It is science, not sentiment.

Compassion in therapy means mindful awareness, kindness toward your internal experience, and recognition of common humanity.
You learn to meet your pain without judging it.
You stop punishing yourself for the symptoms you developed for survival.
You build a relationship with yourself that is steady rather than adversarial.

Opposite of Compassion: numbness.
Not numbness as a flaw. Numbness as the predictable outcome of chronic stress, emotional overload, or years of living inside systems that deny your needs.
Numbness is not a lack of feeling. It’s the second stage of burnout.

Compassion helps thaw that freeze in a safe, intentional way.

Integrity

Integrity is often misused as a morality metric. That is not what I mean here.
Integrity is alignment.
Your values match your behavior.
Your boundaries match your limits.
Your choices match your priorities.

Therapy helps you identify these values in concrete terms.
You learn what matters to you instead of what you were conditioned to perform.
When your choices align with your values, guilt loses its power.

Opposite of Integrity: shame.
Shame happens when you feel pulled in competing directions, or when you’re forced to choose something that doesn’t align with your values.
When your actions do not match your needs.
When you shape-shift for safety, approval, or survival.

Shame can be “pro-social” (it makes you align with your social system via social signaling according to RO-DBT) and shame is part of vulnerability, according to Brene Brown, Another way to look at it is that it is adaptation to your environment, even when you did not choose it.
Integrity is the slow, steady return to yourself.

Resilience

People tend to think resilience means grit. Endurance. More pressure.
Real resilience has nothing to do with white knuckling.
Real resilience is flexibility.
It is a capacity to bend without breaking.
It grows through rest, connection, emotional expression, and support.

In therapy, resilience shows up through problem solving skills, regulation tools, distress tolerance, and self trust.
Resilience does not erase pain.
It helps you move through pain with steadiness.

Opposite of Resilience: rigidity.
Rigid patterns develop when you have lacked safety or predictability.
Rigid rules create a fake sense of control.
Diet culture depends on rigidity.
Perfectionism depends on rigidity.
Resilience interrupts that.

Candor

Candor is honesty without cruelty.
It is the ability to speak truths that matter, even when they feel uncomfortable.
Therapy without candor is just a performance – why bother going through the process if you’re not going to be honest? Healing requires accurate language.

Candor helps you name your experiences.
It helps you stop gaslighting yourself.
It helps you see your patterns without shame.

Opposite of Candor: avoidance.
Avoidance protects you when honesty feels dangerous.
It is common after trauma.
It is common in families where conflict was punished.
Avoidance makes sense, but it blocks growth.

Candor restores clarity.

Acceptance

Acceptance is misunderstood almost as often as compassion.
Acceptance is not surrender.
Acceptance is recognition.
It clears the mental clutter.

Acceptance helps you see what is in your control and what is not.
It helps you stop wrestling with reality like you can outsmart it.
It reduces shame.
It reduces self blame.
It frees energy for real change.

Opposite of Acceptance: resistance and suffering.
Resistance is the push against reality.
People get stuck here because they think resistance equals strength.
In therapy, acceptance gives you access to transformation.

How CIRCA Disrupts Diet and Productivity Culture

CIRCA works because it interrupts the scripts you inherited.
Compassion interrupts numbness.
Integrity interrupts shame.
Resilience interrupts rigidity.
Candor interrupts avoidance.
Acceptance interrupts resistance.

CIRCA dismantles the rules you were taught about your body, your worth, and your value.
It clears the mental clutter, similar to the way a well designed space reduces overstimulation. That is as close as I get to feng shui here, but the principles translate.

Your mind needs space.
Your body needs respect.
Your emotions need acknowledgment.

CIRCA provides that.

What Working This Way Looks Like

Therapy with this framework uses evidence based approaches from DBT, ACT, RO DBT, Intuitive Eating, HAES, CPT, and Mindful Self Compassion.
Sessions are collaborative.
You are not a puzzle to solve.
You are a person to support.

You learn skills that match your needs, not skills that serve a system.
You challenge beliefs rooted in diet culture.
You build a sustainable relationship with food, emotion, and rest.
You learn how shame works so you stop letting it dictate your choices.
You learn to question the rules you were handed.
You learn how trauma shaped your patterns without letting trauma define you.

CIRCA works because it keeps the focus on the whole person.
Your body, your mind, your story, and your future all matter.

Is CIRCA For You

If you feel betrayed by systems that told you to keep performing.
If you feel disconnected from your body or unable to trust your hunger.
If you feel lost inside the pressure to be productive at all times.
If you want a therapeutic relationship that is collaborative, grounded, and human.
If you want help separating your identity from survival patterns.

You will likely benefit from this framework.

CIRCA is not a formula for perfection.
It is a structure for coming back to yourself.
It helps you build enough internal clarity to stop living by fear based rules.
It supports healing from eating disorders, chronic self judgment, trauma, and burnout.

And it does all of this without asking you to perform a personality you do not recognize.

If You Want Support

I work with clients across Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland.
If you are looking for a therapist in the mid-Atlantic who understands eating disorders, trauma, emotional burnout, or the exhaustion that comes from doing everything “right,” this framework may fit you well.

You deserve a place where your symptoms are not evidence of failure.
You deserve support that treats your nervous system with respect.
You deserve care that includes clarity, humor, and real connection.

Healing is not a performance.
It is a return to yourself.

If you are ready for that, I would be honored to work with you.

Reach out when you are ready.

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