I walked away from my conversation with Leah Marone feeling like someone had quietly turned on the lights in a room I didn’t realize I’d been living in half-dark.
Because “fixing” feels noble. It feels productive. It feels like love. It feels like competence. And if you’re the kind of person who’s been rewarded your whole life for being reliable—good student, good teammate, good colleague, good parent—then fixing becomes your default operating system. Someone brings you a problem and your brain goes, Perfect. I know what to do. Hand it over.
Except… nobody ever tells you the bill comes due.
Leah started by saying something that landed hard: her outside didn’t match her inside.
From the outside, she looks like the prototype of someone who has it together—athlete, psychotherapist, speaker, writer, online presence. The kind of person you assume had straight A’s and a calm childhood and never cried in a parking lot. But she was honest about what was running the show behind the scenes: a fierce inner critic. Not some cute “I’m a bit of a perfectionist” thing. A real internal voice that can hand you ten bodyguards when you only need one.
And here’s the move she made that felt almost countercultural: she stopped trying to destroy the inner critic and started trying to understand it. She reframed it as a part of her that helped her achieve, kept her from stagnating, pushed her toward growth—until it got too loud, too dramatic, too controlling.
That’s the theme of the whole episode, really: the problem isn’t caring. The problem is caring in a way that steals ownership from other people, and then quietly steals your own life from you.
At some point I asked the question that’s almost a setup: “You’re a psychotherapist… aren’t you basically a professional fixer?” And Leah didn’t flinch. She said no—therapy done well isn’t “here’s my mess, clean it up.”
It’s support, not solving.
It’s pattern recognition.
It’s helping someone keep the torch in their own hand.
Support. Don’t solve.
That phrase should be stitched onto the steering wheel of every person who finds themselves exhausted, resentful, and strangely furious at people they “love.”
Because resentment is the smoke alarm. Leah said it plainly: resentment is one of the biggest clues your boundaries are weak or nonexistent. And it’s so true it’s annoying.
Resentment isn’t always a sign you’re surrounded by bad people. Sometimes it’s a sign you’ve been volunteering for a job nobody hired you for.
And the other clue? The same conversation, over and over, like some weird emotional Groundhog Day. You give the advice. They nod. They say “you’re right.” They change nothing. You do it again next week. Eventually you don’t even feel compassionate—you feel like a human FAQ page that nobody reads.
That’s when Leah’s practical advice gets sneaky-good: start with validation, not solutions. Don’t sprint to the finish line of “here’s what you need to do.” Create the space first. Let the other person hold the problem long enough to feel it’s theirs. That alone is a pattern interrupt for fixers, because fixers don’t actually crave solutions—we crave relief. The fastest way to get relief is to take control. But taking control isn’t the same as helping.
She had this line that I can’t stop thinking about: sometimes fixing is compassion disguised as control.
That’s such a clean gut punch.
Because it explains why fixing can feel so morally pure while quietly creating a dynamic that’s unhealthy for everyone. The person with the problem doesn’t build self-trust because you keep building it for them. And you don’t build peace because you’re living in constant urgency—always “on,” always monitoring, always bracing for the next crisis.
When we got into the addiction example—someone in hospital for the third time, family members in the room, everyone raw and exhausted—Leah’s approach wasn’t “be softer” or “lower your standards.” It was: establish the baseline, pass them the torch.
Not a lecture. Not the “third time in two years” speech. A question.
Where are you at right now? How are you feeling? What’s going through your mind?
And then—this is the part that takes discipline—sit with what they say without hijacking it. Validate the heaviness. Ask what they need. Ask what they think their options are.
Keep the ownership where it belongs.
Because the brutal truth is: a plan without ownership becomes garbage the second someone leaves the building. Families and hospitals can produce a perfect discharge plan with phone numbers, programs, protocols, and hope-filled speeches—and if the person doesn’t own it, it becomes a paper souvenir of someone else’s effort.
Leah also nailed something that explains why parents, partners, and close family members get trapped: love makes it confusing. Especially parents. There’s grief in watching your child—adult or not—fall apart. And there’s shame in the background:
Where did I go wrong? How did I miss this? What does it say about me if I can’t fix this?
That’s the emotional fuel behind a lot of “helping.” It’s not just wanting them to be okay.
It’s wanting to prove you’re a good parent, a good spouse, a good sibling. Fixing becomes a way to regulate your panic.
So boundaries aren’t just a communication strategy. They’re emotional regulation.
They’re grief work. They’re identity work.
And they’re not, as Leah put it, an attempt to change the other person. That was an important reset. A boundary isn’t: “You need to stop doing X.” A boundary is: “Here’s what I am no longer willing to do when X happens.” It’s you controlling the piece you actually control.
Which is why she’s big on “I” statements—not because it’s therapy-speak, but because “you” statements trigger defensiveness and escalate the drama. “You’re irresponsible. I’m done.” feels satisfying in the moment, but it’s often the kind of rigidity that leads to caving later. The balloon pops, you go nuclear, then you feel guilty, then you rescue again. It becomes a cycle.
The “I” statement approach is calmer and harder: I’ve noticed this pattern. I’ve noticed what it does to me. I’m changing how I show up. This is my line now.
And then Leah layered in something that I think is underused: if you’re constantly rescuing, you’re accidentally communicating you don’t believe the person is capable.
Even if you do believe in them. Your behavior tells a different story. You’re basically saying, “I don’t think you can handle your own life, so I’ll handle it for you.”
That might be the most painful part for fixers to admit, because fixers usually see themselves as generous. But sometimes generosity becomes a subtle insult.
The last chunk of our conversation veered into self-care, and I loved the way Leah refused to reduce it to “eat vegetables and go for a run.” She said most people already know what they “should” do. The issue is the rigid internal associations: the voice that says rest is weakness, slowing down is failure, saying no means you’re not compassionate, boundaries mean you’re selfish, self-care means you’re not a team player.
That voice is loud in medicine. It’s loud in high performance culture. It’s loud in anyone who’s learned that love and approval come from productivity.
Her most practical advice wasn’t “schedule meditation.” It was: use transitions. Micro- resets. The in-between moments you already have—walking to your car, standing at a red light, moving from one room to another, brushing your teeth, taking a shower.
Stop cramming every crack and crevice with stimulation. Stop treating every spare minute like a productivity emergency. Collect data on how often you reach for your phone as a pacifier. And then—this is the uncomfortable part—practice being present in tiny doses until your nervous system stops acting like presence is a threat.
Because for a lot of fixers, stillness feels unsafe. If you’re not doing something for someone else, your brain starts screaming that you’re falling behind.
And that’s the thing Leah kept circling back to: these changes need reps. You don’t fix fixing overnight. You don’t go from “I rescue everyone” to “I’m peaceful and boundaried” because you read a chapter or heard a podcast episode.
You practice.
You fail.
You feel guilty.
You re-try.
You learn to tolerate discomfort without trying to control it.
What I liked most about Leah is that she doesn’t talk down to fixers. She clearly understands them, because she’s been one. And she’s not asking people to stop caring.
She’s asking them to care in a way that doesn’t destroy their relationships and doesn’t destroy themselves.
Because if your love requires you to lose yourself, that’s not love. That’s a slow leak.
And if you’re always fixing other people’s lives, you might want to ask the question that sits underneath everything Leah said, quietly, like a needle:
What would you have to feel… if you stopped?
That’s where the real work starts.
Episode 95: Stop Fixing Everyone’s Problems: Practical Advice with Leah Marone