006 Stop Trying to Fix People

Dr Toni Reilly introduces intuitive counselling as an everyday relationship skill and explains the difference between advice and counselling: advice removes responsibility, while counselling helps people understand themselves, own their emotions, and make their own choices. She shares personal stories from seeking validation in her first counselling session, to misreading her child’s need for acknowledgement, to recognising her own self-control, to show how “fixing” and analysis can become projection. The episode focuses on listening as a conscious practice: noticing what’s said and what’s underneath it, while also tracking your own reactions, discomfort, and urge to rescue. Reilly outlines how accurate reflection expands awareness and shifts behaviour, and challenges listeners to tolerate emotion without neutralising it. 

00:00 Stop Fixing Start Listening

00:58 What Counseling Really Is

02:14 My First Counseling Lesson

03:17 The Skill of Presence

04:35 Projection at Home

05:49 Hear the Pattern Beneath

07:18 My Control Wake Up Call

09:32 Avoid Projecting Ask Instead

11:38 Hold Emotion Don't Neutralise

12:45 Weekly Takeaway and Closing

Schedule a conversation with Dr Toni
https://calendly.com/tonireilly/scdtalk

Submit a Question  / Contact us
Send your question through, suggest what you want to hear about or share your story using the form below for potential feature in future episodes. 
https://tonireillyinstitute.com/podcast/

Website 
https://tonireillyinstitute...

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Stop trying to fix people. How listening changes everything. Someone you care about is upset and you want to help? You'll want to fix it. You want to explain what's really going on. Probably you can see the pattern. You understand what's driving it. You know exactly why it's happened. And without realizing it, you make it about you.

