Therapy Can't Fix What Your Life Is Missing

You can't self-care your way into a meaningful life.

I need to say something that might make some people uncomfortable: therapy culture has convinced us that if we're unhappy, unfulfilled, or struggling with life, the solution is to heal our psychological wounds. Process our trauma. Reframe our thoughts. Develop better coping strategies.

And yes, sometimes that's exactly what we need.

But sometimes, maybe more often than we want to admit, the problem isn't that we're broken. It's that our lives lack meaning, purpose, or connection to something larger than ourselves. And no amount of therapeutic processing will fix that.

Because therapy is designed to help you function better within your life. It's not designed to tell you that the life you're functioning within might be the problem.

Living with purpose and in community

The Medicalisation of the Soul

We're living through an era of unprecedented psychological awareness. Mental health is finally being taken seriously. Therapy has been destigmatised. We have more therapeutic modalities, more trained practitioners, more resources than ever before.

This is genuinely good. I'm not anti-therapy. I've benefited from therapy myself.

But something troubling has happened alongside this progress: we've started treating every form of human suffering as a psychological problem requiring psychological intervention.

You feel empty? That's depression. Here's an SSRI and eight weeks of CBT.

You feel disconnected? That's attachment issues. Let's explore your childhood.

You feel like your life lacks meaning? That's rumination. Let's challenge those thoughts.

But what if the emptiness, disconnection, and meaninglessness aren't symptoms of a disorder? What if they're appropriate responses to a life that actually is empty, disconnected, and meaningless?

What if your psyche is working perfectly by sending you signals that something fundamental is wrong with how you're living?

The Difference Between Healing and Meaning

Therapy is primarily concerned with healing psychological wounds and helping you manage your mental health. This is valuable work. Unprocessed trauma can genuinely interfere with your ability to function, form relationships, and make choices.

But meaning is different.

Meaning comes from:

• Connection to something transcendent or larger than yourself

• Purposeful contribution to others or the world

• Alignment between your values and your actions

• Engagement with the fundamental questions of existence

• Participation in communities and traditions that carry wisdom

• Encounters with beauty, truth, and the sacred

  
  

These aren't psychological issues. They're existential and spiritual needs.

Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz and founded logotherapy, observed something crucial: humans can endure almost any suffering if they have a sense of meaning. What we can't endure is suffering that feels pointless.

He wrote: "Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for."

That was written in 1946. How much more true is it now?

The Epidemic No One's Naming

We're experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression, particularly among young people. The standard explanation is that we need more mental health resources, more therapy, better medications.

But I wonder if we're misdiagnosing the problem.

Look at the actual conditions of modern life:

• Many people work jobs that feel meaningless, serving shareholders rather than communities.

• We're more connected digitally and more isolated physically than ever before.

• Traditional sources of meaning (religion, tight-knit communities, connection to land) have dissolved without being replaced by anything equally robust.

• We're encouraged to find meaning through consumption, achievement, and self-optimisation - all of which prove hollow.

• We're living in the midst of ecological crisis, political instability, and cultural fragmentation.

  
  

Under these conditions, wouldn't it be strange if people weren't anxious and depressed?

Your anxiety might not be a malfunction. It might be an appropriate response to genuinely threatening conditions. Your depression might not be a chemical imbalance. It might be your soul's rebellion against a life that doesn't align with your deeper nature.

What Therapy Can and Can't Do

Let me be precise about this, because I don't want to be misunderstood.

What therapy CAN do:

• Help you process trauma so it doesn't control you

• Give you tools to manage difficult emotions

• Improve your relationships through better communication

• Challenge distorted thinking patterns

• Provide a safe space to be seen and heard

• Support you through crisis

• Help you understand your patterns and behaviors

  
  

What therapy generally CAN'T do:

• Give your life purpose

• Tell you what you should value

• Provide connection to the transcendent

• Create community for you

• Offer a coherent cosmology or worldview

• Replace spiritual practice or wisdom traditions

• Make a fundamentally meaningless life feel meaningful

  
  

The therapeutic model is built on the medical model: something is wrong, and we fix it. But meaning isn't the absence of a problem. It's the presence of something profound.

The Spiritual Void Disguised as Mental Illness

I've worked with many people in my shamanic practice who come to me after years of therapy. They've processed their trauma, learned coping skills, maybe even feel better in some ways.

But they still feel hollow. They still wake up wondering why they're doing any of this. They still feel disconnected from any sense of purpose or belonging.

What they're experiencing isn't a failure of therapy. It's the recognition that therapy was never designed to address their actual need.

They don't need better mental health management. They need:

• A felt connection to the sacred (however they understand it)

• Practices that put them in touch with something real and alive

• Community that sees and values them for who they are

• Rituals that mark transitions and create meaning

• A cosmology that makes sense of suffering and death

• A way of life aligned with their deepest values

  
  

These are spiritual needs. And we live in a culture that has systematically dismantled spiritual infrastructure while offering nothing adequate in its place except therapy, medication, and self-help books.

