You’re Not Broken — You’re Adapting: Reframing Emotional Struggles

By GGC Clinician: Jennifer Barrios

Does life ever feel heavy? Like your emotions feel like more than you can carry? Anxiety heightens, sadness lingers, and frustration bubbles over the tiniest things. In those moments, it’s easy to think, “I’m broken,” or “Something must be wrong with me.”

But what if those emotions weren’t proof that you’re broken — but proof that you’ve been adapting this whole time?

Many of us grew up hearing messages like:
“There’s something wrong with you.”
“You just need to fix this.”
“If you were stronger, you wouldn’t feel this way.”

Over time, these messages get internalized. They shape how we see ourselves and how we relate to our emotions. Eventually, emotional struggle begins to feel like failure — instead of information.

What If Your Struggles Are Adaptive — Not Defective?

Every time your mind spirals into worry or your heart races in a social situation, your nervous system is actually doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you.

Neuroscience shows us that our nervous system evolved to keep us alive. Millions of years ago, that meant staying alert to real, physical threats — a lion or a bear emerging from the bushes. Today, those threats are rarely physical. Instead, they’re emotional: rejection, conflict, disappointment, loss. Your brain doesn’t always know the difference — it simply works tirelessly to prevent harm.

If you learned hypervigilance to stay safe in relationships, perfectionism to feel worthy, or overthinking to avoid rejection, those were adaptations. They helped you survive. They may no longer serve you in the same way and can feel exhausting or overwhelming now — but they existed for a reason.

Research shows that when we’re able to reframe emotional experiences as meaningful and adaptive, it can reduce shame and increase resilience. This process doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, awareness, and compassion for what you’ve been through.

In other words, how we interpret our emotional experiences matters. You aren’t broken because parts of your inner world feel heavy. You’re using emotional muscles that were built to help you survive.

You Are Responding — Not Failing

At the heart of the work we do at Grace & Gratitude Counseling is helping you see your internal experience not as a mistake or malfunction — but as a response.

When you tell yourself, “I’m broken,” it reinforces self-criticism, guilt, and shame. But when you begin to reframe that message, it creates space for self-compassion and changes the way you relate to yourself.

Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me?” you can begin asking, “What was I adapting to?”

This shift is especially important for women and teen girls, who often internalize pressure to be perfect, accommodating, and quietly strong. As Dr. Brené Brown reminds us:

“Owning our story can be hard, but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.”

Owning your story includes honoring the ways you learned to cope — even when those ways now feel painful or limiting.

Reframing Isn’t Denial — It’s Meaning-Making

Reframing doesn’t mean minimizing pain or pretending things didn’t hurt. It means placing your experience in a new context — one that reflects your agency, not your defect.

Consider the difference between these two thoughts:

• “I have anxiety, so something is wrong with me.”
• “I learned to stay alert to danger to protect myself — and now I’m learning how to notice safety, too.”

The first isolates your struggle as a flaw. The second invites compassion, curiosity, and growth.

Your Nervous System Is Learning — Not Failing

When emotions feel overwhelming, your nervous system isn’t malfunctioning. It’s responding to cues of threat or stress — even when those cues may no longer be present.

This is often what we mean when we talk about being “triggered.” A trigger activates neural networks connected to past emotional memories. Even though something is happening in the present, your brain may be responding as if it’s happening in the past — perhaps to a moment when you were younger and felt embarrassed, unsafe, or unseen for expressing a need.

These experiences are stored in the emotional parts of the brain, which is why triggers can be activated through 

sight, smell, taste, sound, or touch — and why it can be hard to put words to what you’re feeling.

The encouraging part? Your nervous system can learn again.

Each time you practice mindfulness, self-compassion, grounding, or body-based awareness, you gently teach your system that safety is possible. You are literally learning new ways to respond to the world.

Your struggles are not proof of weakness. They are proof of neurobiological flexibility and resilience.

What Does This Reframe Look Like in Everyday Life?

Reframing emotional struggles often shows up in subtle — but powerful — ways:

Noticing your responses

• Instead of judging anxiety, anger, or sadness, you pause and think: “This is my body responding to a perceived threat. What might it need right now”
• Instead of punishing yourself for “overthinking,” you recognize how deeply you care, and how your brain learned to anticipate danger to protect you.
• Instead of beating yourself up for people-pleasing, you see it as a learned strategy to feel safe, seen, and valued, and begin choosing what actually helps you feel seen.
• Instead of hating your body’s stress response, you notice it as a protective mechanism that once served you, and gently teach it new messages of safety.

Naming your adaptive strategy

• Ask yourself how this response may have helped you in the past. Overthinking, perfectionism, or emotional numbing often developed to create control or protection. Understanding the why builds respect for your resilience.

Practicing gentle self-inquiry

• Questions like:
• “What is this emotion trying to tell me?”
• “How can I honor it without letting it run the show?”

Turn struggle into insight.

Integrating mind-body awareness

Many adaptive responses live in the body, tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, a racing heart. Somatic approaches and EMDR help bring safety back into the body, not just the mind.

Each time you meet your emotional pain with curiosity instead of shame, you create a new internal story — one rooted in choice, not fear.

Therapy Helps You Rewrite the Narrative — With Grace

At Grace & Gratitude Counseling, we meet you exactly where you are — with warmth, honesty, and deep understanding. We help women and teen girls explore the origin stories of their emotional patterns — not to criticize them, but to understand why they existed in the first place.

From there, we support you in learning how to adapt in ways that align with your values, needs, and goals.

Over time, you begin to see:

📌 Your emotional responses are messages — not mistakes
📌 Your nervous system is adaptive — not faulty
📌 Your history shaped your survival — and now your choices shape your healing

Your Struggles Are Part of Your Strength

Here’s what’s true:

You are not broken. You are responding to life with the tools your mind and body created to protect you. With awareness, guidance, and compassion, you can learn to respond differently, more freely, more safely, more gently.

You’ve already been adapting for years. Now it’s time to let adaptation become growth.

As Dr. Tara Brach writes:

“The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.”

When we stop labeling ourselves as broken, we open the door to acceptance, freedom, and healing.

If you’re ready to explore your emotional world with curiosity, safety, and support, we’d be honored to walk with you on that journey.