Speaker 1 0:37

I'm Dr Toni Reilly. This is the SoulLife Psychology Podcast. We've explored awareness, integration, and we've explored our intuition as your inherent counterpart in life. Now we move into application, recognizing what you now know about yourself in real life. This episode is about intuitive counselling. Before we go further, consider that counselling skills are everyday skills. You use them in every single interaction with another person, in your workplace, in your home, with your partner, with your family, with your friends, with your children, no matter what age they are. Because the moment another person is involved, the depth of your awareness directly affects the dynamic and it changes depending on where you're at. This is where awareness and intuition weave into a relationship. This is where perception meets responsibility. What counseling actually is, or maybe is not, counseling is helping someone to understand themselves. It's helping to empower people to take responsibility for their own lives and choices and decisions in life. It empowers people to take responsibility, own their own emotions, understand why they're there. Advice takes responsibility away, but counseling gives it back. I didn't understand that. When I left my marriage, I went into counseling for the first time. I wanted validation. I wanted someone to confirm that what I was doing was right. I wanted approval so that I could feel secure in the decision that I'd already made. But the counsellor didn't give it to me. I left so disappointed. At the time, I thought she hadn't helped me. I thought counselling had not helped me. But I understand now that she was in a position right where she was supposed to be. She wasn't there to relieve me of responsibility. She was there to help me meet it myself. At that stage, though, I didn't know that I was heading down the therapist path. So in hindsight, I can clearly see how that counselling session was another puzzle piece that helped me to understand this work and what transpired. Intuitive counselling requires a particular internal position. Two things. One, that you're aware of the other person, and two, that you're aware of yourself. You're listening to what's being said and you're listening to what is really going on beyond what they're saying. Listening is a conscious activity. It requires your attention, it demands your presence. When you are in the moment, you notice their language, you'll notice their tone, emotional shifts, and you even start to notice the patterns that are revealing. At the same time, you notice yourself, your reactions, your discomfort, or your desire to fix. If you feel an urgency to fix their situation, that belongs to you. If you feel discomfort and want to smooth things over, that also belongs to you. If you feel pressure to provide answers, that's also you. When awareness is the default space that you operate from, your intuition becomes clearer. Without awareness, inner guidance can become projection. I have a story to help make sense of projection. I learned this in my own home. One of my children told me about a friend who'd gone behind their back in a significant way. It was a big deal. And there was a lot of distress around what had happened. Instead of listening, I shifted into therapist mode and I analyzed the friend's behavior and I explained the psychology behind what had happened. I described the insecurity that might be driving it, and I was accurate, and yet I was wrong. My child didn't need insight. He needed someone to hear how painful it was. He needed me to say what a shitty thing it was that had happened. He needed me to say that what had happened was hopeful. But in that moment, my explanation was about me, about my competence, about my understanding. It wasn't about him. Sometimes the most accurate response is not analysis, it's present, being present. When you're listening to someone, most people will start with a story. They'll tell you what happened, who did what, why it feels unfair or disrespectful. But underneath the story sits the pattern, the insecurity, the broods, their coping strategy. Every human being lives with certain givens, relationships, responsibility, freedom, choice, uncertainty, and time. No two people respond to these in the exact same way. If you understand that, you stop taking anyone else's behaviour personally and you begin to see the human condition behind their reaction. A child might say they hate school, for example. A teacher might hear defiance. A parent might hear laziness. An intuitive listener hears insecurity. Underneath it might be shame or fear of not being enough or not belonging. If you respond to the surface, you're correcting the behavior. If you respond to the pattern, you'll help shift awareness. Instead of judging someone's choices, you can ask yourself, what is this person trying to protect? That question that you ask yourself changes how you listen. Let me tell you about my realization around control. When I first sat in Pamela's intuitive counseling, actually, let me step back a moment. Let me just tell you that Pamela Ray wrote our intuitive counseling course for the SoulLife psychology module. And she was a huge mentor, majorly influential on me. And when she first taught counselling, of course, and the first time I sat in her counselling course, her intuitive counselling course, I was in for a shock. And I want to tell you about it. So what happened was I experienced seeing myself accurately or seeing who I really was to an extent. An exercise that we did in the class reflected something back to me that I hadn't noticed before. I was a controller, a control freak, and I had no idea. So I laughed and laughed, probably because it was accurate. Now, we do all use control. There are different kinds, which we'll cover in other episodes, but mine was self-control. It made me look disciplined, capable, and responsible. I felt those things. When I recognized the control, my body felt calm and at ease, and I felt like I had everything under control. Like I didn't need any help, like I was independent and I was emotionally regulated. So control felt very safe to me. I remember Pamela did not try to like undo the layers of it. She just recognized it. And she helped me recognize it. And that recognition shifted my awareness. And from there, my behaviors adjusted, or I was able to adjust my behaviors. Intuitive counseling is not about dismantling anyone, it is about highlighting what is already operating within them. Let me share a moment of projection. I can remember another counsellor telling me how I must feel during my separation. Her interpretation was based on how she would feel. She focused on financial stability, on whether I could support myself independently. But that concern was hers. It wasn't mine. What mattered to me was freedom, freedom from accommodating someone else's fears, freedom from adjusting to someone else's preferences. For someone else, finances might be everything. So can you see how this was a projection onto me? When you assume someone feels what you feel, you distort perception. When you're in conversation, don't assume, just ask. What was that like for you? That simple question prevents projection. It returns the experience to the person who's living it. Now, let's face it, most people have experienced advice, been corrected, been judged, or even dismissed. Very few have experienced being seen accurately for who they really are. I've used these skills for decades now, and the biggest change happens when someone feels heard without being fixed. They feel seen, it softens them, it brings clarity and it allows them to take responsibility for their choices instead of handing that responsibility to someone else. Accurate reflection expands awareness. When awareness expands, the person's point of reference shifts. And from that shift, their behavior changes through recognition. This is awareness. Intuitive counseling asks something uncomfortable of you. It asks you to tolerate not fixing, not advising, not rescuing, and not proving yourself to be insightful. It asks you to sit in someone else's emotion without neutralizing it. A great example of neutralizing someone's emotion would be when you're speaking to someone, a friend, let's say, and they start to cry. And a very common reaction to that is to hop up and cuddle them or reach over and touch them. But what happens when you do that is you break where they're at and you neutralize it. They'll pull themselves together usually and stop crying when actually it's part of their release. We don't want to neutralize anyone. So what it's asking you to do is to see clearly while remaining aware of yourself. That's maturity in a way. Let's talk about the takeaway for this week. This week I want you to notice what belongs to you. Observe yourself in conversation. Notice if you feel an urgency to fix or discomfort with emotion or pressure to give advice or even desire to be right. Because remember, that's yours. When you see that or notice it, stay with it. Intuitive counseling brings awareness into relationships, it changes how you speak to your children, how you respond to your partner, how you lead, how you teach. Notice what belongs to you. If you have any questions or suggestions from this episode, use the form in the show notes so that I can feature it in a future episode. Thank you for being here. If this work resonates, subscribe or follow to stay connected. See you in the next episode. Awareness is the ultimate activism.