The Tyranny of Self-Care

The therapeutic culture has also given us the concept of self-care, which started as a genuinely helpful reminder to attend to your own needs, but has metastasised into something more insidious.

Now self-care means: bubble baths, meditation apps, therapy, journaling, setting boundaries, saying no, prioritising yourself.

All of these can be helpful. But notice what's missing: any sense that you exist in relationship to others, that you have responsibilities beyond yourself, that meaning might come from giving rather than protecting, from serving rather than optimising.

The therapeutic model is fundamentally individualistic. It focuses on your mental health, your boundaries, your self-actualisation. But humans aren't isolated individuals. We're relational beings who need to be embedded in communities, connected to purposes larger than ourselves, participating in something that will outlast us.

You cannot self-care your way into a meaningful life.

What Actually Helps

So if therapy isn't enough, what is?

I can only speak from my experience, but here's what I've found helps people who are suffering not from mental illness but from spiritual emptiness:

Genuine spiritual practice - Not consumption of spiritual content, but actual practice. Meditation, prayer, shamanic journeying, contemplation. Disciplines that put you in contact with dimensions of reality beyond the psychological.

Community and belonging - Not just social connection, but being part of something with shared values, shared practices, and genuine mutual care. This might be religious community, spiritual circles, activist groups, or intentional communities.

Connection to nature - Not as a backdrop for Instagram posts, but as a living reality you're embedded within. Regular, attentive time in wild places changes something fundamental.

Meaningful work - Work that serves others, that contributes something real, that you'd do even if no one was watching. This doesn't have to be your job (though it helps if it is), but it needs to be somewhere in your life.

Ritual and ceremony - Practices that mark transitions, honour what's sacred, create container for transformation. Not as aesthetic performance but as genuine participation in something older and deeper than yourself.

Engagement with beauty and art - Not as entertainment or distraction, but as encounter with truth. Music, poetry, visual art that cracks you open and reminds you there's more to existence than survival and comfort.

Wisdom traditions - Whether religious, philosophical, or indigenous, engaging with teachings that have helped humans find meaning for thousands of years. Not as exotic consumer experiences but as serious students.

The Hard Truth

Here's what makes this conversation difficult: the solution to existential emptiness requires more from you than therapy does.

Therapy asks you to show up weekly, be honest, do some homework, and trust the process. It's designed to be accessible and manageable.

Building a meaningful life asks you to:

• Question everything about how you're living

• Possibly make major changes (career, location, relationships)

• Develop daily practices that require discipline

• Commit to communities and traditions

• Face the reality of death and limitation

• Give up the illusion that comfort equals fulfillment

• Accept that you might need to sacrifice some options to fully commit to anything

  
  

This is harder. Much harder.

It's easier to believe you just need to fix your psychology than to acknowledge you might need to restructure your entire life.

It's easier to work on your mental health than to ask whether the life you're mentally healthy for is worth living.

When Therapy Is Part of the Problem

I've seen therapy become actively harmful when it:

• Pathologises spiritual experiences or longings

• Reinforces consumerist individualism by focusing solely on personal fulfillment

• Treats dissatisfaction with meaningless work as a psychological problem rather than a reasonable response

• Offers endless processing without encouraging action or change

• Substitutes for genuine community and spiritual practice

• Keeps people focused on their wounds rather than their calling

  
  

The therapeutic relationship can also become a substitute for real community - a paid professional who listens becomes the only person who truly knows you. That's not healing; that's a symptom of a sick culture.

What I'm Actually Saying

Let me be clear about what I am and am not arguing:

I am NOT saying:

• Mental illness isn't real

• People don't need therapy

• Medication is bad

• You should just "think positive" or "find meaning"

• Trauma doesn't need to be addressed

  
  

I AM saying:

• Not all suffering is mental illness

• Existential and spiritual problems require existential and spiritual solutions

• Therapy culture can't replace wisdom traditions

• You might not be broken; your life might be

• Meaning requires more than psychological adjustment

  
  

An Invitation to Something Harder

If you've been in therapy for years and still feel empty, consider this: maybe you're not failing at therapy. Maybe therapy is failing to address what you actually need.

Maybe what you're experiencing isn't depression but the soul's refusal to accept a life without meaning.

Maybe your anxiety isn't a disorder but an alarm system telling you to change course.

Maybe the path forward isn't more self-care but more self-giving. Not more processing but more practice. Not more optimisation but more surrender to something larger than yourself.

This is harder than therapy. It doesn't come with a treatment plan or a promise of results in 12 weeks. It requires courage, commitment, and the willingness to become someone different than who you are now.

But it also offers something therapy cannot: the possibility of a life that doesn't just feel better, but actually means something.

I'm Kathy Postelle Rixon, researcher, philosopher, and shamanic practitioner. I work with people who've tried everything else and are ready to ask deeper questions about what it means to live well. If this resonates, reach out at kathy@magicinharmony.com or visit www.magicinharmony.com.

Have you experienced the limits of therapy in addressing existential questions? What helped you find meaning when psychological tools weren't enough? I'd genuinely love to hear your story.